this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
71 points (98.6% liked)

Game Development

5882 readers
4 users here now

Welcome to the game development community! This is a place to talk about and post anything related to the field of game development.

Community Wiki

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Well, here's an unexpected combination... Toyota's Toyota Connected North America unit is developing a console-grade open-source game engine. Making it even more unusual is their engineering choices of building around the Flutter toolkit and in turn the Dart programming language. This new game engine creation is called Fluorite.

Toyota Connected North America is Toyota Motor Corporation's subsidiary founded in collaboration with Microsoft for working on in-vehicle software, AI, and related tech initiatives. Toyota Connected developers announced at FOSDEM 2026 their Fluorite game engine as a "console grade" engine built around Flutter and Dart. They were going with Flutter to leverage its rich UI toolkit and for "building stunning interactive experiences." Fluorite also makes use of Google's Filament 3D rendering engine.

top 25 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 27 points 5 days ago (6 children)
[–] cm0002@literature.cafe 25 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Japanese companies have a habit of getting bored and just delving into random ass industries LMAO

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Yeah... they have a tendency to spread into unrelated markets, and then dominate.

Probably most notably, Nintendo originally made Hanafuda cards.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

Most notable in gaming, no question. You've also got Yamaha (probably the most diverse) making guitars, motorcycles, wheelchairs, electric surfboards, air conditioners, and about a hundred other things. Nokia made rubber boots or some shit before making an indestructible phone.

But I think the most notable is a Korean company, Samsung. Semiconductors, phones, TVs, and other related electronics. Also sentry guns. Also the Burj Khalifa. Also, a theme park (Everland).

I guess to your point, not just Japanese but they do seem to have a greater tendency.

[–] Malgas@beehaw.org 3 points 4 days ago

Nintendo still makes hanafuda cards.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 9 points 4 days ago

Nintendo started as a card game manufacturer.

[–] PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 9 points 4 days ago

I have a hunch it's for in-car visualizations, similar to how Tesla uses Unreal Engine.

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 4 days ago

Tell me what Yamaha makes?

The same reason unreal and godot are used on the Tesla console

[–] RaoulDuke85@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago

Not exactly endorsing it, but it worked for Sony who was mainly known for making TVs and Walkman.

[–] PonyOfWar@pawb.social 15 points 5 days ago

Interesting. This might actually become a good option for mobile games and apps. I've created a few Flutter apps that integrate Unity for their 3d content, but that always comes with drawbacks, especially performance-wise. I'll definitely keep an eye on this.

[–] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 5 days ago (2 children)

This seems sort of interesting, although I really wonder how performant it'll actually be given that most Flutter apps on my phone are somewhat laggy.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 5 points 5 days ago

And they're a usability nightmare on PC

[–] somegeek@programming.dev 2 points 4 days ago

Same. flutter apps just feel sooo heavy and laggy.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago

How about console grade open source car systems

[–] PokerChips@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

Thanks. Looks like Microsoft is getting their dirty hands in Toyota. Good to know now that I'm looking at trucks.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Doesn’t godot already solve a lot of this?

[–] halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 8 points 4 days ago

When has an existing solution prevented a new one from being developed?

https://xkcd.com/927/

[–] morriscox@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Meanwhile for Godot they found long start-up times and being too resource heavy.

Addressed in the article.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Long startup times? Godot opens very quickly on my computer. Granted, my projects are small test projects with not much going on, but flutter and dart will probably start sputtering once their scenes get bigger.

They are also always at the mercy of Google who might drop flutter and dart at any time.

[–] kamstrup@programming.dev 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

On your computer. I think this engine is aimed at embedded, if I understand the article correctly

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

But are they going to develop games on the embedded device?

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 5 points 4 days ago

Toyota is interested in a game engine suited for their in-vehicle / digital cockpit experience.

Maybe not embedded devices, but hardware equivalent to mid phones from 2016 which is what I suppose would be the equivalent of the media center in their cars, stuff that might not even support OpenGL3

Also: godot still isn't that great with 3D graphics

[–] enbiousenvy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

maybe practically not developing on an embedded device. but targetting to. Godot games on Android is also not the smallest nor starts up the fastest compared to something like Defold games.