Toyota has just announced a proprietary game engine, but that doesn’t mean it’s targeting PC and consoles

Today, in news no one could’ve predicted: Toyota has been quietly working on a game engine of its own, but the end goal isn’t what you’d expect.

The shocker comes from Automaton (with Japanese site Game*Spark as the original source), who explains Toyota Connected North America, a subsidiary of the company known for its cars, recently revealed the Fluorite engine. It “works closely with Flutter,” which is the UI framework used by Google, and uses the Dart language to handle game logic as well as interface. “Its purpose is to yield high performance even on lower-end or embedded hardware, like running 3D graphics and interactive UI via in-vehicle systems.”

At the time of writing, the official Fluorite site shared above is highlighting features like its high-performance Entity Component System (ECS) core, which is written in C++ and goes for “optimization for weaker hardware.” Secondly, there are “model-defined trigger touch zones” that should allow artists to more easily set clickable areas inside Blender, making “building 3D interfaces a lot simpler.”

The third highlight is “console-grade 3D rendering” powered by Google’s Filament, which definitely ups its potential for game development even if Toyota’s ambitions are limited to displays for its cars. Last but not least, Fluorite is also leaning on Flutter’s ‘Hot Reload’ to allow quick updating of scenes.

So, why did Toyota work on this in the first place? Well, the original Game*Spark piece, translated by Automaton, explains Toyota Connected North America originally wanted to work with established game engines, but all of them were tied to high licensing fees or a resource-intensive nature. Thus, Fluorite was born.

The best part is that Fluorite is being marketed as a fully featured open-source engine, so even if Toyota won’t be working on games, there might be potential there for independent developers.