Concerns with feature updates 2018.3 vs 2019.1

Hey,

Just wanted to raise this as a mild concern: I've noticed a few things recently where a new feature has been added in 2018, but then it's suggested that it won't mature until 2019, and I just wanted to get some clarification from someone please?

Just to grab a couple of examples from the new terrain tools in 2018.3 - this is a bug I found which seems to be being ignored in 2018.3 but fixed in 2019.1, and in this thread improvements are being made to the tool, but again only in 2019.1. Is this just a case of getting 2018.3 out the door and all this stuff will be backported? What state can we expect the new terrain tools to be in in 2018.4LTS?

Another related point is LWRP - I may well have missed it, but I don't remember seeing anything saying that LWRP wouldn't be 'verified' until 2019.1, but that seems to be the message now. I'm seeing quite a few people who have (rightly or wrongly) moved their production project over to LWRP, some of whom I imagine expected it to reach a production ready state in 2018. Was this always the plan, or did something change? Perhaps the target Unity version for a preview feature could/should be more prominently displayed somewhere?

I know for me personally I'm planning to finish the current game with 2018.4LTS, but I did toy with using LWRP, and now I'm very glad I didn't cos I'd have a fair bit of backtracking to do!

 

As I remember it, Unity Technologies is fixing bugs in the most recent version and then back-porting them over time.

If there is a bug in 2018.3, it's likely that is gets fixed in 2019.1 alpha first. Then a few weeks later, the fix should land in 2018.3 and eventually land in 2017.4 as well.

It's explained in this blog post:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/04/0...g-the-tech-and-long-term-support-lts-streams/

 

Yeah hopefully that's the case @Peter77. The blog post doesn't even mention alphas/betas though - 2018.x is currently the TECH stream.

 

The only time I've seen them mention that a fix won't be backported is when it's associated with a preview package. For example, there was a bug in the HDRP package under 2018.2 that I was told was fixed in 2018.3, but would not be backported because HDRP is in preview.

Assuming the terrain feature you're talking about isn't a preview feature, I would assume that fixes will be backported.

 

I've been patiently waiting the terrain bugfix to get backported, but I'm starting to think maybe it won't be? Who is the best person to ask / nudge? @ChrisTchou?