Flax Engine is touted as the game engine made by game developers, for game developers. It was first released in 2020 and has a focus on productivity with features designed to expedite and streamline the development process, making it more efficient and agile. It was created to cater to all developers, from solo to bigger teams.
Some standout features include multiple scripting options such as C#, C++ and visual scripting, open world tools including terrain, foliage and fog systems and 64-bit precision for worlds coordinates.
The recently released 1.6 update brings multiple new features including support for .NET 7 and C# 11, PhysX 5 and support for iOS and macOS M1/M2. Let's go over all of the highlight features in this release:
.NET 7
C# scripting now runs with the latest .NET 7 runtime. This brings improved performance, support for C# 11, the ability to use mixed native/managed debugger in VS 2022, safer code hot-reload in the editor and smaller build sizes.
PhysX 5
The physics simulation engine has been updated from PhysX 4.1 to PhysX 5.1 which includes exceptional stability and performance improvements as well as new GPU simulation features (planned for the future). The Flax team has stated that they'll add cloth and destruction support to the engine in the upcoming months.
iOS Support
iOS support has been added in this release making Flax a truly multi-platform engine supporting all common gaming platforms including desktop, consoles, and mobile.
Flax uses Vulkan via MoltenVK to render high-quality 3D graphics on iOS with full support for C++, C#, Visual Scripting, stereo audio, multi-touch input, high-dpi UI, single-click deployment, and more.
macOS arm64 Support
Flax 1.6 can now run on arm64 Apple devices including macOS. Flax runs on M1 and M2 chips with stunning performance and great stability.
Animation Retargeting
Animation Retargeting allows the reuse of animations on different skeletons. New tools for skeleton retargeting inside the editor were added in this update. The Engine also does a better job at reusing animations between skinned models.
Any State in Anim Graph
This update adds a new Any state node. This is a special node that can define transitions to states that will be always checked during state machine updates. It can improve the workflow when creating more complex character animations such as a "Death" state that can be activated from any other state in the animation sequence. Additionally, State Machine transitions can define Interruption options to support transition rule rechecking or instant transitions.
Audio improvements
The audio system got multiple quality improvements for better spatial sound playback and new HRTF audio.
Audio sources can now control Pan, Doppler Factor, and Spatialization. The minimum audio attenuation distance has been fixed in this release and a debug sphere for visualization has been added to the editor.
Network Replication Hierarchy
NetworkReplicationHierarchy is a new feature used to store objects for replication in a more optimized structure (eg. grid or hierarchical tree) and it can be used to control the replication rate and target clients for each object individually. This feature is especially useful for large game levels with thousands of networked objects, preventing performance issues caused by replicating them to all clients. The networking system has also been improved, enhancing reliability and adding support for more features in network RPCs code generation.
Flax engine 1.6 is now available for download on the Flax engine website.
