This release primarily focuses on stabilization, while also introducing several significant new features.

We are continually enhancing our Screen-Space Ray-Traced Global Illumination (SSRTGI) technology to achieve even greater photorealism. The ray distribution across the hemisphere has been completely redesigned to improve the overall effect. Updates have also been made to the accumulation and application process for SSGI. Gamma correction issues have been resolved for SSAO, both when writing to the buffer and during rendering debug visualization.

Moreover, the overlay of SSAO on reflections has been eliminated, resulting in more natural-looking reflections.

Upscalers such as NVIDIA DLSS 3 (Deep Learning Super Sampling) and AMD FSR 2.2 (FidelityFX Super Resolution), introduced in version 2.18.1, are essential for reducing pixel load at higher resolutions, freeing up resources, and ensuring optimal performance. With this release, these upscalers are now available in VR as well, delivering a significant performance boost in virtual reality environments.

The SpiderVision plugin has been enhanced with undo/redo functionality, improved multiselection in Projection Setup widgets, main window designation, UI tooltips, and a new Borderless window type in the API.

In version 2.19, we introduced the WebStreaming plugin, allowing you to broadcast audio and video frames rendered by a UNIGINE application via WebRTC. This release builds on that by enabling streaming from any existing camera to a separate web browser instance. This feature allows you to switch between cameras in the scene, provide different views to various client devices (including mobile), and display multiple views in separate browser instances on a single device. Additionally, the update includes optimizations and performance improvements.

Building on the USD (Universal Scene Description) export functionality introduced in 2.19, this release adds support for USD import, enabling the use of usda, usdc, and usdz files.

Additionally, the USD Export plugin in UnigineEditor has been renamed to USD Exchanger and is now available across all SDK editions, including the free Community edition.

As part of our ongoing improvements to the virtual avatar animation system, animation preview is now built into the Editor, enabling you to easily view and select animations directly in the Asset Browser without needing to assign them to a Skinned Mesh object.

Dear ImGui is a bloat-free graphical user interface library for C++ enabling fast iterations and empowering programmers to develop content creation tools and visualization / debug tools quickly and efficiently. It has been used by a number of our customers, and there have been plenty of questions asked and answers provided. So, for this release we decided to implement and deliver an integration sample showcasing the most commonly used and frequently asked things regarding Editor plugins based on Dear ImGui.

This sample is available on the Add-On Store as ImGuiSamplesPlugin and covers multiple basic cases encountered by users when making their own Editor plugins.

The plugin adds a dedicated window in UnigineEditor with three tabs, each showcasing a unique sample:

• Spline Editor: Demonstrates using the Undo/Redo system via API, remappable hotkeys, and custom visualization with spline editing as an example.

• Editor (Immediate Mode): Showcases working with Editor and Engine widgets in immediate mode (similar to ImGui), ideal for prototyping or simple plugins. Features interactive polygon manipulation with live updates.

• Components: Highlights in-Editor generation and assignment of C++ components to nodes, enabling real-time execution and parameter adjustments directly in the Editor.

• OpenXR hand tracking and Linux support

• Various quality-of-life improvements for the Editor

• Performance optimizations, including faster hashmaps

• GUI render optimizations made it approximately 2 times faster

• Added force feedback support for steering wheel controllers

• Numerous bug fixes

• New user account registration directly from the SDK browser

• Free UNIGINE learning course for C++ developers

• New sample: physics-based robot arm with a kinematic chain

For more changes and technical details please see our devlog.

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