New 3D Game Engine makes peace between HoloLens and ARKit

As is too often the case, developers are once again faced with supporting either Microsoft’s more specialist technology or Apple’s much larger market, and usually when faced with this choice Microsoft loses.

They have been why Microsoft has been acquiring more and more cross platform tools, including Xamarin, which runs on nearly every operating system.

Now developer Egor Bogatov has expanded UrhoSharp, his .net-based lightweight Game Engine, which runs on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and SharpReality, and which already supports HoloLens, to include support for ARKit, meaning developers can write once and deploy on both the leading AR platforms.

The UrhoSharp Game Engine suitable for using with C# and F# to create games that run on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows and Unix and is available as a portable class library, allowing your game code to be written once and shared across all platforms. UrhoSharp is powered by Urho3D, a game engine that has been under development for more than a decade and can render to both OpenGL and Direct3D systems.

It is similar in spirit to Apple’s SceneKit and SpriteKit and includes physics, navigation, networking and much more while still being cross platform.

Read more about the engine here and see the sample demonstrated in the video here.