5.4 Released

Unity 5.4 is now available! ​

Read the blog for details on what's new in 5.4. Remember to back up your projects before downloading the latest version of Unity.

• Download 5.4
• Release Notes
• Docs

Unity 5.5 Beta
If you’re looking for the Unity 5.5 Beta, never fear, it’s coming soon. While we’re getting it ready, why not take a look at our guide to being an effective Beta tester or check out what’s coming in Unity 5.5 on our Roadmap Page.

 

Why now there is "5.5 alpha" and "alpha" in the roadmap and most of the cool things are in the new separated alpha?

 

• Android: Deprecated UnityPlayerNativeActivity and UnityPlayerProxyActivity; these will now print warnings to the logcat if in use.
• Android: Removed native activity implementation. An activity with the same name based on a regular activity is still in place for backwards compatibility reasons.

Not entirely sure what the implications of these are? Has the process of creating Android plugins changed completely? No more Native Activity?

 

5.5 alpha (soon beta) is because it's the plan for 5.5, while "alpha" is undefined internal.

 

Runs on Sierra every time I launch. That alone is a vast upgrade for me

 

Ok but most of the features have just been moved out of 5.5 then, including the Director(delayed forever) and the splash screen. Or does it mean that they can also appear sooner than 5.5?

 

Well, there's "alpha" - as in it's getting customer and user feedback on how to shape the feature.

Then there's "alpha" as in this bundle of features are being prepared together, still getting some feedback and looking to move forward as a set towards stabilization. However, there's a reasonable confidence that it can stabilize for the release.

Things still sitting in the former set, means we have feedback to still process (as well as actually land the changes).
However, as you suggest, the 5.5 alpha is not yet _locked_. The lock basically comes in going to beta.

I can confirm though, we are still incorporating lots of feedback for Director, so 5.5 is not in the cards.
Splash screen, has a fair chance.

 

The fancy almost-but-not-quite-a-presentation-app splash screen system is like a bugfix to some, so I expect them to add it in a 5.4 update soon-ish. Been waiting long enough

I noticed there's a button for joining the feedback panel on the roadmap, so I signed up. I hope UT open a nearby office so I can make full use of it

 

hmm, unity 5.4 does not let me upload any package to the asset store!
i grabbed the latest version of the "asset store tools" and let it be updated.
then i tried to upload from mac: unity prompted that "uploading webplayer bundles is not supported anymore".
trying to upload the same asset folder on win simply stalls in "Building asset bundle" – for more than half an hour now.
what shall i do?

 

With the current "locked" features of 5.5, seems like a very minor release.
Sound like Director is out of the running for 5.5. I really hope that NavMesh baking doesn't suffer the same fate.
Ooo the new Video API was added the to roadmap. I've been waiting on a fully cross-platform MovieTexture replacement forever!

 

Minor means fast. Let's hope compiler upgrades make it at the very least.

 

Now that DX12 is supported with better multi threaded rendering, does that mean we now can get those insane amount of draw calls without choking the pipeline?

 

Noticed that the installer (on MacOS) no longer has MacOS as a component to select during the installation. Is that a new thing - that it installs Windows/MacOS automatically if that's the platform you're running the installer on? Or am I going to find that I can no longer build for MacOS

 

Nevermind - I RTFM'd!

 

There is one annoying bug in this version, i have scene where there are no cameras but just ui canvas. And i can't get rid off message "No cameras rendering". Someone already reported bug on issue tracker while this was still in beta:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ing-canvas-rendering-and-doesnt-need-a-camera

Edit:

One more thing to report, unity cloud build cant' build iOS version now. It worked in previous version:

This is the error:
[Unity] Player export failed. Reason: Shader error in 'Sprites/Default': Internal error communicating with the shader compiler process
558: ! build of 'default-ios' failed. compile failed

Update:

At the end, unity cloud builded game after second try, not sure what caused problem before.

 

Really appreciate the quality and compatibility of this release!! Everything works like a charm when upgrading our project.

 

instanced surface shaders broken in unity 5.4.0f3

instanced surface shaders produce heavy light flickering when using forward rendering and a point light as the shader compiler does not add "#define UNITY_USE_CONCATENATED_MATRICES"!

reproduce this by creating a new instanced surface shader.
select the "NewInstancedSurfaceShader" in the project tab and click "Show generated code"
you will not find any "#define UNITY_USE_CONCATENATED_MATRICES" as mentioned in the docs:

"You need to tell Unity to always calculate the vertex transformation. To do this, multiply by M first, then by VP (VP * M * v) in add passes. This allows you to avoid conflict in the base/first passes caused by small floating point error. Define UNITY_USE_CONCATENATED_MATRICES before including UnityCG.cginc. You don’t need to do this for surface shaders, as it is automatically generated."​

Bug Case 818543

 

By the way, the blog post talks about motion blur effect and link to the asset store but that effect is only available in bitbucket and only on an experimental branch, so a bit hard to find.

 

Could anyone explain to me, in a language I can understand, what are the real differences between 5.3 and 5.4, beside the fact that we can now zoom in and out in the game view?

 

How about actually updating the contents of the items of the roadmap? For the newly released 5.4 we read (on instancing):

• OS X and mobile platforms support might come in 5.4.

As Unity continues to play "shiny feature dominoes", I'd say it's pretty important they make these overviews accurate.

 

I just installed Unity 5.4 and everything, including the tabs for me to try and get my viewport reset is all pink... is anyone else getting this issue? I even started a new scene and everything is pink

 

@ladyonthemoon http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.4.0

In a nutshell :
- This version's standout feature is "Faster 'n prettier graphics", plus some other stuff.
- Also, this version has some known bugs, check the known issues section in the link to see if your project might be affected.
- If you do not really need now a new feature that appears in 5.4 only, you can wait until 5.4 patches are out or, until 5.5 comes out. It took much time to iron this version enough to release it ( which is reasonable enough since the technological advances it brings are huge ) and chances are it still needs some ironing to become headache - free.

 

I am still getting the pink viewport, even with everything updated... I will have to do a clean install of 5.4 to see if I can get my project back up... this is not fun

 

Just removing the Unity folder you will find in App Date/Roaming should suffice. There must be some preferences settings in there that interfere.

Thanks for your input. I'm afraid this is an unending story; if I wait for 5.5, there will be some problems that might make me wait until 5.6 is released, and so on.

 

Version numbers are how we separate different combinations of bugs and flaws.

 

Each unity version has some strengths and weaknesses but in general :

v x.0 - Major features introduced, mostly buggy.
v x.n, n {.0 - .9} - Bug fixes, minor features introduced.
v x.5 - Mostly stable.

This is how I personally evaluated Unity versions since 2.something, other people may have a different experience. But it used to work this way so far.

 

I hope this works... I face this every time I work on a project... For now on, I will have to completely uninstall Unity before updating... I am not thrilled that it has taken this much time to get back to work on my game

 

No dice... EVERYTHING is completely pink... even the tabs for the windows are pink as well... WTF?

Here is a screenshot of what is happening...



No matter what I do, I can't get past this... and I am within spec on my laptop. This wasn't an issue in 5.3.2 and I have been waiting ANXIOUSLY for this update

 

You removed your "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming"? Did you restart the computer afterwards? In your project folder, you could remove the Temp and Library folders too.

I hope you backed up your project before opening it in 5.4...

 

Let me try that... this is PAINFUL

 

Already did. I'll pull the folder and see what this does

 

I'm gonna strip my project to nothing and see if this fixes my issue... I'm frustrated now too, waiting for all of this crap...

 

You can still work on it in the version of Unity you were using.

 

Even after stripping everything, I am still seeing pink

 

I could, but won't have any of the new features I've been waiting for. Even in a fresh project, everything is pink. My drivers are up to date

 

Success... with a clean project, everything is good... now to open my project

 

Great release, good work. Some news on MonoDeveloper update? The one that came with 5.3.5 is pretty buggy.

 

The mono develop that comes with 5.4 is version 5.9.6. I can't remember what version is used with 5.3.5 though.

 

Almost any release will have bugs that are a showstopper for someone. Whether they are a showstopper for you is clearly a different matter though, so its fairly rare that I would advise everyone to wait by default.

I like 5.4. I would recommend anyone with the available time to at least try it with a copy of their project. And if you are targeting suitable platforms, to try things like the TAA & Motion blur of the Cinematic Image Effects pack.

I also wait with interest to see what Asset Store packs make use of 5.4 stuff over time, such as motion vectors and gpu mesh instancing.

 

okey, it is the same, so i guess we are stuck with buggy 5.9.6 as integreation. Or ofc use Visual Studio without the realtime debug.

 

Since installing 5.4 in addition to keeping 5.3. The FPS has dropped extremely low in our project. I've stripped the project back to 5.3 through our SVN, re imported the project back into 5.3 and everything works fine. Then re imported again to 5.4 and the massive fps drop still occurs.

But within the first 3 seconds the fps will drop from the usual 60fps to 2fps. Is there something we should be looking at, we've changed player and graphic settings to extremely low with the same result...

 

so does profiler say where? It really should if you investigate. You need to be looking at millisecs and where, not "fps" because nobody's able to help then...

bug report of project would help you I guess?

 

Will there be anymore updates for the 5.3.X release?

I currently have 5.2.3 installed, and want to install the last update for 5.3.X.
I don't think jumping right to 5.4 from 5.2 is wise in my situation.

 

After upgrading to 5.4 my FPS are approximately 30% worse than on 5.3.6p1

I have prepared simple repro project. It's just blank terrain 1.5x1.5km with 10000 terrain speedtrees of one kind. (deferred + linear color space, x64 build)

Here are my results. Performance degradation is even more apparent in repro project:
Unity 5.3.6p1
dx11 = 145 FPS

5.4
dx11 = 103 FPS
dx11 + jobs = 61 FPS
dx12 = 82 FPS
dx12 + jobs = 110 FPS

Case 818706

You can download repro project here if you would like to try it:
www.virtualo.org/download/ReproPoject.zip

Best regards
Peter

 

Please make sure to file an official bug report with the above description and repro project if you haven't already.

 

I'm digging the improvements to the reflection probes... what was added to them? And I'm drooling over the LPV... makes lighting my scene so much easier...

And the tonemapper feels familiar too.

 

I am unable to activate 5.4. The activation form keeps telling me max activations has been reached. Okay but I seem to be unable to disable my Plus activations on the website

 

This is crazy... I am trying to update my sanctuary level and when I got to bake out reflection probes, I am getting this error in the Console

PPtr cast failed when dereferencing! Casting from GameObject to Texture!
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

And my viewport looks like this, the result of a reflection probe that is messed up:



This seems to only happen in this level... I wanted to rebake the lighting in my level and I get this mess instead

 

Of course I have specified case 818706 in original post and it contains simple repro project.

Best regards
Peter