Discussion Good things about this release:

Post here what you like about 2023.2.

 

The only things I know about Unity 2023.2

- New light baking architecture (Light Baker v1.0), GPU lightmapper out of preview, APV URP support, precomputed realtime GI
- HDRP PBS (add support for night sky), HDRP improved exposure (local tone mapping and Luminance-Based Exposure), Volumetric clouds beer shadow maps


To be honest, for me this version is disappointing, I expected more, I think that the roadmap for Unity 2023.2 is not complete and that new things will be added in the near future.

Instead, Unity 2023.1 comes with some pretty interesting stuff that caught my attention. Some improvements that I would like to see made in Unity 2023.2: the terrain system needs some improvements (https://forum.unity.com/threads/imp...ke-to-see-made-to-the-terrain-system.1362709/), on the graphics performance side, I would also like to see some changes. Besides that, in the roadmap I saw a lot of things "under consideration" that I would like to be added.

 

looking forward to learning more about TextCore
i see a lot of items getting setup to be more aligned between URP an HDRP

wish the change notes would include the PR change numbers to make it easier to find the details.

 

[Edit: Started updating info for Alpha 17. Not finished updating post yet.]

First off thank you for starting off with a great positive message about for the devs to work with.

For those reading this was typed during alpha 6. Will update it as the Alpha goes on.
Let's start:

Core Changes:
New overloads for GameObject.CompareTag and ComponentCompareTag with the new tag handler is nice for a simple performance boost.

Input Changes:
Thank you for exposing Input.mousePositionDelta. This helps save a lot of people from making small helpers functions.

Editor Changes:
Thank you for the version control option to allow tracking packages that are on a disk outside of the projects root folder. Can't tell you how thankful I am for this one.

The new option in preferences to only refresh scene view when the editor is focused is nice. Thinking of multiplayer testing with the new same machine multiplayer test toolkit Unity released and how this could be useful when you have the second window focused for testing player 2.

The shortcut keys for making transitions between animator states is a nice QOL change as well.

Automatically opening a tab when an object is dragged over it can be very useful for people working with custom editor systems like Item Databases and more.

Package Manager:
At first wasn't sure about the new Package Manager, but took me only a few minutes to like it. I make a lot of packages and load them from GitHub so in the Package manager a lot testing changelogs and more stuff. The new layout makes switching between the different sets of packages a lot easier now. Also thank you for fixing the tab index for the search bar inside of the package manager so I can quickly tab, search, and select the package I need.

Also the Improved UI Tag for git and local packages was nice.

UI Toolkit changes:

Tab system all I need to say. We have a built in Tab UI Control for creating no code required tab menu systems. Takes two second to use and make a full UI Tab system.

Tab view and tab controls are a really nice simple way to create bigger editor extensions.
Implementing them for tabs for my game editors right away.

Thank you Unit devs for the new event prorogation controls API. Being able to handle BubbleUp and TrickleDown events this way made life a lot easier on some of the custom systems I was working for when doing drag and drop on a node based grid system. Haven't looked too much into the new Focus Controller ignore event too much, but I can see some cases it can help me down the line already.

Also thank you for Improving TreeViews performance using the UI Toolkit.

2D Changes:
Serializing TileChangeData is going to come in handy for a side project that involves making a Metroidvania Style Map Editor Package that I am working on if I am understanding the correct use cases for it.


Animator Changes:
Automatic stripping of any leading or trailing white spaces when editing names of state machine parameters. Haven't run into accidentally adding one myself, but I can imagine it happens a couple times every month to someone. So good QOL.

The GC improvements are welcomes as well that the animator.awake performance improvements for everyone to enjoy.

Burst:
The selection of line and highlight stuff is nice.
Haven't really touched burst in 2023.2 Alpha yet so can't say much, but the notes are looking nice

Big thank you to the Unity team for focusing on a lot of QOL and performance changes this version.
Also big thanks to all Unity using devs that keep the community alive.

 

With precomputed realtime GI Unity is making a big step in the right direction in my opinion .
Probe Volumes are already an awesome feature and having a realtime counterpart is super great!

 

I'm noticing improvements with general and over-all Editor performance in comparison to 2021/2022 (Not 5, 2019, nor 2020). This is very good thing.

It feels more lightweight and streamlined. Much like versions 5 and 2019 (2020 to some lesser extent)

 

> UnityPlayer.invokeOnMainThread

 

How is iteration time?

 

Part of the SRP coexistence is done. (light intensity, shader stripping)

It's not complete yet (camera additional script, converting materials), but I feel like it's the right direction for SRP.

By the way, I found that URP Unlit shader doesn't have emission property while HDRP's has. Is this by design, or can it be added in the future (disable by default)?

 

Script compilation in HDRP should be reduced to below 1sec, even better to 500ms.
Cold build time should be reduced to below 30min.
HDRP library should be reduced significantly.

 

Is it already present in the current alpha build?

 

Seems low. Script compilation of what?

 

Even Better to 0.

But I'm also wondering what we are talking about ?

 

When you change something in the script, the time needed to get back to editor. Iteration of scripts.

 

Create assembly definitions more often, compiling should be faster.

 

"the" script? Which script, what's the kloc?

 

C# script

 

Something is happening:

 

Artist driven AI assisted tools

 

I hope that these improvements will appear in 2023.2
I'm waiting for a blog/some post on the forum from Unity...or maybe even a video(youtube) explaining these improvements and changes

 

They are "under consideration" though.

 

I believe Unity should be C# script responsive <=1sec without assembly definitions in HDRP.

 

Finally, they've brought back the possibility to create UGUI shaders with shadergraph (still nothing for UI Toolkit).

For me, this is the most desired feature since 2021 LTS.

 

Same here, but Beta is not even available yet. Is this from the roadmap?

 

It's available in the latest alpha (2023.2.0a16)