Source 2

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Quake ▶ GoldSrc ▶ Source ▶ Source 2

Todo:This page is not a stub but could use some more detail.

Screenshot of Half-Life: Alyx, using the Source 2 Engine.

Source 2 is a 3D video game engine in development by Valve as a successor to Source. It is used in Dota 2, SteamVR Home, Half-Life: Alyx, S&box, Counter-Strike 2, and more. Elements of Source 2 are present in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, such as Panorama UI.

Source 2 was first made public with the Dota 2 Workshop Tools Alpha in August 6th 2014 and formally announced by Valve in March of 2015 at the Game Developers Conference. It was then implemented into Dota 2 on June 17th 2015. Valve has announced that Source 2 will be released to the public for free, and it will only take money should it be used for commercial products.

The engine is capable of rendering highly complex and well detailed scenes with minimal framerate drops, thanks to its new 64-bit support alongside Vulkan, allowing for better multi-core rendering and more efficient 3D rendering.

Support for 32-bit, OpenGL, DirectX 9, XAudio, and macOS versions below 10.14 were removed in 2021.

Features

Integrated asset management via the Asset System.
New engine-integrated authoring tools, rebuilt from the ground up.
Completely rebuilt Hammer level editor, featuring modern polygon mesh editing tools.
Support for both forward and deferred rendering pipelines.
Lower latency and more responsive input.
Improved audio and voice processing.
New in-house physics engine, Rubikon. Includes support for Cloth Simulation.
Physically based rendering support.
Support for the Steam Audio sound system.
Enhanced Panorama GUI, designed to be more user friendly.
Native DirectX 11® and Vulkan® support.
64-bit only

Products using Source 2

Valve

Products made by Valve.

2015 Dota 2
2016 SteamVR Performance Test – Non-interactive version of the Robot Repair demo
2016 Robot Repair – Included in The Lab
2016 Destinations – Replaced by SteamVR Home
2017 SteamVR Home
2018 Artifact – The Dota Card Game
2019 Dota Underlords
2020 Half-Life: Alyx
2022 Aperture Desk Job
2023 Counter-Strike 2