Linux Foundation in game engine push

The foundation teams up with the likes of Adobe and Red Hat to design a 3D game and simulation engine.

Alongside the announcement of the Linux-powered Steam Deck (see opposite page), gaming on Linux is taking another exciting step forward with the Linux Foundation joining with other institutions, such as Adobe, Intel, Huawei and Red Hat to create the Open 3D Foundation (https://bit.ly/lxf280open3d), which will support open source projects that focus on 3D graphics, rendering and development.

The first such project is the Open 3D Engine (O3DE), which is based on the Amazon Lumberyard engine, and will be made available under the Apache 2.0 licence. This will hopefully make developing games now more accessible and affordable, as devs won’t need to pay to licence it. Devs using the engine will be supported via “an open source community through forums, code repositories, and developer events.” Features included in O3DE will be “a new multi-threaded photorealistic renderer, an extensible 3D content editor, a data-driven character animation system, and a node-based visual scripting tool,” and developers can author code in C++, LUA and Python. Meanwhile, the Open 3D Foundation will have a governing board alongside a Technical Steering Committee.

As Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of Linux Foundation explains in the announcement (https://bit.ly/ lxf280open3dannouncement), “the new Open 3D Foundation finally gives gaming and engine developers an opportunity to influence the direction of a major AAA-class 3D engine that is sustained for the long term by a worldwide open source community.” You can find out more about O3DE at https://o3de.org.