5.1 Beta Preparation

Greetings and welcome to the 5.1 Beta!

We're gearing up to release the 5.1 beta to the Pro users, and I'd like to start people off with the plans. First off, there was the previous announcement in the Announcement forum regarding 5.1 Beta. To repeat what was said there: We kicked off the beta (beta 1) to the previous-existing closed beta group last week, but was unable to commit to delivering it publicly because we were not yet prepared with our shifting publishing processes and the Easter holidays throughout Europe.

However, this week we plan on releasing beta 2 to the public via the standard http://unity3d.com/unity/beta site once we've wrapped up this week's testing.

While there will be the regular release notes, I'll also be sharing a set of documents to get you acquainted with the various re-factors and features coming for 5.1. This release is a lot lighter on features as we're focused on getting out timely releases with things that are ready, while also working towards improving maintainability, stability and performance.

Lastly two more things of note, this will not be a long extended beta like 5.0. We intend to shift to RC by early May and deliver final in early June. Also, this beta 2 is not supported to consider shipping any games with as we may still cut features we are not comfortable shipping with.

 

when will you be doing this?

 

Super exciting! I haven't tried B1 yet but I really like some of the things I'm seeing in the release notes, so hopefully most of them make it into the release.

 

what release notes? where?

 

I'm curious, too. Where are the notes?

 

Private beta currently...

 

they sent me an email saying something about closing the private group, and I no longer have access to it

 

They just weren't ready to distribute yet as Alex said. The group is no different from the original private beta (same group). As of beta 2 it will be a public beta. And as Alex said, it's not a huge update by any means, some new features and lots of fixes / improvements but nothing groundbreaking. It's a minor point release.

 

We closed the beta drops group, because it has no more purpose with the public betas now open to all Pro users.

 

Just posted.

No release notes yet. That will be on the public download page as usual once the build is ready.

 

These are pretty big features for me. Native Sketchup and Oculus support. Changes my world.

 

Can't wait for UNET. I've been holding of multiplayer games in Unity just for that reason. The same reason I didn't bother with GUI before UGUI was released.

As a hobbyist my time with Unity is very limited so I'd rather not have to learn a ton of different tools. One GUI and one multiplayer solution and I'm a happy camper.

 

UNET!

 

Unet is pretty fantastic, I'm expecting people will go wild with it.

 

I'm expecting to go wild with it - make sure I'm well on the ball and ready for phase II whenever we get that.

 

Really hope they have a great sample project for UNET, i never did multiplayer game. Really interested to do one

 

Yeah I purposely holding off on making anymore MP games because I want to use UNET, I'm hoping it will be as easy to set up as photon and stuff, and if there is a pricing structure I'd really like to see it.

 

I dont have time for testing UNET the next months too much work. Working on two Steam releases AND master thesis

 

Don't feel bad, you could be as dumb as me. I was in the group until I fat-fingered the unsubscribe button and couldn't get back into it. Talk about feeling stupid... Replied to my invite to get a re-invite, but never got any communication back.

 

Hi Alex,

with respect to 5.1 (and in light of your post a few minutes ago regarding Analytics not being included in the beta 2)...are you anticipating major changes regarding integration from its current (5.0) version to 5.1 beta X ?

Basically, I haven't integrated analytics (5.0) yet, so should I hold off trying it out until 5.1, or will it be relatively simple to switch over to the new version?

Thanks!

 

Note that Analytics will be there, just not enabled by default. Our concern was largely the editor integration and configuration, less so the APIs and other bits. So, it may be more manual to configure for use, but the APIs should have high likelihood of staying reasonably consistent.

 

Oh I see. Thanks for the clarification

 

Any news about SSRR post effect ahead, as commented here? Joachim commented you're working on that and I'm interested in knowing if you've plans to include it in near beta?

 

Yes, the news is that it is not in the release notes for 5.1.

 

Dantus correctly stated, it's not in 5.1. Similarly, as Joachim stated, it's also being worked on. Both are true.

We're working on a roadmap to show where things *might* land, but as you can see from just 5.1 we're landing with less than we hoped. However, as I also stated earlier, we are going to stick with faster releases so expect 5.1 to land in June.

 

I'd rather have a roadmap of things that are being worked on, and a list of what's to come after that (just so we know) - rather than a roadmap that's a list of timescales - as we know timescales drag - it's the nature of such things

 

We intend to do both.

 

Thank you for clarifying my question. I'll take a look on existing alternatives to SSRR in the meanwhile.

 

Are you able to say anything about webGL within 5.1/ 5.2? I'm wondering whether to start rebuilding a lot of projects via the webplayer or try and persist with webGL

 

Well, I hope that you continue to improve WebGL since you just added it to Unity5. I think you have achieved an interesting milestone here but needs lot of improvement. For instance, I don't know if there's some limitation but in order to reduce the build size/download time, you should strip out the core of javascript belonging to Unity and host it on some CDN network, like other javascript libraries do (jQuery comes to my mind).

 

Hi, is the beta already available to Pro users? Can't wait to get my hands on the new native VR support.
I hope the vsynch issue has gone (frame rate cut down to 37,5 if not running at 75fps) and the native support will give us improved performace.

 

Beta is now available. See the stickied post.

 

Cracking work guys
Going to be delving straight into the new networking so I'm familiar with it and ready for phase II and III

 

BEST CHANGE EVER!!!

 

Alex,
Any updates on when B3 will go RC? And will RC be available publicly to non-Pro customers?

I'm asking because we've spent the past month (and the next month) on building networking using the old RakNet system. I'm scared we're wasting 2 months of dev time only to rewrite everything all over again in May when you release 5.1. Any suggestions?

[aside from "upgrade to Pro for your whole team so you can get the beta now"]

 

We plan to release in early June.

 

Some early impressions:

1) Simple math in numeric fields! Wooh!

2) Crunch texture compression is very, very cool.

3) I like the new hdr color picker, but why is Ambient color/Gradient in lighting still clamped to 1 intensity? I would really like to be able to go above 1 there.

4) Fair amount of GI fixes (and it feels a bit faster?) but there are still problems (some objects get unnaturally dark with higher resolution, while they look fine with lower resolution, which is weird).

 

Also, in that Arch Viz blog posted before the release of 5, it was mentioned that you were looking into some sort of smarter chart updates for GI, is that going to be implemented after 5.1?

I'm experimenting with high density lighting and I very quickly run into problems where lighting updates are very noticeably slow and produce visible artifacts, especially if I'm going for dramatic changes.

 

I second and third that

it really is, I was surprised by the size reduction compared to the quality it gives!

On my end, GI baking is WAAAAY faster..

 

Thanks for your hard work, these are great improvements!
simple math in numeric fields and crunch compression are really cool!
Personally I am very satisfied with the native VR support, it makes things easier and seems to run way faster => Keep it up!

 

Is there going to be a new beta release each week? some kind of schedule like the patch releases?

 

BUMP

 

I'm downloading Beta 4 now so it looks that way!

http://unity3d.com/unity/beta

 

I see, seems fixes from the 5.0.1 patch releases.

 

Hello,
I wanted to know whether Unity 5.1 will include native retina display support since the editor doesn't look good when it is pixellated

 

We will publish a roadmap soon of what is expected in the upcoming releases and what is currently in progress.
5.1 is wrapping up at this point, and no new features from what was previously stated were added.

However, I can say Retina display support is being worked on.

 

Are we expecting Final release next week, I know 5.0.2 is being prepared this week, but not sure how this will all fit with the schedule.

 

Will post the plans later today.

 

Careful! roadmaps are driven on by thousands of angry Unity users who haven't got driving licenses!

 

I'd love to see some roadmaps to know what's going on behind the scenes, but putting one on the open forum would be like typing "car crash" into youtube.