After a year of development, the non-profit organization Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) published the release of an open game 3D engine called Open 3D Engine (O3DE) on September 24th. This engine is suitable for the development of modern AAA games and high-precision simulators capable of working in real time and ensuring cinematic-level quality. The code is written in C++ and is published under the Apache 2.0 license. It supports platforms such as Linux, Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
The initial code of the O3DE engine was opened in July 2021 by Amazon and was based on the code of the proprietary engine Amazon Lumberyard, which was built on Cryengine technology licensed by Crytek in 2015. After the opening of the code, development of the engine was taken over by the non-profit organization Open 3D Foundation, established under the Linux Foundation. Companies like Epic Games, Adobe, Huawei, Microsoft, Intel, and Niantic have also joined the project.
The engine includes integrated tools for game development, a photorealistic rendering system called Atom Renderer with support for Vulkan, Metal, and DirectX 12, 3D models, Character Animation system (Emotion FX), prefab system, real-time simulation engine, and mathematical libraries using SIMD instructions. It also features a visual programming environment (Script Canvas) for gaming logic, alongside support for LUA and Python languages.
The project is designed for adaptability and has a modular architecture, offering over 30 modules as individual libraries that can be replaced, integrated into third-party projects, or used separately. Developers have the flexibility to replace components such as graphics renderers, sound systems, network stacks, and physical engines.
Changes in the new version of the engine include the ability to create projects with a ready-made installer that do not require C++ code compilation and only contain scripts in Lua and Script Canvas.