New-Gen Engine: New generation of graphics engine providing a new visualization paradigm

Today, technological advances in the field of graphics engines have been driven primarily by the video game industry. These engines, originally designed to generate immersive and realistic visual environments, have evolved significantly to meet the increasingly complex demands of the digital entertainment industry.

However, while the video game industry has enjoyed a wide range of advanced and optimized graphics engines, the supply of graphics engines targeted at other industries is much more limited.

This gap in the availability and quality of specialized graphics engines has created a challenge for various industries, such as architecture, engineering, and simulation, which require specific solutions tailored to their particular needs.

In this context, our R&D project appears, which aims to further develop a highly specialized and versatile graphics engine that addresses these shortcomings and provides a comprehensive and effective solution for various industrial applications.

The main objective of the project is to research and design the concept of a new generation of graphics engines capable of addressing the current needs of the industry and with a high level of compatibility and interoperability with the latest 3D graphics technology disruptions in the market.

The result of this research and design will provide the engine with new advanced capabilities on top of our Evergine graphics engine.

The processes that are necessary to achieve the main objective of the project involve the realization of 4 major blocks: 

1. Architectural reformulation: research and reformulate the architectural design of the graphics engine, focused on improving graphics rendering capabilities and introducing new disruptive capabilities.
2. Integration and interoperability mechanisms with cutting-edge technologies and devices: incorporate and enable the exploitation of the advantages and innovations provided by third-party devices and technological resources.
3. New resources and functions for creating and managing efficient 3D assets and scenes: research new mechanisms that streamline and expand the possibilities for creating and managing 3D assets and content, as well as improving visualization efficiency.
4. Advancement in the new web paradigm in new generation graphic engines: to advance and improve the characteristics of graphic engines in terms of support for web technologies.  

At Plain Concepts we have been developing our own graphics engine since 2013, called Wave Engine. The engine continued to evolve and improve until in 2021 it underwent a rebranding to boost its commercial side and was renamed Evergine.

It has positioned itself as one of the most advanced industrial graphics engines on the market, and its new capabilities continue to grow.

To continue to be a reference engine on an industrial scale, this research proposes to create a new generation of Evergine that can meet the current needs of the industry and with a high level of compatibility and interoperability with the latest technological disruptions in the state of the art in 3D graphics market.

After analyzing the main needs of the industry, several points of improvement have been established: 

• Performance optimization and new functionalities: the graphics engine, in its different parts and modules, comprises a series of libraries and packages of different origins. These libraries are updated and new versions of improved code are released, so to be at the forefront of technology, it is necessary to evolve the engine to adapt it to these new versions, ensuring that it is always able to work with the most recent code versions available.
• New hardware devices for virtual and mixed reality with which to integrate: in the development of VR and MR applications, in addition to a graphics engine capable of managing and creating the 3D scenes, another of the key pieces are the physical devices that allow the user to immerse themselves in said immersive experience. These third-party hardware devices also present their own trajectory of technological progress, and we are seeing new and impactful capabilities appearing on the market. Therefore, it is essential to ensure compatibility and integration in the graphics engine with the new devices that appear in order to stay at the forefront of technology and be able to take advantage of all existing resources to create immersive experiences as realistic and advanced as possible.  
• Need to provide new tools for the 3D creation stage: the demand for 3D graphic applications continues to grow, making it necessary to continue to make progress in the provision of resources and tools that allow the generation and management of 3D content in an intuitive, fast and efficient way, as well as being available to a greater number of users and different professional profiles.
• Appearance of new complex 3D data formats of growing use in the industry: in recent years new 3D data formats with great potential have appeared, such as point clouds. For their visualization, a substantial amount of GPU memory is usually required to display them accurately, especially in detailed environments. Gaussian Splatting is another 3D scene reconstruction technology that stands out for its speed and efficiency. However, to exploit all these new resources that offer great advantages in the industry, it is necessary to have graphics engines capable of supporting these formats.  
• Need to advance in the ability to operate in web technology: one of the most desired features and with the greatest potential is that a graphics engine can be executed directly from a web browser. However, there is still a long way to go to reach a complete implementation and functionality of what this new web paradigm implies. Therefore, the structure of the engine must be adapted to the latest web technologies that are appearing.  

The execution of the project will entail obtaining a new graphic engine of a new generation, which will be characterized by the incorporation of a set of novelties in terms of technical and functional characteristics that were identified as needs for improvement and/or expansion based on the analysis of the previous product.

Some of the new features are:  

• Support for .NET 8: Evergine’s latest Release already includes a complete migration to .NET 8, which represents a significant evolution in terms of performance and efficiency for the development of 3D graphics applications. With this, our graphics engine is positioned as the first to natively support .NET 8.
• New Render Pipeline architecture: this technical feature represents a fundamental transformation in the way rendering challenges are addressed within the graphics engine, evolving towards a simpler and more versatile architecture, and offers 3D visualization with an unprecedented level of detail and precision.
• New Render Pipeline modules for advanced 3D format visualization: the implementation of these new modules will represent a significant advance in the ability to render large volumes of 3D data. In the case of Point Cloud, the innovation will lie in the development of progressive rendering based on compute shaders and reprojection, which will allow us to render scenes of up to 600 million points in a single second. As far as Gaussian Splatting is concerned, it will be a revolutionary initiative aimed at overcoming the challenges of current 3D visualization techniques. 
• New immersive VR and XR experiences through disruptive hardware devices: integration in the graphics engine support for new hardware devices for immersive experiences is fundamental to enable users to interact with the physical environment around them while immersed in a digital experience. This represents a commitment to interoperability and cutting-edge technology, ensuring that applications developed in the engine can benefit from the latest innovations in the field of extended reality (XR).
• Integration with APIs from different operating systems: this feature is essential to maximize the performance of applications developed for previous devices, taking advantage of their full potential.
• Advancing the new web paradigm in graphics engines through WebGPU: the introduction of a new graphics backend for WebGPU Native in the new engine design represents a significant evolution in the development of web and graphics applications. It offers a notable increase in its ability to handle 3D rendering tasks and also allows access to the GPU for generic computation.  

We are already witnessing the achievement of the first results that are very satisfactory and innovative, such as having achieved the first graphics engine to natively support .NET 8, the optimization of the development workflow, or new possibilities in the creation of 3D content, among others. Soon we will share with you the new advances achieved with the project! 

Funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU