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Unity now supports the Vulkan API

Unity logo

Unity’s new beta branch has launched, adding a bunch of new features to the game engine, including support for Google Daydream VR, more graphical features and full support for the Vulkan API.

No doubt some of our upcoming PC games list will be made with Unity. 

Unlike DirectX 12, Vulkan actually offers a decent performance boost on most games. In fact, Unity promise their developers will get “a rendering performance improvement out-of-the-box up to 60%”.

If you’re not familiar with it, Vulkan is a low level API that gives developers direct access to the GPU. It promises less latency than traditional OpenGL or Direct3D, and it also boasts a range of efficient multi-threading capabilities, so multi-core CPUs will keep the graphics pipeline nice and full.

It’s like a free performance boost for gamers, then, which is why it’s such good news. It’s especially good news these days, too, since Unity is becoming one of the most dominant game engines on the market, boasting a reach of 770 million gamers playing Unity-made games, thanks to its relatively easy porting capabilities.

Existing Unity games could get Vulkan support added retroactively, though that’s obviously down to individual developers.

Check out the full Unity 5.6 beta patch notes at that link.

Thanks, Tech Report.