What is Unity3D? Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, which is primarily used to develop both three-dimensional and two-dimensional video games and simulations for computers, consoles, and mobile devices. First announced only for OS X at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 2005, it has since been extended to target 27 platforms. Six major versions of Unity have been released. For a list of games made with Unity, visit List of Unity games.

Unity is a multipurpose game engine that supports 2D and 3D graphics, drag-and-drop functionality and scripting using C#. Two other programming languages were supported: Boo, which was deprecated with the release of Unity 5[5] and JavaScript which started its deprecation process in August 2017 after the release of Unity 2017.1.

The engine targets the following graphics APIs: Direct3D on Windows and Xbox One; OpenGL on Linux, macOS, and Windows; OpenGL ES on Android and iOS; WebGL on the web; and proprietary APIs on the video game consoles. Additionally, Unity supports the low-level APIs Metal on iOS and macOS and Vulkan on Android, Linux, and Windows, as well as Direct3D 12 on Windows and Xbox One.

Within 2D games, Unity allows importation of sprites and an advanced 2D world renderer. For 3D games, Unity allows specification of texture compression, mipmaps, and resolution settings for each platform that the game engine supports, and provides support for bump mapping, reflection mapping, parallax mapping, screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO), dynamic shadows using shadow maps, render-to-texture and full-screen post-processing effects. Unity also offers services to developers, these are Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, Unity Certification, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Everyplay, Unity IAP, Unity Multiplayer, Unity Performance Reporting and Unity Collaborate.

Unity supports the creation of custom vertex, fragment (or pixel), tesselation, compute shaders and Unity’s own surface shaders using Cg, a modified version of Microsoft’s High-Level Shading Language.

Supported Platforms for What is Unity3D?

Unity supports building to 27 different platforms. The platforms are listed in the following: iOS, Android, Tizen, Windows, Universal Windows Platform, Mac, Linux, WebGL, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, 3DS, Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Steam VR, PlayStation VR, Gear VR, Windows Mixed Reality, Daydream, Android TV, Samsung Smart TV, tvOS, Nintendo Switch, Fire OS, Facebook Gameroom, Apple ARKit, Google ARCore, and Vuforia.

Unity formerly supported 7 other platforms including its own Unity Web Player. Unity Web Player was a browser plugin that was supported in Windows and OS X only, which has been deprecated in favour of WebGL.

Unity is the default software development kit (SDK) for Nintendo’s Wii U video game console platform, with a free copy included by Nintendo with each Wii U developer license. Unity Technologies calls this bundling of a third-party SDK an “industry first”.

Unity3D is definitely the place to begin your advanced video game creations. Want us to create a FREE learn Unity3D online course? Well, it is coming soon. Please consider buying us a cup of coffee for our efforts here.

What is Unity3D?

Supported Platforms for What is Unity3D?

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