Announcing Unity 3.0! iPad, Android and PlayStation!

Not known at the time to the other console platforms. So far UT only informed external parties that those platform are in work.
The only thing we can take for sure is that you must be licensed with MS if you want to even license unity x360, due to its XDK relationship

But the Wii license (with Wii being the much easier platform to develop for due to the lower power and the far inferior graphical and cpu capabilities) we have a possibility to do our own estimates

 

1. will there be any LOD features like the UNILOD plugin somebody did, except more of an automatic system/user friendly implemented into unity to even gives us a better frame rate after occlusion culling?

2. stencil buffer?

3. Any improvements on the terrain?

 

1. You mean windows fixed only due to the relationship on D3DX progressive mesh for which OpenGL does not offer any counterpart?

2. Stencil Buffers are pre-shader age technology where it served purposes that were later finally doable in a performant way thanks to pixel shaders.
You don't need them in the light of buffer textures etc as you can already have but as you will especially have with the deferred rendering.

 

would the xbox360 natal be automatically supported by the unity3D? it would be cool see unity games using the new xbox kentic(natal) technology.

 

who knows. At the time Unity x360 isn't available so we don't know what non-standard input devices might be supported (mic, dance matte, natal, ...)

 

It would be great to get some more details on Beast...
Will Unity simply provide their implementation of it? Or will this be more flexible for users to adapt it to their project?

One example is - I've heard this 'baked lightmaps that will then move to realtime lights as you get closer'... I don't want that.
I want to use Beasts excellent lighting solver to bake my lighting into the vertices and don't want anything dynamic and don't want someone else deciding how my project must use the lighting solution. I'll handle my lighting... I'll handle how dynamic characters are lit... I may even have a point cloud baked during the beast process and use that as a lookup for dynamic objects... point being, I'll take care of what Beast provides.

So - will the implementation let us use the data from Beast how we like?

Other things are baking out 'exotic' maps such as directional lightmaps (ala HL2, Unreal3) or bent normalmaps...

Again - this is purely based on a projects needs (per-vertex baked, RNM, bent-normalmaps, lightmaps, and even this hybrid that Unity is providing)- so hopefully the implementation of Beast will be more of providing data for us to process rather than it being deeply entwined in a UT decided 'solution'.

Is there any more information on how Unity will deliver the beast?!

 

You can basically use what Unity exposes. Without getting the Unity source license you won't have access to the lower level stuff (as it is right now with RakNet, FMod or PhysX).

It was also mentioned that it is unlikely that PointClouds will in 3.0, but potentially in a later point release (so 3.1+)

If you want fullscale control you will likely have to get a beast license yourself and implement it yourself, pretty surely in a different engine as you can't hook in that deep in unity without source licensing. Question is if you need that control that desperately that you want to fork out 6 figure for beast per title + implementation in some engine of your choice

But you can likely always decide to not use it at all and provide static lightmaps with your model for example.


You can always think of unity exposing meaningfull enduser friendly functionality basing on the implemented middleware.

 

Hopefully we don't have to pay 100K per project for Beast. It's free with Unity3. ^^
Now, for the offline lighting, you can bake everything up, then switch off your dynamics lights. Tada!

 

How would we export and test on an xbox?

 

When you pay for the licenses, you can export to test.

 

In addition you will need to be a licensed xbox developer.
no support for xna and homehacker marketplace, only xdk from what mentioned (-> XBox live arcade and disc distribution)

 

Can someone "in the know" please confirm exactly what parts of the FMOD api will be exposed in V3, and if we will be able to use FMOD Designer 2010 properly integrated into the Unity3d Dev workflow?

Many thanks,
sv

 

who said FMod was included in Unity 3. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere.

 

FMod replaced the old sound system with Unity 2.6 already

 

Yes, FMOD is already in 2.6, albeit basic implementation.

From V3 release blurb.
http://unity3d.com/unity/coming-soo...nu67NZKXonjHpfsX67estT/rn28M3109ad+rmPBy+2IEB


Audio Magic

Unity 3 brings Reverb Zones, filters, tracker file support and a bunch of other goodies to the table. We're also introducing editable falloff curves for all major audio parameters, so you get complete control over your sound ambience.

However, it would be helpful to confirm exactly what parts of the FMOD api will be exposed in V3, and if we will be able to use FMOD Designer 2010 properly integrated into the Unity3d Dev workflow.

Especially interested in implementation of tracker files (unfortunatly FMOD midi implementation is basic playback only, which really limits any interactive use of midi to drive interactive gameplay atm).

Many thanks!

 

Magic, as we are a very large professional studio so thats great news, and will save use on production time//

Ordered the beta months back now so await the toys.

S

 

AFAIK we have only implemented the playback of tracker files at this point.

 

kk..ty.

 

Hi,

sorry if this has been discussed, but I was reading the first page and someone mentioned that Unity iPhone 3 will be $300? Is this true? As the current unity iphone is $300 as well.

Am a little confused

Thanks

Dan.

 

At this point you can only buy Unity iPhone 1.7 with a free upgrade to 3.0 so they're the same thing now. The $300 price is the pre-order discounted price. After Unity 3 is released it will go back up to $400.

 

ahh awesome, thanks for that

I suppose the million dollar question is, when is it due for release

Thanks

Dan.

 

The only date we have is summer 2010

 

Checking back in as today is the first day of summer.

GIMME GIMME GIMME :wink:

 

Thanks for this info... still curious as to release timeframe, if it's in "summer 2010" or if it's later.

 

Unknown.
It was clarified that the summer part only was in relation to Unity 3 and Unity iPhone 3, that PS3 and Android are not bound to the unity 3 target timeframes

 

Actually, looking at that again.. is Unity iPhone usually $499? Or is it $399? Either way, Android is going to cost the same as iPhone, they will not be bundled in any way for a "Mobile License"

 

If we are developing a project using Unity2.6, is there going to be some way to turn that project into an iPhone project (assuming we're not using features that don't work on the iPhone) with the Unity3 product or will we have to start assembling things all over again? We end up having to do it for the iPhone product, but now that the UIs are merged will we still have to do it?

 

I'm not sure what you mean...you can already load a Unity 2.6 project into Unity iPhone.

--Eric

 

Trying to figure out if it is smart enough to strip out the stuff that won't fit. So for example if I have a project and a level editor put a terrain in it, will Unity3 say "hey you can't do that on the iPhone" or will it expect that the project brought in be suitable for iPhone use. How smart will Unity3 be about stripping out what it can't use on a particular platform? Will be have a single unified workflow that simply gets platform optimized?

 

Terrains are not supported on the iPhone as far as I know, as with past history, any projects written in Unity from major release to major release aka 1x to 2x required adjustments, sometimes minor, sometimes major, sometimes none at all, honestly just finish what you have started in 2x and release it as is and when 3.x comes out, see how the upgrade goes, they are pretty smooth at transitions.

 

Thanks. As I started getting through the question it also made me wonder what the workflow will be since we have a single IDE for all platforms - which is awesome. I'm just curious how the workflow will go when you create projects. Do you just create a Unity project and then build things out, do you create an iPhone project and the IDE simply removes options that don't apply, and what happens if you have a "PC" version and start on the iPhone version - do you have to start from scratch or does it do some feature stripping for the target platform.

 

<stalker>
So the betas are being released, huh?
</stalker>

 

Please explain...

 

Twitter of Aras

 

Is this the time for me to take the crow bar to my wallet for the pre order? Will pre orders have access?

 

Is iPhone 3 included?

 

If its time for you to upgrade to pro and get iphone 3 upgrades is up to you.

 

Allow me to try and re-phrase my question...

If I pay for the update to Unity Pro and iPhone Pro today, will I get access to this beta being released today?

This text

The gloves are off. Unity 3 betas are now making their way to the first pre-order customers. We're sending them out on a first-come first-served basis. Order now and be first in line.


from http://unity3d.com/unity/coming-soon/unity-3

suggests that that is the case.

 

Yes, you'll get access to it. Whether it will be today or not depends on how many people are in front of you and at what rate they're sending out the emails. I got mine an hour or so ago, but I preordered as soon as it was announced.

Reading though the updated (if somewhat incomplete) docs is really exciting.

 

Ordered! Yea...

[waiting patiently on line]

 

I ordered mine soon after. They had issues with ordering site for upgrades. How do I find out my number in line?

Can't waiting been excited for this one.

Have fun.

 

I hope they don't forget about me... as I've entered my email(s) into their, "Keep informed of updates submit box" and have never once received anything?!

I ordered fairly early on, so i'm checking every 30 seconds LOL!! (only joking, but i am excited)

Regards,
Matt.

 

I'm getting antsy. The email will be going to my bosses mailbox and he's out of the office til who knows when D:

 

Does this mean the Beta is sctually in your hands? (i'm drooling!)... also, did the Beta access mention anything about not talking about specific features etc until release?

Regards,
Matt.

 

Just seen it for the first 100 'early bird customers'... i doubt i fall into that.

Regards,
Matt.

 

Yes, I'm playing with it now. As for discussing it:

"You are welcome to share your experiences with this Unity 3 preview build on the forum, IRC room, your blog, or anywhere else. Of course we would like it if you have positive things to share with the world, and if not please be gentle ;-)"

-The other Matt

 

AFAIK we've lifted all NDA about the beta today so people are free to talk about their impressions, post screenshots, make standalone builds, etc... the only thing we disabled was publishing web players.

 

Would you guys prefer discussion about it to happen here, or a separate Unity 3 beta discussion thread?