Unity 1.5 engine released for iPhone bringing major performance improvements

When it comes to developing applications, and in particular games, for the iPhone there are two different roots you can choose to follow. The first is to pick up the iPhone SDK and start learning to code in Objective C. The other is to use a commercial engine and build your app on top of the functionality it offers. Unity falls into the latter category and is widely regarded as one of the best engines for developing games both on iPhone and across other platforms.

Today Unity Technologies, the company behind the multiplatform engine, has updated Unity for iPhone to v1.5. With this release the development team has implemented a number of enhancements and new features. The biggest of these is a major performance gain which can be as much as three-times what was possible with the previous engine release. Other new features include:

* Full support for iPhone 3GS
* Built-in anti-piracy protection which detects modification and can hobble the app if the developer so wishes
* Video playback, GPS, and on-screen keyboard support
* Eight texture shading on the iPhone 3GS, automatic fallback solution for anyone running Unity apps on the original iPhone
* Engine now takes advantage of the VFP coprocessor meaning animation skinning is much improved

Nicholas Francis, chief creative officer at Unity Technologies said:

We’re all about making the leanest, meanest development tools, and this release cements that commitment. With Unity iPhone 1.5, we’ve squeezed out performance everywhere we could and added a bunch of features to help people take advantage of the new iPhone models.

The Unity engine is available for a 30-day unlimited free trial after which an iPhone Basic license costs $399 and the advanced license costs $1,499. Cheaper licenses are available for those not needing iPhone development. You can view all the license prices and a comparison of features at the Unity website.

Read more at the Unity website