In a new video released by Gaijin Entertainment, people can compare the studio’s Dagor Engine, which has been free and open source since last year, with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 5 from Epic Games. The video shows off content from the East District, a part of Gaijin’s unannounced game, with the content in the demo being made using both Dagor Engine and Unreal Engine 5. In addition to the video, Gaijin Entertainment has also released the full code of one of Dagor Engine’s multiplayer frameworks under a permissive license, along with the art sources of one of the multiplayer samples. Those interested can look at the East District demo on both Dagor Engine and Unreal Engine, depending on your preference.
Gaijin Entertainment decided to do this to showcase the engine by asking their partners over at Hooks Creative Studio to create an FPS map that was inspired by iconic maps of the past. This map was built by the team at Hooks Creative Studio totally from scratch, using Megascan and modern Photogrammetry assets on Unreal Engine 5. Once this was done, they then continued by moving the map over to Dagor Engine, which is now being used in their unannounced game. Gaijin Entertainment has said that it’s beneficial to have it in both Unreal Engine and Dagor Engine, as they can use it for comparison and use it as an internal validation of the existing Dagor technology.
Gaijin found that the Dagor map runs faster while providing an equal or superior (subjectively, they admitted) visual fidelity. The map uses state-of-the-art technologies, such as real-time global illumination and advanced anti-aliasing. While it doesn’t use vendor-specific performance-enhancing techniques such as DLSS, XeSS, or FSR, Dagor does support all of them. Gaijin has said that the Dagor demo operates in native resolution in most configurations, while the Unreal Engine version does not, which helps demonstrate the performance of the Dagor Engine.
The company admits that they can’t compare them fully, as the Unreal Engine version of the demo has the potential to be further optimized by experienced developers. However, by releasing both versions of the demos, they hope to encourage developers to explore using Dagor Engine in more of their projects. This engine powers titles such as War Thunder and Enlisted.
