 | This articlerelies largely or entirely on asingle source. Relevant discussion may be found on thetalk page. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Visual3D Game Engine" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(November 2023) |
| Visual3D Game Engine | |
|---|---|
| Developers | PowerAccess, Realmware Corporation |
| Initial release | 2003 |
| Stable release | v1.0 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Platform | PC |
| Type | Game engine, In-Game Editor (IDE) |
| License | Free, Commercial, Open-source |
| Website | Visual3D Game Engine |
Visual3D Game Engine is a 3Dgame engine andgame development tool written entirely inC# and built for the.NET Framework, with development of its 3D rendering engine first beginning in 2003.
Visual3D was founded byPowerAccess for Microsoft Access founder, Dan Moorehead, after itsfree and open-source software predecessor,RealmForge Game Engine, was featured as the cover story and namesake forSoftware Developer's Journal July 2015 issue titled3D Games in .NET, for first proving that C#, .NET Framework, and managed languages were feasible for mainstream 3D game and simulation development.
Visual3D (formerly known asVisual3D.NET) is built on theMicrosoft XNA, as the first major XNA-based engine and game development tool. However, Visual3D predates XNA and XNA's successor,MonoGame, with it first being built upon managed wrappers forDirect3D andOpenGL.
Visual3D is also notable for providing its game development tools as integrated or hosted within whatever game is being developed with it, for live, real-time world building, terrain editing, game development, scripting and mission/level/scenario editing, as well as allowing end-users to redistribute its development tools to End-Users as a Mission/Level/Scenario Editor and Modding Toolkit.
Visual3D Game Engine is the commercial successor to the open-source RealmForge Game Engine with roots going back to theOGRE 3Dopen-source engine. Visual3D is the flagship product ofPowerAccess predecessor Realmware Corporation, based inSeattle, Washington.
Visual3D was founded by Dan Moorehead, who, in addition to founding PowerAccess and RealmForge, had also lead development of theAxiom Engine (a C# port ofOGRE) andCEGUI# (a C# port ofCEGUIGUIlibrary).
Visual3D has 30,000 registered users, and, as of July 2008,Visual3D Game Engine has been employed for multiple private business projects and by theUS Department of Defense formilitary simulation andtraining. Also in 2008,Visual3D Game Engine has begun to permeate education andIndie sectors as a part of the recentXNA trends.
Visual3D license editions included Indie, Professional, Enterprise, Enterprise Source, as well as Free editions for Open-Source and Educational use.
Following Visual3D predecessorRealmForge Game Engine's success as the first 3D game engine and integrated development toolset for C# and .NET, and it features as the cover story forSoftware Developer's Journal July 20153D Games in .NET issue,Microsoft announced the first public release of itsMicrosoft XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio products in the August 2006 keynote speech at Microsoft Gamefest conference, confirming the viability of C# and .NET for game development and opening upXbox 360 andPC forgame development byIndies and students with C# and .NET.[1][2]
This announcement set into motion the rise of many newXNA-basedgame engines, such asTorque X, a rewrite ofGarageGames's popularTorque Game Engine in C# using the XNA Framework.
Microsoft'sXNA initiative is a part of the larger trend for gaming technology migrating from traditionalC++ to higher levelmanaged languages, such asJava,C#, andVB.NET, which is a continuation of the historic trends for the migration of software development fromlower level languages such asAssembly andC tohigher level languages such asC++.