[non-Blender] Godot 3.6 Released

The 3.x branch of Godot, the open source game engine for 2D and 3D projects, just received a big update! After 2 years of development, Godot 3.6 is finally out and it comes fully packed with features and quality of life improvements! This includes 2D physics interpolation and hierarchical culling, and 3D mesh merging, level of detail, tighter shadow culling, ORM materials, and more.

Note: as pointed out, Godot is actually already on 4.3 – this is just a branch update. Sorry!

Here’s an overview of some of the new features:

1. 2D Physics Interpolation: This feature improves the smoothness of 2D physics simulations.
2. 2D Hierarchical Culling: It increases performance on large 2D maps by culling entire branches of the scene tree that are off-screen.
3. Tighter Shadow Culling: This reduces the workload for shadow mapping, improving frame rates.
4. Mesh Merging: This feature allows merging of similar objects into a single draw call, improving rendering performance.
5. Discrete Level of Detail (LOD): Godot 3.6 introduces a new LOD system that changes visual representation of objects based on the distance from the camera.
6. ORM Materials: Godot 3.6 now supports ORM materials, which combine occlusion, roughness, and metallic into a single texture.
7. Vertex Cache Optimization: This new setting in the mesh import options can increase rendering performance for high poly models on low-end hardware.
8. Performance Improvements: There are also improvements in the performance of BakedLightmap light probes and directional shadows.
9. View Selected Mesh Stats: This new feature allows you to view total triangle, vertex, and index counts for the selected meshes.
10. SceneTree Dock’s Filter Improvements: This feature improves the functionality of the SceneTree dock.