Talking To The Developers Of The Unigine Engine

Michael: This may a little too technical, but do you use a forward or a deferred renderer? If it is the latter, how did you implement FSAA? Is it done as a custom post-process edge-detect filter, or have you implemented some novel algorithm for this?

Alexander: Unigine uses a combination of forward and deferred rendering, so there is no problem with FSAA or transparency, plus we get benefits of the deferred approach.

Michael: What approach do you take for GI (Global Illumination)? SSAO or something newer/better?

Alexander: We use screen-space ambient occlusion and a special type of lights (probe lights).

Michael: For the game developer, roughly how much does the fully licensed support for the Unigine engine cost? Are there any inexpensive options for indie game developers?

Denis: Current prices are $25k for binary version and $40k for full-source one. We have a special offer for indie developers: they can pay only 20-25% of the price initially to get access to Unigine SDK and technical support, and pay the rest amount of money only after getting major funding from a publisher or other kind of investor. We suppose that these prices are low taking into the account prices for other technologies available on the market.

Michael: How would you compare the Unigine Engine to say id Tech 4, Unreal Engine 3, or other popular game engines?

Denis: That's a hard question because it's rather unethical to talk about our competitors. In general, Unigine is a competitive middleware solution, however CryEngine2 and UE3 have better tools and larger track of records. But there are different numbers of digits in prices for these technologies and Unigine :)

In long-term run we aim to be number one in this field, but it will take years more to achieve it, so we keep working on that.