Talos Engine
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Features

What the engine does

Every feature that has shipped or is coming in the next release, grouped by area, with the release it ships in. Each area page also lists what is planned in that area.

Performance

Fast where you feel it

Measured on our test machines, not promised. Each figure says what was timed and on what.

  • 0.8 s

    from launching the editor to playing your game

    How it was measured

    Windows, where testers run it: warm start, median of the runs. Linux: 0.6 s. The very first launch on a new machine takes longer while the graphics driver compiles its shaders once: about 1.8 s to open the editor on Linux.

  • 1 s

    or less to load every reference scene

    How it was measured

    Process start to scene loaded, warm cache, median of 7 loads, on the engine's own reference scenes. The largest, an alpine terrain world, loads in 0.64 s; the starter course in 0.31 s.

  • 4.3 ms

    a frame for a dense forest in the high-definition renderer

    How it was measured

    GPU time, median, on an RTX 5080 at 1920x1080 (4.7 ms at the 95th percentile).

  • 0.75 ms

    a frame for a kart scene in the standard renderer

    How it was measured

    GPU time, median, on an RTX 3080 at 1920x1080. The starter scene: 0.14 ms.

  • 174 MB

    Windows install size, editor and tools included

    How it was measured

    The size gate fails any build over 250 MB.

New since v0.7.0

Highlights merged into the engine since the last release. They ship in the next release.

  • Ground that looks lived in

    Grass and meadow ground gets gentle hummocks and soil-creep ridges with drier crests and lusher hollows, distant cliffs can read as broken stone instead of streaky bands, and rocks and stumps can sit in darkened, tinted soil instead of on top of it.

  • Lakes look like fresh water

    Lakes and ponds with no water type set now draw as clear fresh water instead of tropical sea, and can pick alpine, glacial, lowland or tannin-stained water.

  • Lighter spruce and fir trees

    Spruce and fir can carry a few larger leaf cards per branch with the same leaf area and crown outline, for far fewer triangles in dense forests.

  • Scenes load faster

    Terrain is built while the renderer starts instead of after it, rivers and UI screens are prepared on all cores at once, and terrain memory is freed in the background, so large worlds and menu-heavy projects open sooner.

  • A faster high-definition renderer

    The high-definition renderer's upscaler, global illumination and virtualized geometry do the same work in less time, with identical frames: the upscaler's heaviest pass is up to five times faster at 4K.

  • A smaller web build

    Games exported for the web download about 190 KB less, with code the browser never uses left out.

  • Restores and replays play back exactly

    Random numbers in scripts continue the same after a restore, characters stand on their floor from the first frame, and players in a lobby before anyone spawns are recorded and replayed.

  • Players are asked about statistics once

    An exported game that sends play statistics asks the player once and remembers the answer, instead of asking at every launch.

  • Notices you can dismiss without a mouse

    A notice that waits for acknowledgement can now be reached with Tab or a gamepad from the menu beneath it.

Packages

Features ship in packages. Each shipped package is labeled Stable or Beta, and lists what is in it.

  • RenderingStableShipped

    • Standard renderer
    • Physically based materials
    • Cached sun and light shadows
    • Multisampling and bloom

  • Lighting and global illuminationBetaShipped

    • Solstice real-time bounce and reflections
    • Physical sky, clouds and exposure
    • A good look by default
    • Hardware ray-traced shadows and reflections (on at High and Ultra with ray-query hardware)

  • Virtualized geometry and far fieldBetaShipped

    • Facet: detail without triangle budgets
    • Baked far-field proxies

  • TerrainBetaShipped

    • Terrain recipes and erosion
    • Terrain material layers

  • WaterBetaShipped

    • Oceans with weather (Stable)
    • Lakes
    • Rivers that follow the land
    • Beaches and shore run-up
    • Waterline and shallows

  • FoliageBetaShipped

    • Trees and shrubs from recipes
    • Grass and wildflowers with wind
    • Foliage brush
    • Instancing for huge plant counts
    • Fern preset

  • PhysicsStableShipped

    • Rigid bodies, joints and triggers
    • Casts and collision layers

  • VehiclesBetaShipped

    • Wheeled vehicles and karts
    • Boats on the ocean
    • Roads from a file

  • NPC AIStableShipped

    • Navigation meshes that follow the terrain
    • NPC behavior and paths

  • ScriptingStableShipped

    • Scripting in TypeScript

  • EffectsBetaShipped

    • Particle effects

  • AudioStableShipped

    • Mixer and buses
    • Positional sound

  • Music and sound generationBetaShipped

    • Sound effects from a description
    • Music for your game

  • UI kitStableShipped

    • Game menus and screens
    • Input for every device

  • 2DBetaShipped

    • Sprites and tile maps

  • EditorBetaShipped

    • The editor essentials
    • Play, slow down, step outside the game
    • Edit while the game runs
    • Cinematic cameras
    • Profiler
    • Watch your game being built
    • Nested prefabs
    • Shader panel with guard rails
    • Record and replay sessions
    • Model import

  • AI toolsStableShipped

    • Tools for AI assistants

  • Automated playtestingBetaShipped

    • AI playtest runs

  • ExporterStableShipped

    • Windows
    • Linux (Beta)
    • Web (Beta)

  • LauncherStableShipped

    • Engine versions and projects
    • Sample games

  • Asset generationBeing built now

    • Shared asset library
    • Generate concepts and models

More areas