playcanvas/engine

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PlayCanvas is an open-source game engine built on WebGL2 and WebGPU. Use it to create interactive 3D apps, games and visualizations that run in any browser on any device.

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npm install playcanvas

Or scaffold a full project in seconds with create-playcanvas:

npm create playcanvas@latest

Here's a super-simple Hello World example - a spinning cube!

import {
  Application,
  Color,
  Entity,
  FILLMODE_FILL_WINDOW,
  RESOLUTION_AUTO
} from 'playcanvas';

const canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
document.body.appendChild(canvas);

const app = new Application(canvas);

// fill the available space at full resolution
app.setCanvasFillMode(FILLMODE_FILL_WINDOW);
app.setCanvasResolution(RESOLUTION_AUTO);

// ensure canvas is resized when window changes size
window.addEventListener('resize', () => app.resizeCanvas());

// create box entity
const box = new Entity('cube');
box.addComponent('render', {
  type: 'box'
});
app.root.addChild(box);

// create camera entity
const camera = new Entity('camera');
camera.addComponent('camera', {
  clearColor: new Color(0.1, 0.2, 0.3)
});
app.root.addChild(camera);
camera.setPosition(0, 0, 3);

// create directional light entity
const light = new Entity('light');
light.addComponent('light');
app.root.addChild(light);
light.setEulerAngles(45, 0, 0);

// rotate the box according to the delta time since the last frame
app.on('update', dt => box.rotate(10 * dt, 20 * dt, 30 * dt));

app.start();

Want to play with the code yourself? Edit it on CodePen.

A full guide to setting up a local development environment based on the PlayCanvas Engine can be found here.

PlayCanvas is a fully-featured game engine.

• 🧊 Graphics - Advanced 2D + 3D graphics engine built on WebGL2 & WebGPU
• 💠 Gaussian Splatting - First-class support for loading and rendering 3D Gaussian Splats
• 🥽 XR - Built-in support for immersive AR and VR experiences via WebXR
• ⚛️ Physics - Full integration with 3D rigid-body physics engine ammo.js
• 🏃 Animation - Powerful state-based animations for characters and arbitrary scene properties
• 🎮 Input - Mouse, keyboard, touch and gamepad APIs
• 🔊 Sound - 3D positional sounds built on the Web Audio API
• 📦 Assets - Asynchronous streaming system built on glTF 2.0, Draco and Basis compression
• 📜 Scripts - Write game behaviors in TypeScript or JavaScript

Build with PlayCanvas your way:

Many games and apps have been published using the PlayCanvas engine. Here is a small selection:

You can see more games on the PlayCanvas website.

PlayCanvas is used by leading companies in video games, advertising and visualization such as:
Animech, Arm, BMW, Disney, Facebook, Famobi, Funday Factory, IGT, King, Miniclip, Leapfrog, Mojiworks, Mozilla, Nickelodeon, Nordeus, NOWWA, PikPok, PlaySide Studios, Polaris, Product Madness, Samsung, Snap, Spry Fox, Zeptolab, Zynga

Ensure you have Node.js 18+ installed. Then, install all of the required Node.js dependencies:

npm install

Now you can run various build options: