A new version of the Unity 6 game engine is now freely available

Unity Technologies has officially announced Unity 6 Preview, an updated version of its development engine that represents the latest stage in the Unity 6 development cycle. The final version is expected to be available closer to the end of the year.

The developers emphasize that the new version includes a number of rendering and performance improvements, offers new lighting solutions, enhanced capabilities for creating multiplayer projects, as well as improved web and XR features and AI tools.

Among the key new features in the Unity 6 Preview are significant tweaks to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). These improvements can reduce CPU load by 30-50% and speed up rendering on a variety of platforms depending on the type of content.

Additionally, Unity Sentis, a neural engine for integrating AI models into rantime, has been introduced to enable features such as object recognition and the creation of intelligent NPCs. Sentis supports quantization of AI model weights in the Unity editor and includes an AI model library with a new functional API that simplifies working with models.