The First Evergine 2023 release is here!

We are glad to release the first Evergine major version in 2023. One of the exciting aspects is that you can start playing with some of the most advanced graphics technologies for digital twins presented recently, like Neural Radiance Field (NeRF), which we will continue working on throughout 2023. For the next major release, we hope to have a faster NeRF rendering technology that can work on cross-platforms.

What’s new?

For this release, we have followed the feedback from companies using Evergine to improve the complete toolset and research some interesting new technologies and platforms required for them. We have put some focus on improving the physics engine, adding support for advanced vehicle simulations that can work in the same way on desktop and web. During the last year, we have created a new technology called XRV, which allows us to improve the productivity of VR/MR applications compatible with the most popular headset devices on the market. This new addon will drastically reduce the time to create advanced experiences and products for our customers. We hope you enjoy all these new advances.

First of all, download and install this from:

• Installer
• Documentation
• Nuget packages
• Samples
• Feedback

Major Highlights

• Improvements on physics
• Vehicles physics support
• Physics Web support
• New XRV platform addon
• Meta Quest Pro and Pico 4 support
• Net 7.0 Windows template
• Launcher and Evergine Studio improvements.
• Web React template
• NeRF sample based on Nvidia Instant-ngp
• Better documentation

Improvement on physics

We have updated Bullet physics to the latest version and added support for all types of advanced joints (hinge joint, cone twist joint, slider joint, gear joint point to point joint). This allows users to create complex simulations from the editor and quickly prototype. This new version includes a lot of performance improvements and bug fixes in some physics components. So the new physics included in this version is faster and more accurate than before.

Vehicles physics support

Following the feedback of our customers, we have included a set of components to set up vehicles and create complex simulation environments with them as part of the new physics. These new components are properly documented to help you take advantage of all their parameters. To showcase this new functionality, we have created a new sample about vehicle physics in our public GitHub repository, where you can start playing with the different parameters to test the performance and the possibilities of this new feature.

Continue reading more about this here. 

Physics Web support

One of the biggest technical challenges of this new release was to have the same physics possibilities on desktop and on web platform. We worked hard on this, and finally, we managed to compile the latest Bullet Physics Engine library directly on WebAssembly. This allows us to use the same C++ code working on web and with the best possible performance compared with other options. This is a big step forward in the possibilities of how to use advanced physics features on web platform. And we have published a new web-based sample based on WebGL 2.0 to show it to you.

More info about this here.

New XRV platform addon

During the last year we started working on a new addon called XRV, which is an accelerator to quickly prototype and create Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality applications. This addon has some built-in services common to this kind of apps, like 3D window system, hand menu, voice system, storage system and so on. It also comes with several basic modules to load, manipulate and show models, add audio notes in the space, connect to video streaming or paint in the air directly with your fingers. All these apps are fully style customizable using a theme system included as well. This new addon accelerates the development of new XR applications by up to 70%.

More details about this here.

Meta Quest Pro and Pico 4 support

VR headsets are evolving every year and some devices offer different features that suit different environments. These features could be based on the weight, the size, battery life, outdoor visibility or deployment time. Many developers are aiming to create multi-device XR applications for these devices. We have been working hard on this goal using OpenXR standard to test and support the latest devices on the market. In this release, we have added support for Meta Quest Pro and Pico 4 devices. Both of these are VR devices that include passthrough, which is an evolution of virtual reality headsets. This feature is also supported by XRV through a core service

These new devices supported will allow you to explore all the new possibilities on the new devices.

Net 7.0 Windows Template

Microsoft released .Net 7.0 last November and many of our customers are interested in exploring the new performance improvements such as Native AOT for fast startup times and new APIs based on C# 11. The main target framework of Evergine remains .NET 6.0 which is LTS but we have included a Windows Template that allows our customers to start using .NET 7.0 with Evergine. We will continue working on this to release new .NET 7.0 templates that enable creating new applications based on Blazor and .NET MAUI in the coming months. These advances will help us prepare for the new .NET 8.0 LTS version that Microsoft is planning for the end of this year and ensure that with Evergine you will have a smooth experience using both and become the best technology to create 3D applications with all the new features for Windows Forms and WPF that are going to come out as well.

Launcher and Evergine Studio improvements

Tools have a big impact on the development process so we keep improving our tools. In this new release, the Evergine Studio binaries are compiled using .NET 7.0 to benefit from the new performance improvements in WPF applications.

We have a large number of templates that made it complex to select the right one from the Evergine Launcher, so we have added the ability to filter by platform. This will help you to know which project templates are available for each platform.

We have also made some important changes in the Evergine Studio, such as rewriting the camera editor from scratch. It now has a smooth movement and allows orbiting around selected objects. We have also added a new directional zoom that lets you get close to the object without passing through them and control whether you need to move the camera closer or change its FOV.

You will see all these new features as soon as you use this new version. More detailed description here.

New Web React template

React is the most popular JavaScript library for creating modern web applications. Millions of developers use it worldwide to build cutting-edge web apps. Now, we have made it even easier to create web applications with 3D rendering using Evergine, React, .Net7 and Web Assembly. The new template uses an innovative architecture that enables different development teams to work on both the web interface and 3D rendering (using the same Studio solution, or the prefered IDE), following React standards. Also, a new NPM package for Evergine has been released, simplifying the upgrade process for web applications to future versions of the engine. This is a big step forward for web developers, as they can now build web applications with rich 3D content rendered in Evergine, using the framework and ecosystem they know and love. In short, this new template provides a great opportunity for developers to create immersive web applications with ease, while taking advantage of the latest rendering technology.

More details about this here.

NeRF sample based on Nvidia Instant-ngp

One of the most advanced technologies that has received a lot of attention in the last months is Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), which can change the way we capture real environments for digital twin representation in the industrial sector. We are developing different approaches to this new technology, balancing quality, real-time performance and platform compatibility.

Nvidia has presented one of these approaches called Instant-ngp, which has a fast-training process and uses CUDA.

We have integrated this and other NeRF techniques into Evergine, and we have published a new sample with the required libraries to render Instant-ngp in real-time using Evergine. We invite you to explore this technology and imagine what ideas you can create with it.

Read more about this here.

Better documentation

We have added documentation for the new physics features in this release, such as the new joint section and vehicle physics. You can find detailed explanations of every new parameter for advanced simulations. We also have documentation for the particle editor and the new XRV addon. You can learn about all the built-in modules and how to extend them with custom modules. You can also integrate your custom modules with the XRV core services to enable network collaboration or add parameters to the default settings hand menu.

We understand that good documentation is important, and we will keep working to improve it in every release.

Check all the changes at https://docs.evergine.com/

Future work

We are working hard to bring you more amazing features and improvements for our software. The next major release is planned for September 2023, but in the meantime, we will continue releasing minor versions with bug fixes and minor changes.

We are also working closely with the companies that are creating products based on Evergine technology to ensure that we include all the features needed today and for future developments.

We are especially focusing this year on digital twin representations, making it easy to create visualizations mixing point clouds, NeRF, and BIM elements in the same render.

Stay tuned for more updates, and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or feedback. We would love to hear from you!

Hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it.

Have a nice day!