Feedback wanted - Your feeling about 2018.3 in its current state

I'm sure the third category, devs who want to use a LTS release, who will benefit from stuff that has arrived in 2018 already in pretty good shape, but dont need to keep up with the latest evolution of stuff that is still rather early, eg preview render pipeline packages, still exists. But I would agree that it could be smaller this year because of the timing of when major features have landed.

I think the new prefab thing draws attention to this possibility, we don't often get such dramatic change to Unity and in many other areas Unity has been able to introduce new stuff without getting rid of the old way at the same time. Perhaps this is one of the reasons we are being asked for our thoughts on 2018.3 in this way now, I don't know, just as I don't know what the reasons were for the beta being delayed from its public release for longer than usual some months ago. Certainly I feel as though maybe 2018.3 needs to come with some kind of giant glowing caveat warning, but I haven't thought about what that could be exactly.

I don't think I could attempt to properly judge how good and useful the 2018.4 LTS release will be until we see quite how well 2018.3 goes for everyone once it is out of beta. If there are issues that cannot quickly be squashed, then it is possible that the fixed calendar nature of Unitys LTS release plans will not serve anyone too well this year. In which case I would encourage Unity to reconsider how that stuff works, and in future either be prepared to do LTS releases at whatever point makes sense rather than fixing to a calendar, or to plan the timing of your new features for the year so that any biggies tend to arrive in the .1 or .2 versions so they have a chance to mature further throughout the year before LTS version comes around again. So yes I probably do believe that given the LTS timing, it is rather unfortunate that something which involves as big a change as the new prefabs system should arrive in a .3 version. Same may go for terrain changes, but I haven't tried it myself yet so I don't know how ripe it is. But overall 2018 has been a busy year with big changes, so I suppose I should not be surprised if the 2018 LTS feels less ripe and ready than the 2017 one, because 2017 felt like more of a year when stuff matured and solidified throughout the year, without too many major shocks to the system.

I'm far more forgiving of unfortunate render pipeline timing issues as they relate to LTS, because I just see this as an inevitable consequence of how long that stuff is taking, and the relative immaturity of these systems. There was a lot of progress in 2018 with a lot more still to do, and most grumbling noises I could make are historical, in that a lot of what happened in 2018 was what I originally hoped would happen in 2017. I would certainly hope that during 2019 both LWRP and HDRP will get to a state where they have reached notable production ready milestones in good time for 2019 LTS to take advantage. Once we are passed that point I would certainly hope that future addition of features and general maturity of the system takes into account future LTS timetable, try to get things in sync a little better when it comes to major features, platform support, breaking/large changes and LTS releases. But that's not a luxury I think they've had the ability to achieve so far, due to immature state of pipelines and a fair amount of refactoring.

 

1. Are you using 2018.3 in a real production? If not, did something keep you from doing so?
Nope. Nested Prefabs.

2. What feature(s) are you most excited about?
Nested Prefabs.

3. What is/are the most annoying/painful part(s) of 2018.3 today?
That Nested Prefabs exist in 2018.3+ and will be the what is supported in LTS versions, and from what I understand there will be no 2018.2 LTS versions? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I've recently updated to 2018.2, from 2017.4.16f LTS, for the latest improvements to WebGL. Knowing that the LTS version of 2018 will now include Nested Prefabs makes me kind of regret upgrading, especially if a situation occurs where I can't avoid it.

4. How would you feel if we released 2018.3 in its current state (b11)? What makes you feel this way?
I picked 3.

Nested Prefabs and missing out on LTS versions (especially if they end up including fixes for WebGL and mobile) if you didn't want to use Nested Prefabs yet.

Don't get me wrong, I do like what the Unity Team has done with Nested Prefabs. It's a step in the right direction and it's only going to get better as time goes on, but it's just weird to have it as one of the last major updates to roll into LTS. Seems more like a first major change for a brand new year kind of thing, ya know?

 

1.
No. Too much stuff is broken and not enough new things we really need.

2.
Some of the new job based raycasting api's. Incremental compiler built in. Terrain stuff has potential but it's been neglected for so long that most of us use third party tools here anyways, so questionable how much immediate benefit is really there.

3.
New prefab workflow. Most professional studios have their own tooling here. You likely broke 80% of those in some way. We will see zero benefit and have to refactor a few things just to get the project back to working condition.

4.
I usually stay on the bleeding edge. But not on this unless we see new stuff in the job system or ECS that is 2018.3 only that forces us to upgrade soon. Currently I think this release is on the high risk side, will wait it out as long as we can.

 

Even if we'd use prefab variants we end up with about 20 different variants. I just dont see any need for the additional step to click "Open Prefab" if all i want is to tweak a single value.

 

1. Are you using 2018.3 in a real production? If not, did something keep you from doing so?
   We're still at least a few months away from release, so we decided to switch to 2018.3 because of the prefab system.
2. What feature(s) are you most excited about?
   Nested prefab is the biggest one. Without it, it would've been very painful to work in this new project.
3. What is/are the most annoying/painful part(s) of 2018.3 today?
   Constant crashes when using prefab system with big prefabs. It also randomly crashes the game in player, after logging warnings like this:
   Internal: JobTempAlloc has allocations that are more than 4 frames old - this is not allowed and likely a leak
   To Debug, enable the define: TLA_DEBUG_STACK_LEAK in ThreadsafeLinearAllocator.cpp. This will output the callstacks of the leaked allocations
4. How would you feel if we released 2018.3 in its current state (b11)? What makes you feel this way?
   It's definitely not ready. This would been Unity 5.0 all over again for us.

 

Not sure why it would be an issue to have 20 variant if needed. It is still easier to manage than 20 similar but unconnected prefabs.

Though I think you make a good point about having to click "open" on a prefab. Selecting a prefab in the project window should open it automatically. It doesn't make sense to display an empty inspector panel just to show a lonely "open" button. Unity should keep that for a very needed locked by password prefab feature.
Also, this would prevent issues with third parties assets. Using Playmaker for example, you can select a prefab and edit it's FSM without opening it and lose these changes if you open and save your prefab later. Being well supported, I'm sure Playmaker will solve this, but some assets with less support or none could cause issues for the users.

 

Its not an issue to manage 20 variants if you can peek at them quickly, and not have to press another button to see anything meaningful, and if you can multiedit them.

 

I'm just uploading a cut down version of our project with a bug-report. It's just taking a little bit of time because of the size (multiple gigabytes). Thanks for the point about referencing the report instead of uploading it multiple times.

 

1. Are you using 2018.3 in a real production? If not, did something keep you from doing so?

Yes I am.

1. What feature(s) are you most excited about?

The nested prefabs work nicely. It would even be better if prefabs in the hierarchy would be automatically updated when the prefab has been changed.

1. What is/are the most annoying/painful part(s) of 2018.3 today?

It does not work at all with Steam VR. It does not let the Steam VR plugin generate input bindings. Unity freezes while doing this and this effectively makes 2018.3 unusable for VR purposes. This issue is known and I was told the problem would be fixed in 2019.1. I do hope however that it will be fixed in 2018.3 before release.

1. How would you feel if we released 2018.3 in its current state (b11)? What makes you feel this way?

I would be hugely disappointed if Unity decides to release a new version which has effectively removed support for VR.

Edit:
Removing the release version of the SteamVR plugin and replacing it with the latest Beta appears to be solving some issues.
Unity will still freeze after pushing Save and Generate in the SteamVR Input window while displaying "Generating scriptable objects..." and the Open Binding UI button from the same window still does not work. So it remains impossible to create custom input bindings.
But at least it will work with the defaults.

 

Are you using 2018.3 in a real production? If not, did something keep you from doing so?
No. There's no Xbox One plugin released. We couldn't test if it works at all. (We already tested on PS4 and it works fine so far.)

What feature(s) are you most excited about?
IL2CPP debugging on Xbox One hopefully (since Mono is not supported with .Net 4.x, there's currently no way to debug on Xbox One...)
Gizmos work in Game tab with SRP
Nested Prefabs

What is/are the most annoying/painful part(s) of 2018.3 today?
Graphics.CopyTexture to Texture2DArray no longer working

How would you feel if we released 2018.3 in its current state (b11)? What makes you feel this way?
Mixed feelings.
At least the Texture2DArray issue should be fixed.

 

The following is in the beta 12 release notes:

Graphics: Fixed Graphics.CopyTexture failing to copy textures into a Texture2DArray for compressed TextureFormats.

 

Are you using 2018.3 in a real production? If not, did something keep you from doing so?
We tried, but it kept crashing all the time. I gave it another go now, by merging in changes from the last attempt, fixing up things, and running AssetDatabase.ForceReserializeAssets on all of my assets. That crashed the editor. So, hey, still doesn't seem stable.

What feature(s) are you most excited about?
Roslyn, C#7. It helps a lot. Right now we're getting it from the incremental compiler, but that brings all kinds of bugs on it's own, so I'd love to get it by default.

Improved prefabs is great. I think you should've kept it under wraps until 2019.1, though, there's still a bunch of things missing, and it's still got more bugs (judging from the forums) than something that's production-ready for replacing a core part of the workflow.

What is/are the most annoying/painful part(s) of 2018.3 today?
The crashes.

Also, that you still haven't removed that close-tab-cross. I thought you had decided to ditch that?

So that's disappointing. It's really annoying, and I keep closing tabs for no reason.

How would you feel if we released 2018.3 in its current state (b11)? What makes you feel this way? Please elaborate.

Not very happy. Improved prefabs needs another round of iteration, and the editor isn't very stable.

 

1 - I am not using unity in a productions I am in the learning stage and just really building terrains ready for a game. In previous versions I was contemplating dumping unity as the FPS seemed really bad. I created an environment that was realistic as possible but then found I had to sacrifice that vision in favour of an easier less expensive game, which is something I wasn't really interested in doing. Now I have FPS to work with.

2 - I like the new terrain, it allows me to actually create a large realistic environment. The only thing I would say about the terrain is that... (and I haven't tried this since about 2018.3.0b6 so it may be possible)... I would like to be able to import a 4096x4096 RAW and spread it across 4 or 16 tiles. Apart from that it is way faster than previous versions.

3 - I keep occasionally "Fatal error in gc Too many heap sections" but it goes away when restarting the project. I haven't really dug deep into the issue as yet. Sometimes editing prefabs in scene can be a little annoying but I am starting to get the hang of it and it is most likely me and not unity at fault.

4 - I am not really qualified to say release it now as it does what I want so far but as mentioned I am on a learning curve so don't stray much from my workflow at present. However on the other hand a few developers of assets such as CTS (mainly) wont update their asset until the beta is released as current version and am really waiting for that particular asset to be functional with the latest beta. I also believe that developer is waiting for the new features of the terrain before releasing Gaia V2 but thats just a guess.

On the whole I would be happy as it is but then as mentioned I havent dug that deep in my learning curve so others would most likely be more qualified than I. Cant wait though. Thanks

I would vote an unqualified 3.

 

I can´t vote for some reason but I would rate 3) its kind of ew due to the imposed new prefab workflow and all of its cumbersomeness and rigidity added to the workflow. I'm happy with the rest, specially physx.

 

We just pushed our first 2018.3 build to production (beta 12).

The majority of the players are very happy with the increased performance from pausing GC & Unity ECS.

We have had 4 problems reported so far:

1. The game window will appear, then almost immediately disappear, but the process is still running in the background.
   I found a forum thread that sounds like the same thing:
   https://forum.unity.com/threads/standalone-windows-build-not-working.562657/
   And an issue tracker for it:
   https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...n-playing-in-windowed-mode-on-windows-8-dot-1
   I did confirm that this problem only happens on 64-bit builds, but we only support 64-bit. So releasing a 32-bit build for players with this problem isn't an ideal solution.
   Launching the game in fullscreen mode is another workaround.
   
   
2. For some players, errors being repeatedly written to the log file causing lag 'TLA_DEBUG_STACK_LEAK'
   Another forum thread that looks like the same thing:
   https://forum.unity.com/threads/web...tions-that-are-more-than-4-frames-old.586024/
   Apparently this may be fixed as early as b13.
   
   
3. Editor: Unable to open and edit prefabs after updating from b11 to b12 without reimporting the prefab
   As outlined in this forum thread:
   https://forum.unity.com/threads/ope...fab-root-after-loading-assets-prefabs.590611/
   EDIT: I can not reproduce this problem anymore, perhaps even re-opening the project fixes it. Nothing in my version control, so I am guessing the problem was in the Library folder which I don't version control.
   
   
4. Unity UI performance problems vs 2018.2. I don't fully understand this one yet, and it only happens on some UI windows. I have 1 keybinding window that runs at 200fps on 2018.2 but 100fps on 2018.3. On lower end computers this is more noticeable which is why I missed it before release. Gut feeling is it relates to scrollable areas. I need to investigate this further, but wanted to mention it.
   EDIT: SOLVED. There were 2 canvas scalers on my canvas, more details here:
   https://forum.unity.com/threads/solved-2018-2-vs-2018-3-ui-performance-problem.592579/

 

This problem might be not limited to prefabs, the b12 upgrade seem to "break" some materials too, I have to reimport to fix them.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/lwr...5-1-0-19-1-are-out.562291/page-4#post-3941767

 

Im as always late to the party, but Id have voted 3

Its nice but it really could do with more polish. I think if released now the crashes the annoyances would bug people too much, but on the whole its doing OK..

I am using it for production of my incredibly pittiful work but, I wanted the nested prefabs

 

Today we are getting quite a few reports of "Fatal error in gc: Too many heap sections"

There are 2 forum posts that sound like the same issue:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/fatal-error-in-gc-too-many-heap-sections.588850/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/case-1092711-crash-with-too-many-heap-on-gc.571906/

And 1 Issue Tracker:
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ference-to-other-system-dot-serialized-object.

 

Same here. I can confirm frequent crashes for "too many heap sections".

 

Just tried to use b12 as the beta version at google play and got a lot of feedback with the issues. Some users had black screen (just UI is visible, other 3d stuff is black), someone has a huge performance impact (from 60fps on 2018.2 down to 34fps on 2018.3 beta). On some oldest devices with Open GL ES2.0 UI Mask is blocking the images inside the mask (not reproducible in the 2018.2). Will review tomorrow ANR/Crashes once get results...

New version of PhysX is awesome. Resolves a lot of issues with the collision detection.

Unfortunately it's impossible to use in production (at list on Android). Too much issues I got from the beta testers and the bad thing - I can't catch it on my testing device...

Also there are some problems with the Prefab flow:
- I can't select multiple prefabs and add to everyone some new component. I have to open each of it and add the new component manually or I need to add the all prefabs into the scene and then make the changes > override changes > delete prefabs from the scene (previously I was able to do it through the Project tab in one step).
- It's very difficult to edit some huge prefabs in the "Open Prefab" mode because each change took some time to apply. For example I have opened a big prefab with a lot of UI windows. I want to change some value and after that I have a lag about 1 second until this change is recorded into the prefab. It would be better to apply the prefab changes when the prefab mode will be closed (or add a separate button).
- I can't change the order of any object inside the prefab. I have to open prefab and then do it. So as result I have to open prefab any time to make some serious changes and at the same time in the prefab mode it's very difficult to work (any change took about 1 second to apply).

Oy, just figured out the autosave checkbox. It resolves the problem with the autosaving. Thanks to Marc-Saubion for the tip!

I'm using b12 but looks like it's impossible to use in production due to the issues described above. And the bad thing - I don't have a proper device to reproduce it. It's just review from the beta testers I got after uploading a new beta version of the app on Google Play. Per the editor flow it's quite nice to use. Yeah, sometime I'm getting a crash after trying to override the prefab changes but mostly everything goes very well.

In overall, I have answered: I would feel positive about Unity's quality standards. 2018.3 is in good shape.
But after uploading the app and getting reviews I'm feeling a little bit sad with the results. Anyway, looking forward for the new update.

 

@Feelnside you should deactivate the autosave of your prefab window. This way you won't have to wait for the prefab to update each time you make a change.

 

Oy, thank you so much. Just didn't saw it before.

 

I would like that Unity evens out usage of shader graph and visual effect graph for default renderer, LWRP and HDRP.

Making better performance and data loading.

This is my confusion also with 2018.3 release. New features and optimizations are welcomed but I don't understand why different versions are being forked while pervoius ones are buggy/not stable and robust.

I think there should be more unification of Unity involved.

Becuase what will become of 2019.x. Constant updates every week or two?
And after 2019.x is finished, 2020.x will already roll out?
Where will this stop?
There should be one stable and unified Unity rather than these constant upgrades.

 

Stay on LTS if you want stability without upgrades

 

I'm seeing a pattern and coming to the conclusion that the better releases (at least as far as somewhat stable, not bleeding edge, but not falling behind on new features) are the mid year releases, the rest will be bug ridden and feature unfinished. 2017.1 junk, 2017.3 junk, 2018.1 junk, 2018.3 junk , 2019.1 junk, 2019.3 junk etc

You squeezed in nested prefabs into 2018.3 late in the year ( and I can't tell if we should be glad so that 2018.2 remains usable, or if had you actually got it finished earlier, 2018.2 could have had the feedback you got now, and 2018.3 might have been a release with the polishing up and feedback implemented) anyway it still leaves lack lustr terrain update breaking a bunch of terrain assets with still no clear stated goals as to what is coming next with terrain, not really good or for for asset authors.

Also LWRP it is still changing to much for some asset authors to really even considering trying to support it with custom shaders.

As far 2018.3 I've barely used it, was filled with enough bugs to put me off even bothering further. I've submitted a project and heard nothing back on the errors. I've tried nested prefabs and I also noticed the regressions in workflow.. this shouldn't happen, you don't add a feature while removing an existing way that was faster, the new way adds more workflow steps to something that used to be achieved in less.... if only it was optional way of doing something @TJHeuvel-net has summed it up well

Still wondering why there still isn't any built in project exporter tool, that would make exporting out a working project from an earlier version without all the extra textures conversion crap etc that makes dealing with unity's pain ass temp library folder because I really enjoy that waiting just to try out a new Unity bug beta release.

And lastly what in hell is going on with leaving that sodding x close button or its invisible empty space on all tabs? it was discussed here https://forum.unity.com/threads/i-tend-to-close-other-tabs-more-often-than-not-now.554080/ I thought that was meant to be removed or at least put behind some preference option.. seriously why? if 2018.3 goes on to be 2018.4 with some stupid x close button left on tabs for me to accidentally click and lose a tab that requires me to reset gui... I will metaphorically flip a table.

2019.1a / 2018.3b ...what's the difference, the later has less features and more bugs, the former has more features and newer bugs (or maybe less if this is how it's working with Unity they've already moved onto 2019.1 branch and 2018.3 was done with months ago?)

Clearly we do need the alpha releases, to get the feedback in earlier,

 

(Lost references)

I'm still getting it in b11, if you thought it was resolved there (it's not clear, since only for the next report did you mention b12).

 

@LeonhardP is there anything planned in regards to showing the components of a prefab in the prefab importer, in addition to the Open Prefab button?

 

Great!

On kind of the same note, posts keep popping up on the editor using Windows local settings for locale. That's surprising, as:

Did you change your mind internally, or is this also something that fell through the cracks?

 

Here and here. Though looking more closely, it might be that those users are not on the beta, so it could be a false alarm, unless you were planning for the change to hit 2018.2 too.

 

I'm getting this a few times every few hours working on it.

 

I belive that was fixed in 0b12 version update. I havent experienced it so far in this latest version

 

Any ETA for the next 2018.3 release ?

 

I would need confirmation of theese two things please.
1) hierarchy modification of prefabs in not prefab edit mode will be supported or not at some point.
2) viewing and editing of prefabs from project view as 2018.2 will ever be considered seriously to be brough back.

 

Developers have said "in the future" they will improve this.

The same for this.

They did not specify when or how, but I'm hoping the same quick workflow will be possible as before. In our case we saw this problem early and chose to divert some of the more common tweaking to scriptable object assets.

 

I havent had the issue since updating to 0b12 but I am working on a different project now. Above you stated in next release but I was using 0b11 at that time so thought it was fixed as Im not getting the issues but like I said above I am on a different project. Thanks

 

There's some quick hacks done by community members in the improved prefabs subforum that works around this in a custom editor window. If you have functionality to override the default inspector for all objects, it shouldn't be too hard to implement a general fix until Unity gets around to doing this properly. Expect one to show up shortly after 2018.3 ships.

 

Thats actually a good shout, we will give this a try in the meantime!

 

I feel its fine to release it now, and make it 2018 LTS a the same time.
I have also moved to 2019 for my main projects because of incremental garbage collection.
and for older projects that are finished they stay on 2017 LTS for now.

 

LTS is scheduled to happen about the same time frame as when 2019.1 gets out: https://blogs.unity3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/tech_lts-flowchart-horizontal.png. I think it's good that way, 2018.3 needs to get out of the door eventually and if they release it soon, they'll still have months time to fix the remaining issues during 2018.3 tech cycle before it moves to LTS. There's literally no reason to rush the LTS, but there are many good reasons to get 2018.3 out.

I'm not saying Unity should rush 2018.3 out either (they've delayed it already so they clearly care about the quality), but the thing is, 2018.3 will divide opinions a lot regardless of how much work they put to it before the release date. Some think the new prefabs are flawed (I'm mainly annoyed about not being able to restructure prefabs from the main scene view) and will want to revert to the old setup but that's clearly not going to happen. And yes, there are some really funky issues reported even on this thread where many of the remaining issues could take yet many months to get solved if they even find the root causes for them all.

But at the same time, 2018.3 been functional for many people from the start of the beta cycle too. I've reported bunch of bugs on earlier Unity betas but none on 2018.3 beta cycle (altho I've ran into few issues that I've seen on the forums that will be fixed on following releases so I didn't have to report them myself).

 

2017.3 was released on Dec 19th.

They're still on track with 2018.3, if they go with one or two release candidates from now and just release in this month. The xxxx.3 release is basically just the last release in the year (1), so you can't be too late if you release in that year.

 

And it's already RC1.

 

And the hover

X to close a tab is still there in RC1, hope it gets removed before final