Unity 3 Released

After relatively long beta-testing a very promising game engine Unity 3 is finally released to general public. In this new version engine was significantly improved, receiving many enhancements and new features, thus become even better and promising. With no doubt, Unity now is one of the best game engines for wide variety of game developers, genres and platforms.

Read complete list of changes and new features in "What's new in Unity 3" section of their official site, and i will focus only on what I personally find most important and "tasty". Some of them was already presented in previous versions of Unity, but I will mention them again in one row with really new features of Unity 3.

• Unified Editor

Allows developing of your projects for all platforms in one editor. Target platform is selected at the stage of project compilation.

• Autodesk Beast Lightmapper

Unity 3 has integrated Autodesk Beast Lightmapper, which is considered as "best lightmapper in the world". Beast can generate lightmaps within Unity Editor, create UV-maps and bake them out.

• Deffered Rendering provides possibility to have a very large number of light sources in the scene with almost no performance drop.
• Advanced debugger allows debug your project in real time, set breakpoints, etc.
• Post-processing effects, including Lens Flares
• Integrated Umbra Occlusion Culling system
• Terrain editor
• Physics, including PhysX, Ragdoll, Soft Bodies, Rigid Bodies, Joints, Cloth.
• Support for PC, Web, iOS ( iPad, iPhone ), Android, PS3, Xbox360, Wii.
• Editor allows scene preview in it's window, thus you able to playtest your game without need to compile it.
• Asset Server — control and organize system for all assets in game ( like models, scripts, sounds, etc. ) Must-have feature for large projects or projects, developed by non-local people. Version control and overall organization gets easier with it.
• Profiler allows frame-by-frame optimization of your game.

In overall, as i wrote before, I like Unity. In addition free version of this game engine is available to developers, making Unity perfect choice for new developers or indie dev's. Pro version license with no limitations in functionality cost 1500 $ — not much for what you get, i think. Very reasonable price for such a game engine.

Demo "Dark Unity":

Demo "Boot Camp":

Links by topic:

Unity official site
Unity game list
Developers blog

Also you can download Unity 3 trial version, which also is free version ( license type is determined during activation ).

In conclusion

In my opinion, Unity seriously "jumped" in last 1,5 years, and key moment in this success was release of Unity 2.5, which is brought support for Windows ( yes, Unity editor previously was Mac-only ). Since Unity becomes with every step more and more powerful, which can not fail to please me.