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CryEngine

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CryEngine
Information
Type Game engine
Industry Video game development
Developer Crytek
Operating System Windows (editor)
License Proprietary; royalty-based since CRYENGINE 5.5
Supported Devices Windows, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Oculus Rift, OSVR, PlayStation VR, HTC Vive
Release Date CRYENGINE V: March 2016; CRYENGINE 5.7 LTS: April 2022
Website https://www.cryengine.com


CryEngine (styled CRYENGINE by its developer) is a proprietary 3D game engine developed by the German studio Crytek. Crytek uses it for its own games, including its virtual reality titles The Climb, Robinson: The Journey and The Climb 2, and licenses it to other developers.[1][2][3] Native Oculus Rift support arrived in CryEngine 3.8.1 in June 2015, and CRYENGINE V, launched at the Game Developers Conference in March 2016, supported the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and OSVR headsets.[4][5]

The latest public release is CRYENGINE 5.7 LTS (Long Term Support), released in April 2022. In December 2021 Crytek said it would focus on supporting its own game development and delay the next major public version, and it has since continued to develop the engine mainly for internal projects.[3][6][7]

Reviewed 4 October 2026. Engine version history, licensing terms, VR plugin documentation, Crytek VR game release dates and awards, VRScore, CryVE paper and Lumberyard/O3DE claims checked against the cited sources. About review dates.

History

Before VR

Crytek's engine was the technology behind its games Crysis and Crysis Warhead. In March 2009 the company announced that CryENGINE 3 would debut at the GDC Expo in San Francisco (25 to 27 March 2009), describing it as a development platform for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MMO games and DirectX 9 and 10 PCs.[8]

On 21 August 2013 Crytek launched "the new CRYENGINE" as a continuously updated technology service for commercial licensees, with support for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Wii U alongside PC. Crytek said the engine would "no longer be identified by version numbers", although later builds such as 3.8.1 again carried them. Crytek business development director Carl Jones said that the engine had changed so many times since CryENGINE 3 launched in 2009 that "it's not the same engine anymore".[9] On 19 March 2014 Crytek announced an "Engine-as-a-Service" (EaaS) subscription that, from May 2014, gave independent developers the full engine for 9.90 USD/EUR per user per month, royalty-free. The free, non-commercial CryEngine SDK stayed available under its existing terms.[10]

VR work in 2015

At GDC in March 2015 Crytek showed Back to Dinosaur Island, a VR demo built in CryEngine 3 that ran on Oculus's unreleased Crescent Bay prototype. Road to VR reported that 20 members of Crytek's VR team made the demo in 45 days and that the company had about 50 people working on VR. Crytek's Patrick Esteves told the site that the studio planned to generalize its VR code and integrate it into the engine SDK, so that partners and licensees making VR projects would get the same code. The site noted that CryEngine faced competition for VR developers from Unity and Unreal Engine, both of which had recently become free to use.[11]

CryEngine 3.8.1, released on 19 June 2015 to coincide with Crytek's E3 announcement of Robinson: The Journey, added native Oculus Rift support, along with Linux and OpenGL support and a sample level called "VR_Demo" showing how to set up a VR level.[4] Crytek released Back to Dinosaur Island as a free five-minute download for the Oculus Rift DK2 in November 2015.[12]

CRYENGINE V

Crytek launched CRYENGINE V at GDC 2016 under a "pay what you want" model with no minimum payment. Voluntary payments could be split between Crytek and an Indie Development Fund, which Crytek backed with US$1 million. Unlike Unreal Engine 4 at the time, CRYENGINE V took no royalties from commercial games.[13] The release added a DirectX 12 renderer, a C# API, FMOD Studio audio integration, a new GPU particle system and a volumetric cloud system that Crytek said was optimized for VR. Games could be deployed to Windows, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while the editor itself ran only on Windows (Vista SP1 or later).[13] UploadVR reported Crytek's claim that the engine could render two high-resolution views at 90 frames per second.[5]

Crytek announced a change of business model with CRYENGINE 5.5 in 2018. From that version on, a project's first 5,000 EUR/USD of annual revenue is royalty-free and Crytek takes a 5% royalty on revenue above that threshold. Developers who stayed on CRYENGINE 5.4 or earlier could apply for a royalty exemption until 30 June 2018.[14][15] CRYENGINE 5.6 followed in August 2019.[6]

CRYENGINE 5.7 LTS and current status

In December 2021 Crytek wrote that it had "hit bumps on the development road" and had chosen to focus on supporting game development over advancing its CRYENGINE plans. Head of Product Arto Ruotsalainen said the change meant "a delay in releasing the next major public version of CRYENGINE." In the same post Crytek listed The Climb 2 for Oculus Quest among its recent work and named "the mobile and mobile VR pipeline" among internal advances it expected to reach engine users later, without giving a date.[3]

CRYENGINE 5.7 LTS, scheduled for 5 April 2022 and designed to be compatible with 5.6, updated the Scaleform UI middleware to version 4, added Visual Studio 2022 support and extended the GamePlatform plugin for Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.[16][6] With it, Crytek moved source code from public GitHub distribution to a private repository for registered developers. On 9 May 2022 it removed versions 5.0 to 5.6.7 from the CRYENGINE Launcher and announced that their source code would be removed from GitHub later that week.[16][17][18] The company moved its public documentation to a new format in September 2024.[19] Crytek has kept updating the engine internally. In May 2024 KitGuru reported that an update to Crytek's shooter Hunt: Showdown, due on 15 August 2024, would move the game to "the latest version of its CryEngine technology".[20] In June 2025 GameFromScratch described 5.7 LTS as the engine's last public update.[7] In October 2025 CG Channel reported the release of the CryEngine Community Edition, a free, unofficial patch for CryEngine 5.7 made by a group of users led by indie developer Pterosoft Studio, with its source code under the MIT license.[21]

Summary of releases

Release Date Notes Source
CryENGINE 3 March 2009 (GDC debut) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, DirectX 9/10 PC [8]
CRYENGINE (unnumbered) 21 August 2013 Version numbers dropped; Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Wii U support [9]
Engine-as-a-Service May 2014 9.90 USD/EUR per user per month, royalty-free [10]
3.8.1 19 June 2015 Native Oculus Rift support, Linux, OpenGL, VR_Demo level [4]
CRYENGINE V March 2016 Pay what you want; DirectX 12; Rift, Vive, PlayStation VR and OSVR support [13]
5.5 2018 5% royalty above 5,000 EUR/USD of annual revenue per project [14]
5.6 August 2019 Last version before 5.7 LTS [6]
5.7 LTS April 2022 Scaleform 4; source code moved to a private GitHub repository [16]

VR support

CryEngine's VR support is organized as vendor plugins. The CRYENGINE V manual says to enable the Oculus Rift by adding the CryOculusVR plugin to a project's .cryproject file. HTC Vive support uses the CryOpenVR plugin (named for Valve's OpenVR interface) and requires Steam to be installed. In both cases the console variable sys_vr_support=1 has to be set in the system or user configuration file.[22][23] The engine can also connect to OSVR headsets through a running OSVR server. With the default hmd_driver=0 it tries to detect a supported VR SDK automatically, and hmd_driver=3 forces the OSVR SDK.[24] According to the manual, VR runs in game mode only. To edit a level in the Sandbox editor, developers must remove the VR plugins and the sys_vr_support setting, then restore them before testing in the headset again.[22]

Gameplay logic reaches VR data through Flow Graph nodes and code interfaces. The VR nodes in Flow Graph, the engine's visual scripting system, return the position and rotation of the head-mounted display, the camera and the player (VR:TransformInfo). They also report tracked controller poses (ControllerTracking), read button, trigger, thumbstick and gesture values from Oculus Touch controllers (OculusController) or OpenVR controllers (OpenVRController), and adjust VR quad layers.[25][22] In C++ and C#, game code reaches the headset through the system's HMD manager to check the connected device class and read head and controller tracking states. The Rift programming guide also covers Oculus HRTF plugin support in the Wwise audio middleware.[26]

The Rift-specific console variables in the manual include hmd_ipd, which overrides the headset's interpupillary distance in meters, and hmd_projection, which switches between normal stereoscopic output, a monoscopic "cinema-like" mode and a monoscopic head-locked mode. hmd_perf_hud shows Oculus performance overlays covering latency, application render timing and compositor timing. The manual lists Oculus runtime 1.3 Beta as the supported driver version.[22]

VRScore and Sky Harbor

VRScore, a benchmark for testing whether a PC can run VR content, was created by Crytek in collaboration with Basemark. Its test scene, Sky Harbor (presented at GDC 2016 as Codename: Sky Harbor), is a real-time cinematic VR short that Crytek built in-house on CryEngine; in the system test the benchmark plays the scene with pre-recorded head motion and measures the frame rate.[27][5][28] In its January 2017 first look, Road to VR described Basemark as a Helsinki-based company and reported that VRScore would launch first in a Corporate version, with Professional and Free versions following in the second quarter of 2017. The benchmark also works with VRTrek, Basemark's optical latency sensor, which plugs into the PC's 3.5 mm microphone input.[28]

VR games made with CryEngine

The following Crytek VR releases run on CryEngine.

Title Type Release Platforms Source
Back to Dinosaur Island Tech demo Shown at GDC March 2015; free download November 2015 Oculus Rift DK2 [12]
The Climb Climbing game 28 April 2016 (Rift, US$49.99); 3 December 2019 (Quest) Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest [2][29]
Robinson: The Journey Sci-fi adventure 8 November 2016 (PlayStation VR, North America); 19 September 2017 (HTC Vive via Steam) PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive [1][30]
Sky Harbor Cinematic VR benchmark scene Shown at GDC 2016; part of VRScore (2017) PC VR [27][28]
The Climb 2 Climbing game 4 March 2021 Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2 [31]

When The Climb came to the standalone Quest, UploadVR noted that its graphics had been scaled down a long way, since the Quest's GPU was around ten times slower than the Rift's minimum PC specification.[29] For The Climb 2, Crytek said the game rendered at 100% native resolution on Quest 2 and at roughly 90% on the original Quest.[31] The Climb won the Grand Prize of the VR NOW Award 2016, Best VR/AR Experience and Technical Achievement at the Deutscher Entwicklerpreis 2016, and Best Innovation at the Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2016. Robinson: The Journey won Best Presentation at the Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2017.[32][33]

Research use

Researchers have used CryEngine to drive projection-based virtual environments. In 2010 Alex Juarez, Bram Schonenberg and Christoph Bartneck described CryVE, a low-cost CAVE built on CryEngine2. It is a 3 m cube whose walls are back-projected screens; three walls were working in a U shape at the time of the paper, and two more were under construction. Each wall is driven by its own PC running an instance of a CryEngine2 game, networked so that one machine acts as the server controlling gameplay and the others act as clients rendering the peripheral camera views. The authors put the basic installation at 19,300 euros excluding labor and measured 18 to 19.5 frames per second across the networked machines. They proposed uses such as virtual museum tours.[34][35]

Derived engines

Amazon released its free Lumberyard game engine on 9 February 2016. Lumberyard was built on CryEngine technology licensed from Crytek and shipped with full source code. Amazon's teams had already begun changing the engine's systems, and Lumberyard general manager Eric Schenk said: "We're going our own direction here, and over time that will increase substantially." At launch Game Developer reported that Amazon's internal builds supported the Oculus SDK but the public beta did not yet.[36] On 6 July 2021 Amazon Web Services contributed an updated version of Lumberyard to the Linux Foundation's new Open 3D Foundation as the Open 3D Engine (O3DE), under the Apache 2.0 license.[37]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Robinson: The Journey Out Now for PlayStation VR". Crytek Press. Crytek. 2016-11-08. https://press.crytek.com/robinson-the-journey-out-now-for-playstationr-vr. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Experience an Extreme New Reality and the Adrenaline of the Ascent in "The Climb" from Crytek". Crytek Press. Crytek. 2016-04-28. https://press.crytek.com/experience-an-extreme-new-reality-and-the-adrenaline-of-the-ascent-in-the-climb-from-crytek-out-now-on-oculus-rift. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "CRYENGINE 5.7 Roadmap Update and Future Plans". CRYENGINE. Crytek. 2021-12-16. https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/cryengine-5-7-roadmap-update-and-future-plans. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Paul James (2015-06-19). "CryEngine 3.8.1 Released, Adds Oculus Rift and Linux Support". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/cryengine-3-8-1-released-adds-oculus-rift-and-linux-support/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 David Jagneaux (2016-03-15). "Crytek Debuts CRYENGINE V With Pay What You Want Model, VR Optimization". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/crytek-debuts-cryengine-v-pay-what-you-want-vr-optimization/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Jim Thacker (2022-04-07). "Crytek ships CryEngine 5.7". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2022/04/crytek-ships-cryengine-5-7/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "What Happened to CryEngine?". GameFromScratch. 2025-06-12. https://gamefromscratch.com/what-happened-to-cryengine/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Nick Breckon (2009-03-11). "Crytek's CryEngine 3 to Debut at GDC". Shacknews. https://www.shacknews.com/article/57622/cryteks-cryengine-3-to-debut. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Crytek Announces the Arrival of the New CRYENGINE". Crytek. Crytek. 2013-08-21. https://www.crytek.com/news/crytek-announces-the-arrival-of-the-new-cryengine. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Crytek announces its CRYENGINE-as-a-Service Program for 9.90 USD per month". Crytek. Crytek. 2014-03-19. https://www.crytek.com/news/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-a-service-program-for-990-usd-per-month. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  11. ↑ Ben Lang (2015-03-13). "Crytek's 50 Person VR Dev Team Can Only Mean One Thing". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/crytek-virtual-reality-50-person-development-team-gdc-2015-back-to-dinosaur-island/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Scott Hayden (2015-11-18). "Crytek's Beautiful 'Back to Dinosaur Island' VR Tech Demo Now Available on Oculus Rift". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/crytek-back-to-dinosaur-island-oculus-rift-download-cryengine-tech-demo/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Jim Thacker (2016-03-16). "Crytek releases CryEngine V for free". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2016/03/crytek-releases-cryengine-v-for-free/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "CRYENGINE Business Model Changes Explained". CRYENGINE. Crytek. 2018-05-15. https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/cryengine-business-model-changes-explained. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  15. ↑ "General - CRYENGINE Support". CRYENGINE. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/support/view/general. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 "CRYENGINE 5.7 LTS Release Date Announcement". CRYENGINE. Crytek. 2022-03-30. https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/cryengine-5-7-lts-release-date-announcement. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  17. ↑ "CRYENGINE Legacy Versions Deprecated". CRYENGINE. Crytek. 2022-05-09. https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/cryengine-legacy-versions-deprecated. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  18. ↑ "CRYTEK/CRYENGINE_ReadMe". GitHub. Crytek. https://github.com/CRYTEK/CRYENGINE_ReadMe. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  19. ↑ "News". CRYENGINE. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/news. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  20. ↑ Matthew Wilson (2024-05-22). "Crytek is overhauling Hunt: Showdown with the latest CryEngine tech". KitGuru. https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/matthew-wilson/crytek-is-overhauling-hunt-showdown-with-the-latest-cryengine-tech/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  21. ↑ Jim Thacker (2025-10-07). "Download the free CryEngine Community Edition". CG Channel. https://www.cgchannel.com/2025/10/download-the-free-cryengine-community-edition/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 "Oculus Rift - CRYENGINE V Manual". CRYENGINE Documentation. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/docs/static/engines/cryengine-5/categories/23756816/pages/25534187. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  23. ↑ "HTC Vive - CRYENGINE V Manual". CRYENGINE Documentation. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/docs/static/engines/cryengine-5/categories/23756816/pages/25534185. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  24. ↑ "VR - OSVR - CRYENGINE Programming". CRYENGINE Documentation. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/docs/static/engines/cryengine-5/categories/23756813/pages/23309878. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  25. ↑ "VR Nodes - CRYENGINE V Manual". CRYENGINE Documentation. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/docs/static/engines/cryengine-5/categories/23756816/pages/29450640. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  26. ↑ "VR - Oculus Rift - CRYENGINE Programming". CRYENGINE Documentation. Crytek. https://www.cryengine.com/docs/static/engines/cryengine-5/categories/23756813/pages/25536784. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Ben Lang (2016-03-19). "Crytek and Basemark Accidentally Made the Most Spectacular Cinematic VR Short I've Ever Seen". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/sky-harbor-crytek-basemark-vrscore-cinematic-vr-test-scene/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Paul James (2017-01-30). "First Look: Basemark's 'VRScore' Benchmark Arrives With a Unique Solution for Accurate Testing". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/first-look-basemarks-vrscore-benchmark-arrives-unique-solution-accurate-testing/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 David Heaney (2019-11-15). "The Climb Comes To Oculus Quest December 3, Trailer Shows Graphics". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/the-climb-quest-december-3/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  30. ↑ "Crytek Bring Robinson: The Journey to HTC Vive". Crytek Press. Crytek. 2017-09-19. https://press.crytek.com/crytek-bring-robinson-the-journey-to-htc-vive. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 "The Climb 2 Launches Today". CRYENGINE. Crytek. 2021-03-04. https://www.cryengine.com/news/view/the-climb-2-launches-today. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  32. ↑ "The Climb". Crytek. Crytek. https://www.crytek.com/games/climb. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  33. ↑ "Robinson: The Journey". Crytek. Crytek. https://www.crytek.com/games/robinson. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  34. ↑ A. Juarez, B. Schonenberg, C. Bartneck (2010). "Implementing a Low-Cost CAVE System Using the CryEngine2". Entertainment Computing, vol. 1, no. 3-4, pp. 157-164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2010.10.001. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  35. ↑ Christoph Bartneck. "Implementing a Low-Cost CAVE System Using the CryEngine2". bartneck.de. http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2010/caveCryEngine/. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  36. ↑ Christian Nutt (2016-02-09). "Amazon launches new, free, high-quality game engine: Lumberyard". Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/amazon-launches-new-free-high-quality-game-engine-lumberyard. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
  37. ↑ "Linux Foundation to Form New Open 3D Foundation". Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation. 2021-07-06. https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/linux-foundation-to-form-new-open-3d-foundation. Retrieved 2026-10-04.
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