Wicked Engine
v0.71Modern open-source C++ game engine with Vulkan/DX12 rendering, hardware ray tracing, and a built-in editor
Development Activity
Sample Renders
Overview
Best for
Indie game developers and graphics programmers seeking a modern, fully-featured open-source C++ engine with cutting-edge rendering capabilities and DXR ray tracing
Not ideal for
Teams needing cross-platform support on macOS/iOS/Web, or non-programmers seeking a visual scripting workflow and extensive beginner documentation
Strengths
- Remarkably comprehensive feature set for an open-source engine — hardware ray tracing, real-time path tracing, volumetric clouds, physics, audio, networking, terrain, and a full editor from a largely single-developer project
- Modern rendering architecture built from the ground up on Vulkan and DirectX 12 with no legacy API baggage, resulting in a clean codebase ideal for learning modern graphics programming
- Real-time path tracing mode via DXR/Vulkan RT produces ground-truth global illumination at interactive frame rates on RTX-class hardware, with an integrated temporal denoiser
- Clean, well-organized C++ source code that has become a widely-referenced learning resource for Vulkan/DX12 rendering techniques, shader programming, and ECS architecture
- MIT license allows unrestricted commercial use, and the active development pace consistently pushes new rendering techniques into the engine
Limitations
- Primarily maintained by a single developer, creating sustainability concerns for teams building production titles on the engine
- Smaller ecosystem and community than Godot or established commercial engines — fewer tutorials, asset stores, third-party plugins, and integration guides
- Linux support is less mature than Windows, and macOS support is absent due to the engine's reliance on Vulkan and DirectX
- Scripting is limited to Lua with no visual scripting or beginner-friendly alternatives, raising the entry barrier for non-C++ developers
- Documentation consists primarily of wiki pages and code comments — no comprehensive reference manual or API documentation website exists
Background
Wicked Engine is a modern, open-source 3D game engine created and primarily maintained by János Turánszki. Built from the ground up on Vulkan and DirectX 12 (with DirectX 11 fallback), it delivers a rendering feature set that rivals commercial engines — hardware-accelerated ray tracing, real-time path tracing, volumetric clouds and fog, physically based materials, screen-space global illumination, and a temporal denoiser — all from what is largely a solo developer project.
Beyond rendering, Wicked Engine includes a complete game engine stack: an Entity Component System (ECS), Jolt Physics integration, custom audio, Lua scripting, terrain with procedural generation, video playback, networking, and a built-in editor with transform gizmos, entity inspectors, material editing, and weather/atmosphere controls. The engine imports glTF 2.0 as its primary scene format and supports OBJ for simpler geometry.
The engine's real-time path tracing mode uses DXR (DirectX Raytracing) and Vulkan RT extensions to produce ground-truth global illumination at interactive frame rates on RTX-class hardware. The accompanying denoiser smooths the noisy path-traced output for real-time use. The clean, well-organized C++ codebase has become a popular learning resource for modern graphics programming, with each rendering feature implemented in clearly structured, readable code. Wicked Engine is MIT-licensed and has attracted a growing community of contributors and users building games and visualization tools.
Quick Start
git clone https://github.com/turanszkij/WickedEngine && cd WickedEngine && cmake -B build -S . && cmake --build build --config ReleaseRelated Renderers
Community & Resources
Tutorials & Resources
Performance Benchmarks
No benchmark data available for Wicked Engine yet.
Benchmarks will be added as more renderers are tested across our standard scene suite.
Learn about our methodology