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CryENGINE VS Unigine

Compare CryENGINE VS Unigine and see what are their differences

CryENGINE logo CryENGINE

The most powerful game development platform is now available to everyone. Full engine source code.

Unigine logo Unigine

Unigine Engine is a proprietary cross-platform middleware, developed by Unigine Corp.
  • CryENGINE Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-18
  • Unigine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-23

CryENGINE features and specs

  • High-Quality Graphics
    CryENGINE is renowned for its cutting-edge graphics and rendering capabilities, enabling realistic environments and character models, which can significantly enhance visual appeal.
  • Real-Time Lighting
    The engine offers advanced real-time lighting features, including dynamic shadows and global illumination, which contribute to more immersive and visually stunning scenes.
  • Sandbox Editor
    CryENGINE’s Sandbox Editor is highly intuitive and user-friendly, offering a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment that speeds up the development process.
  • Integrated Physics Engine
    The engine comes with an integrated physics engine known for its realistic simulation of physical interactions, which is crucial for creating believable gameplay experiences.
  • Support for Multiple Platforms
    CryENGINE supports multiple platforms, including Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, and VR devices, making it versatile for various types of game development.
  • Strong Community and Resources
    There is a strong community of developers and comprehensive documentation available, providing ample resources for troubleshooting and learning.

Possible disadvantages of CryENGINE

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Despite the user-friendly interface, CryENGINE has a steep learning curve, particularly for beginners, which can make it challenging to fully leverage its capabilities without significant time investment.
  • Performance Requirements
    The high-quality graphics and advanced features demand substantial hardware resources, which can limit accessibility and increase development costs.
  • Less Popularity
    Compared to other engines like Unreal Engine and Unity, CryENGINE is less popular, which means fewer plugins, third-party tools, and a smaller talent pool of experienced developers.
  • License Costs
    While the engine offers a free tier, commercial use can incur significant licensing costs, especially for large projects, which can be a barrier for indie developers or small studios.
  • Sparse Updates
    Updates and new features are not as frequent as other engines, which can result in longer periods before bugs are fixed or new functionalities are introduced.
  • Complex Scripting
    The scripting in CryENGINE can be complex and less intuitive compared to other engines, which may slow down development for programmers not familiar with its architecture or programming languages.

Unigine features and specs

  • High-Performance Graphics
    Unigine is renowned for its state-of-the-art rendering engine capable of producing high-quality visuals and realistic environments, making it suitable for applications requiring rich graphical fidelity.
  • Wide Range of Applications
    Unigine caters to a variety of industries such as gaming, simulation, virtual reality, training, and more, offering versatility in usage.
  • Scalability
    The engine handles demanding applications and large-scale scenes efficiently, which is essential for large projects like simulations and training modules.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Unigine supports multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, and others, facilitating development and deployment across different environments.
  • Comprehensive Toolset
    The engine provides a robust set of tools for developers, including a visual editor, scripting support, API integrations, and more, enhancing productivity and project customization.
  • Reliable Physics and Simulation
    Unigine offers advanced physics and simulation capabilities, which are crucial for applications that require accurate environmental interactions and realistic behaviors.

Possible disadvantages of Unigine

  • Complexity
    The engine's comprehensive feature set might be overwhelming for beginners or smaller teams lacking the resources to fully exploit its capabilities.
  • Cost
    Unigine's pricing model may be restrictive for indie developers or smaller organizations due to its licensing costs attached to its more advanced features.
  • Limited Community and Learning Resources
    Compared to more popular engines like Unity or Unreal Engine, Unigine has a smaller community, which can make finding tutorials or community support more challenging.
  • Less Popular for Game Development
    While it's highly capable, Unigine is less commonly used for mainstream game development compared to Unity or Unreal, which might limit job prospects for developers specialized in it.

CryENGINE videos

CryEngine 5.6 Released

More videos:

  • Review - The Future Of CryEngine
  • Review - CRYENGINE 5.6 Tech Trailer

Unigine videos

UNIGINE 2 Engine ~ First Impressions & Review ~ Real-time 3D engine

More videos:

  • Review - Unigine Community Edition -- A New Unity & Unreal Competitor for Indie Game Developers?
  • Review - Unigine Game Engine Hands-On

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CryENGINE and Unigine)
Game Development
78 78%
22% 22
Game Engine
80 80%
20% 20
3D Game Engine
79 79%
21% 21
Gaming Software
72 72%
28% 28

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CryENGINE and Unigine

CryENGINE Reviews

Game Engines: A Comparative Analysis
CryEngine, developed by Crytek, is synonymous with cutting-edge graphics and realism. It has been the engine of choice for visually stunning games like the Crysis series. Offering real-time dynamic lighting and reflections, CryEngine is a powerhouse for developers aiming to create visually groundbreaking experiences.
Source: medium.com
The Best Gaming Engines You Should Consider for 2023
CryEngine also provides plenty of free learning resources, although their effectiveness is debatable. Gaming giant Ubisoft maintains an in-house modified version of CryEngine from the original Far Cry called the Dunia Engine, which is heavily used in their later iterations of the popular Far Cry series.
What Are the Best Game Engines?
CryEngine is a cross-platform engine. You can use it to create photorealistic first-person games, especially shooters. CryEngine is used in all games from CryTek, as well as other studios. As mentioned above, CryEngine was licensed and reworked to create Amazon Lumberyard.
The Top 10 Video Game Engines
In addition to the engine itself, CryEngine also provides plenty of free learning resources. Tutorials, forums, and documentation give you the tools you need to get started. Because of the power behind the engine, there’s a bit of a learning curve. YouTube and the official CryEngine resources are your friends, here.
11 tools to get you started making video games
Learning tools: CryEngine has a number of free tutorial videos that cover everything from installing the editor and walking you through making a simple Flappy Bird-like game to more complex things like compiling a custom configured version of the engine.

Unigine Reviews

We have no reviews of Unigine yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Unigine seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CryENGINE mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of CryENGINE yet. Tracking of CryENGINE recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Unigine mentions (6)

  • Unity Silently Deletes GitHub Repo That Tracks Terms of Service Changes
    There is also Unigine [1] but that has less community around it than Unreal. I am mentioning it because I think it should be known more. It was started by a single russian dev who was initially just writing online tutorials on various OpenGL and physics stuff (frustum.org). Then he decided to make a commercial engine and started a company. Of course their engine evolved a lot since and they have a team of devs now... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Skytech Gaming?
    Give it a good once-over when it arrives for any shipping damage, check to make sure that memory overclocking in enabled in the BIOS since that's sometimes not done by the builder and then benchmark it with something simple like Unigine to make sure it's not running weirdly below the norms (4070Ti should be around 3100-3300 in Unigine Heaven) or you can download 3DMark Demo and it should give you a... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Sources: Unity Laying Off Hundreds Of Staffers
    But yeah, I was trying to push Unigine (double sized vector3 would be nice) as it seems to target more the industry type apps. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Has anyone used a game engine for creating something else than a game?
    Https://unigine.com/ is a powerful game engine that no one seems to pay any attention to. So, they mainly get their revenue from industrial applications. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Do Unity 3D have some pros against strong 3D in Unreal?
    So you consider an engine "professional" if your favourite big PC games run on it? What sort of logic is this? I suppose enterprise-geared engines like UEngine aren't "professional" either because they aren't popular with game developers? Source: over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing CryENGINE and Unigine, you can also consider the following products

Unreal Engine - Unreal Engine 4 is a suite of integrated tools for game developers to design and build games, simulations, and visualizations.

Unity - The multiplatform game creation tools for everyone.

Godot Engine - Feature-packed 2D and 3D open source game engine.

Blender - Blender is the open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation.

Stencyl - Make iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android, Flash, Windows & Mac games without code using Stencyl.

Amazon Lumberyard - Amazon Lumberyard is a free AAA game engine deeply integrated with AWS and Twitch – with full...