Strategy

[Josh]

I would like to explicitly explain something because I think it is very interesting and it makes a good story. Back in the post-Steam launch days I was trying to figure out what direction to take Leadwerks in. I knew ahead of time that Steam was going to open up more and it would probably become flooded with products like the iOS App Store was, although I did not hear the term "Steam Direct" until everyone else. So I was scrambling to find a development direction and business model that would outlast Steam. I decided the only thing to do was to be a technology company first and foremost:

I was contacted by NASA a couple of months after posting that blog.

Now in entrepreneurship you learn that in order to achieve adoption of a technology, it has to solve a problem. It isn't enough to just have a nice product. The user you are targeting needs to be experiencing a "pain point" that your company solves. You have to give them something they can't say no to.

The problem NASA was having was rendering performance in VR. When I saw what they were doing with Leadwerks, it was obvious why. They were placing high-poly CAD models with thousands of articulated parts in VR, and naturally the framerate was low. If they were making a game I would advise them to reduce the detail of their 3D models, but they weren't making a game, and they did not want to strip out important details they were trying to visualize.

So I had a problem a big customer had, that maybe I could solve, and it happened to be a problem my other users all had as well. If I could solve this issue I would make everyone happy. However, it's not enough to be a little bit better. Leadwerks already performed a little bit better in most conditions. If you want people to switch to your technology, you have to offer an order-of-magnitude improvement. To my surprise, it turned out that the new engine architecture in Ultra does exactly that.

These books helped me to formulate my strategy and I would strongly recommend them to everyone:

• The Innovator's Dilemma
• Crossing the Chasm
• Zero to One

Now that the actual implementation of this technology is nearly done, it needs to be communicated. If you look at the main website landing page (https://www.ultraengine.com) you can see the advantage that is being claimed is very clear. There's no long lists of bullet points. Everything on that page is written to communicate the promise of Ultra Engine, which is basically that this engine stays fast as your game grows. Everyone who sees that page will know the reason Ultra Engine exists. Benchmarks are provided for download, and a link to my I/ITSEC paper provides validation that this is actually real.

I feel this is very interesting because I formulated and executed a strategy whereby I am changing the terms of how Ultra competes with other engines, instead of just trying to badly copy what everyone else is doing. The advantage we have is that objective reality is on our side. Performance for VR or otherwise is one of the most important aspects of game development. It's clear that Ultra is the technology we should all get behind for the best possible future. So I think I solved a difficult puzzle and it will be very interesting to see this unfold.

Of course it is up to the users what they will choose to do, but in a sense I feel like victory is already here. My dream was to create something that would make a real positive difference in your life, and I feel very good about the solution I have created for you.

[havenphillip]

Sounds great, man. Congrats. I still don't like the subscription thing though. That's my only gripe. Everything else A+.

[SpiderPig]

I think you've done a great job with Ultra.  Speed issues was allways somthing I was facing for my games.  Ultra has certainly solved that!  Well done!

[Josh]

I came across this discussion when searching for "Ultra Engine":
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/zo4dm1/easiest_game_engine_for_high_performance/

This is extremely interesting. The author asks a valid question, but everyone makes excuses, or they attack him since he obviously is not worthy of having his game run fast.

Quote

If you ever run into a game that is a lag fest it is a development issue.

Having a powerful platform, requires that you have the power to fuck up performance.

The engine is not the problem - it's what you do with it.

Performance of game isn't really stuff that engine does or doesn't do.

Unity and Unreal can both run well. It’s up to the developer, usually.

Sooo, you plan to personally visit your players and draw each frame on their screens with crayons?

Sounds like you never really did game dev at all 

I have no idea who this person is, but this is why I found the thread:

Quote

I know an engine that does promise great performance, it's coming out soon - Ultra engine. I've run it's tests and it shows MASSIVE CPU performance increase compared to Unity.

I would not have thought to frame this in terms of ease-of-use, but that is a serious consideration. There has always been this attitude that only a good developer can "optimize" a game the right way. I even mentioned this in my talk at I/ITSEC. But when I visited NASA, I found they had the same exact problem as beginners...they just wanted their unoptimized 3D models to run fast, they did not want to spend tons of time coaxing the engine to run right.

So there is a focused message that is going out, it resonates with people, and they are putting it into their own words and spreading the news. Very very interesting. This is the most interesting thing I have seen in my entire tech career.