Immense Engine: AI for Europe's Answer to Unreal Engine
An ambitious new graphics engine project emerges from the Netherlands
In 2023, the American company Unity hypothesized adopting a more aggressive monetization model for its graphics engine, a choice that caused a small earthquake in the video game world. If you don't remember the episode, you can refresh your memory by reading this special; if nothing else, the Unity crisis had the merit of highlighting the limits of a sector that relies mainly on two large platforms for game engines, Unity and Unreal Engine.
Immense Engine, the new graphics engine
The idea of being able to challenge this duopoly sounds audacious, to say the least, but that's what Arjan Brussee (in the cover image) intends to do. This Dutch developer wrote the code for Jazz Jackrabbit at Epic Games in the 90s; in 2000, he was among the founders of Guerrilla Games and later returned to Epic to work on Unreal Engine. Now Brussee has become a freelancer and intends to create a new concept engine: Immense Engine.
Immense Engine will be AI-based
As reported by the Dutch portal bnr.nl, Brussee intends to leverage the power of artificial intelligence for his project. According to him, AI can be seen as an army of junior programmers, to whom tasks that would require an enormous amount of time can be assigned. By implementing an efficient AI network, a single programmer could thus accomplish the work of 10-15 people.
The advantage over the competition is that Immense Engine would integrate AI natively. Brussee explains that Unreal Engine is a structure made of millions of lines of code, built by people for people: if you want to change something, you have to modify the entire engine. Immense Engine will not have this limitation and will therefore be easier to make changes and keep the engine up to date.
The discussion so far has been conducted purely in terms of video games, but Immense Engine would lend itself to 3D simulations in various fields, such as defense and logistics. It would also be the first graphics engine completely designed and built in Europe, which could compete with the US giants.