HDRP support in 2019.4 LTS

It has been said that as of 2019.3, HDRP will be out of preview, and will (hopefully) be production-ready. I've been waiting for 2019.3/4 to nail down the Unity version for my project, expecting to stay on 2019.4 LTS until the project is complete. But I'm curious how the HDRP team will be approaching HDRP changes moving forward when the "preview" tag is officially lifted from HDRP.

So far, most new development on HDRP (aside from bug fixes) is not backported to support earlier version of Unity. Each major Unity release of late (2019.1, 2019.2, 2019.3) is accompanied by a major new HDRP release, requiring users to upgrade Unity to continue to get feature improvements to HDRP. Will this continue to be the approach when HDRP is no longer in Preview?

My game is heavily invested in Realtime Dynamic GI, which I understand HDRP will no longer support as of 2020.1, which will necessarily keep me stuck on 2019.4 LTS. Will HDRP continue to improve for those who remain on 2019.4 LTS? Or will we see the same approach, where only bugfixes are backported, and new features are only available to those on the latest versions of Unity?

In short, due to the Enlighten deprecation, I'm going to be locked to 2019.4 LTS for at least a year. Should I expect HDRP to continue to improve over that time? Or will there be an HDRP 8.x+ to accompany Unity 2020, with features not backported to 2019.4 LTS?

 

I guess the answer is to look at what they're doing with LWRP, which is no longer experimental.

 

The one thing I can say for sure i that there will be an 8.x, as it already exists on github (although last time I checked it was still way too early in its dev cycle for it to have new features/refactoring compared to 7.x).

I suppose I expect things to keep evolving in 2020 and for only certain things like bugs to get backported, so probably the situation you are anticipating will happen, causing pain. The roadmap talk at Unite Europe next week will probably reveal some info about HDRP features planned for 2020.1 at least.

 

I am in the same situation. I am tired of Unity dev version (.1, .2, .3) they are too unstable. I want to stick with LTS version too, but if HDRP will only evolve with the major Unity releases, I think, we have no choice.

 

I am in the same boat, and I am really worried. It really sucks.

 

I was just looking at the changelog for HDRP 8.0.0, and I'm confused about why 8.0.0 exists at this point:

https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...render-pipelines.high-definition/CHANGELOG.md

The changed listed all seem to be fixes, with no obvious indication that any of them result in breaking API changes. My understanding was that new major versions contained breaking changes. So is 8.0.0 destined for 2019.3/4? Or is 8.0.0 only targeting 2020.1? Maybe after Unite we'll get a better sense of where HDRP is going with respect to the 2019 cycle, and whether we'll expect to see continued feature enhancements under 2019.4 LTS.

 

My understanding is that it's dependent on core engine features that can't be easily backported without bringing the changes that would have come with the new releases. Once the new render pipeline leaves preview I would think core engine changes would slow down, but I fully expect them to continue coming through on occasion.

How long till you expect to release your game? Because we've been told there is an upcoming solution for realtime global illumination coming right after they've completely removed Enlighten. I would hope that they would inform us of what it is before it's completely removed.

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/07/0...-for-baked-and-real-time-giobal-illumination/

 

8.x is destined for 2020.1, and its probably only on github this early on because Unity released an alpha of 2020.1. Given more development time, I would expect to see far more differences between 7.x and 8.x.

It wont be for 2019.3, thats what version 7.x is for.

So far they have always increased the major version number of render pipelines for each new major Unity version. Unity LTS .4 versions havent gotten their own major version of pipelines, they use whatever the .3 release used. Maybe this will settle down more once the pipelines are more mature.

 

Fairly certain that 2019.3/4 LTS will not get any future HDRP features unless they are trivial to backport and there's a real reason to do it. Expect to only get bugfixes once HDRP 7.x is officially released along with 2019.3 and you've set your expectations right. That's still going to be bugfixes for 2 years for 7.x, so if 7.x got all the feats your project needs, there's no need to upgrade to 2020.x and 8.x HDRP.

As a side note, comparing to LWRP is bit difficult as there's no similar situation with it, there was no stable LWRP release while previous LTS arrived so it's not same situation at all. Also it's going to be URP for the 2 year support on 2019.4 LTS now.

 

I wish SRP is future compatible. So that 2019.2 could use v7 and v8.

I think they need to make SRP future compatible.

 

I'm aiming for an awkward release window of about a year and a half from now, which might be just around the time they're planning to release the replacement for Enlighten. But I don't think it's safe for me to plan for that. Not to mention that upgraded to 2020 when it first comes out would mean a year of no dynamic lighting in my alpha and beta releases. So, unless they release some really optimistic news in the very near future about the Enlighten replacement, I don't think I can plan to be on 2020.

I'm understanding about how they can't add new features to an older version of Unity if the engine itself doesn't support it. Those kinds of features I understand I'd need to upgrade to the new Unity release. But there are other "features" missing from HDRP right now that I feel are bugs more than features, which it sounds like probably are just a matter of priorities until they get around to working on it, rather than being engine-dependent. (Of course I could be wrong about that.) For example, proper support for 2D shaders. That's where I would really hope that unless the engine itself prevents something from being backmerged, that we'll continue to see improvements (and not just bug fixes) under 2019 LTS. I understand why they didn't backport everything in earlier HDRP releases, but I'm hoping that removing the Experimental flag under 2019.3 means they'll make a bigger effort to keep the 7.x stream as up to date as the engine permits.

 

It's worth pointing out that all the changes there are also present in the 7.1.x release branch: https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...render-pipelines.high-definition/CHANGELOG.md

 

That's interesting, and good. Looks like that all got merged in yesterday.

 

Its much too early in the life of 8.x to make any assumptions that backports from 8.x to 7.x now are a sign that there will be more backports in future than we saw in the past.