Official Notice on DOTS compatibility with Unity 2021.1

They have been very clear on their design here. In DOTS gameobjects are design time constructs.

They have also been pretty clear that they don't intend games to convert. They intend for new games to use DOTS. So those games can design for the paradigm from the ground up.

And that doesn't mean it's a purist thing, ie all DOTS or nothing. It's more about some of the things in DOTS like the concurrency model, burst, native collections, all need to be factored in when you have hybrid code that integrates with DOTS.

Performance first concurrent design you can't just have for free is sort of the bottom line. Unity has put a lot of work into some pretty cool tech in DOTS to make it more accessible though. It's unfortunate more people don't see that IMO. The concurrency model is something you won't find anywhere else in games period. Burst and native collections are basically giving you a lot of the goodness of C but without having to use C. They are doing what they can here, and more so then any other engine out there in this specific area.

 

I think you're talking about technology Unity never mentioned, like the automatic conversation of random monobehaviours logics into pure DOTS which I think will never happen by the way.
It's even worse, this thread is about Unity struggling to get standard Unity Dots to work with the latest version which has features that many people have long been waiting for.
Can you guys see the difference between the two realities?
Here people are trying to get an atom of information of why this is happening and when this hell will finally end so the wheel can start to spin again.
So by keeping those unrealistic subjects, the unity team will just continue to ignore this thread more than trying to feel the S***ty situation that they spot us in.

 

I agree with most of what u say except this. With burst we are pretty much writing C inside a C# compiler. The only difference is we use "ref/in/out" instead of pointers (*/&).

They have been ignoring the pleas for info on this thread for 2 or more months, I think that ship already sailed.

 

What are chances we get info on this at GDC. We’ve got projects in Tiny and ECS and it awfully quiet on the forums.

 

Based on the GDC schedule I would say low.

-MACHINE LEARNING SUMMIT: CREATING COOPERATIVE CHARACTER BEHAVIORS USING DEEP REINFORCEMENT LEARNING
-SUPERCHARGING MOBILE PERFORMANCE WITH ARM NEON AND UNITY BURST COMPILER (PRESENTED BY ARM)
-TECHNICAL ARTIST SUMMIT: !GAMES: TECHNICAL ART OUTSIDE OF GAMEDEV
-AUDIO SUMMIT: DIY MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS USING UNITY, WWISE AND GAME CONTROLLERS
-BUILDING PIPELINES TO FIND, GROW, AND RETAIN DIVERSE TALENT

 

Ya the silence here has me questioning how much to depend on DOTS generally. I mean burst/jobs/ECS aren't going away but higher level features it really is a question mark. I mean if you are following LTS you could be waiting well over a year for the next DOTS feature release that you can use. That's more towards a worst case but that's the only sane thing to assume given the silence.

Sort of glad we backed away from hybrid renderer and animation. I think that was a smart decision based on recent history with updates just slowing to an absolute crawl and now this.

 

Martin did say

“As soon as we can, we will provide further information on how we will continue to develop and release Entities and Unity in lock step to provide a faster path of releasing DOTS to the Unity community ”

I’ve been patiently waiting, can we at least get a date on when we could expect an update. Or is there simply no solution and the reason why we are not getting information. I was hopeful for some exciting news at GDC but now I’m not so confident we well hear anything.

 

This is what it has come to... asking for updates on when we can get updates

Unity, If you can't provide an update, can you at least tell us when we can get an update on when we can get an update on when the update is coming?

Cheers.

 

I am not sure what kind of update people are expecting.

I think this is perfectly reasonable. Martin asks us to wait a few months. The only reason a developer would, is because they need to work against a fixed target, which is often required.

In a few months we will be "at the end of the year". It is not in proportion to some of the more forceful replies in the thread. I don't think DOTS is ready to keep being shipped lock step with Unity versions.

This seems reasonable. Hopefully in a couple of months Unity will give us more information.

 

At the very least, this one?

Maybe just a bit more communication to calm the waters after churning it up might also be... considerate, perhaps?

 

No, people should start treating not ready features as not existing to avoid any heartache and frustration.

Despite what Unity wants you to believe, this is the way to go for you to finish your games. (although then you will probably get frustrated with how abandoned every "finished" feature is)

 

Are we even on the same topic? You're arguing that it would not be considered considerate to calm the waters with communication by talking about feature adoption strategy? Even as I agree that experimental features shouldn't be relied on, that doesn't impact the fact I would think it a considerate thing to do to communicate more to calm the waters. They are not mutually exclusive.

 

I know this sound silly but deep down can’t convince myself that entities will not run in the next tech stream. I really need something to put that nail in the coffin, then the other side of me is maybe something good is coming. Other ppl I work with are not so optimistic.

 

Dunno I just stick to mono for exactly all this. I think it's pretty clear it does need the space in which to improve.

 

At least for me. I really hope new version of Entities package will release asap. Currently looks like Entities package still struggle to release new version and causing other dots packages can't release new version too.

 

IDK, I can't blame them. First, everyone hated them because they talked too much about upcoming features and plans and then everyone hated them when those plans inevitably needed to change due to natural course of software development.
Now, everyone hates them because they talk too little about upcoming features or plans and on the top of that, a lot of things only can be shared after a roundtrip to the legal department due to public status.
Especially if they have some uncertainty.

Plan with whatever you already have for sure or you can make it work for yourself. They will announce whenever they are ready.

 

When other Unity teams reconsiders their development options due to the time it takes for DOTS to evolve, I get a bad feeling. I feel bad for the team working on DOTS - hope they have a healthy working environment and are doing well under the pressure, and I also get worried for how DOTS will fit in with the other Unity features in the future.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/dots-audio-discussion.651982/page-6#post-7236689

 

U know, sometimes is not the what, but the how.

Support for .NET5 is something a lot of people wants (me included), and some users where pretty aggressive about unity putting effort on <name any unity feature> instead of going full steam for .NET5.
BUT, some 6 or so months ago JoshPeterson (or his boss) decided to took the time to be open, transparent and 100% honest on the work of his team and even if we don't have .net5 nor will we for a couple more years, nobody is complaining anymore. Why? because we know they are working, we know on what they are working, we know what their difficulties/challenges are, so we can come to understand.

We can't understand things we don't know, and we humans fear/hate things we don't understand, so, buy Josh a coffee and do the same he did.

 

DOTS team used to do the same, not so much after Unity went public. Now I can only assume some guys at Wall Street who don't know why Unity is for game developer, player and engineer, not for HUMANITY are forbidding them from sharing great progress and future visions.

 

I don't think there is anything they didn't mention already. They said they will work on better editor and engine integration, they will work on additional services like audio, animation, rendering, etc. We can even see some of those on the forums. I don't feel that lack of communication. The only thing I hate about this silence is that before this, we could hold conversations about upcoming features, see and comment the direction things were going. This is basically dead at this point.

 

Scientist find that some monkeys seek information about bad possibilities, while other individuals have brains wired to avoid seeking such elucidations.

"We're living in a world our brains didn't evolve for. The constant availability of information is a new challenge for us to deal with. I think understanding the mechanisms of information seeking is quite important for society and for mental health at a population level." Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210611110807.htm

 

Not that it isn't my own fault but I regret switching over to DOTS now. Can't use 2021, No WebGL, no New Content. Nothing new upcoming.

 

Hello again!

I will catch up with questions above this post. If you have any new pressing issues, I will do my best to get to those as well.

 

It'll be easier for you if we just reiterate our questions more concisely after this post, rather than you reading through multiple pages of concerned people speculating about what might be happening

I think an in-depth DOTS status update would answer most questions people have:

• When to expect 0.18+ releases
• Will 0.18 release only on 2020.3
• What is the current status of DOTS development? (are there any major issues holding back development?)
• Has DOTS's direction changed? What is the goal for DOTS 1.0
• What is causing incompatibilities/risks with Unity 2021
• Can we expect more transparency/communication in the future

Right now, many of us are very worried about DOTS. Because of this announcement, the lack of news, the lack of releases, and things like DOTS audio being reevaluated after not making much visible progress for years. We need to be reassured with some details on what's going on, and we need an idea of what's planned for the future so we can better judge if we should get started with DOTS projects or not

 

I would add Hybrid Render b

Hybrid Render plans with SRP tied to the editor

 

As was stated many times - YES

https://forum.unity.com/threads/not...with-unity-2021-1.1091800/page-2#post-7039003

 

Is development expected to speed up or slow down(as it feels like we are already going through quite a slow period)?

 

To be fair though, the initial information came out a couple of months ago already. Everyone's just looking for any information they can get, whether it be updates or simply confirmations. I assume the answer is still 'yes' but I would still appreciate the update.

 

This tease and vanish act that Unity is playing is making me believe we might be asking the wrong questions. Let's try some different ones.

• What have you been experimenting with over the last 5 months?
• When can we NOT expect to be able to play with such experiments?
• What's your thoughts on the state of the community? Is there a way we can be more helpful?

 

Actual specific issue that we keep hitting is the ECS typehash conflicts. It just gets worse the larger your codebase is. Half a dozen in our own codebase that I've had to fix over the last few months. Unity terrain tools and another Unity package I can't remember offhand also.

And in general where DOTS has dependencies on other stuff not in preview, I think it's reasonable to expect those to be kept more up to date. Ie scriptable build pipeline. Want to use Addressables? Kind of risky if you also use DOTS.

 

Not going to say too much but they seem to be making some pretty big underlying changes to Entities.

The main one being they are refactoring the entire entities code gen to use source generators.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/feedback-request-ijobentity.888121/#post-6315795

Also redoing memory allocators

https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-to-survive-without-smart-pointers.990608/#post-6436235

 

Agreed. Several statements by Unity folks have indicated that they're not really happy with the way ECS is currently exposed to developers and that it needs to be just as easy to use as GameObjects and MonoBehaviours. These statements (along with the radio silence, lengthy ECS package update delays, and 2021.1 incompatibility) suggest to me that Unity is working on a significant overhaul of ECS and its APIs. I wouldn't be surprised if we see numerous breaking changes in the coming ECS releases.

Of course,this is all speculaton on my part.

 

My assumption is that Unity is working on an ECS version, only for 2021.2 or 2022.x alone, combined with better editor integration, or that ECS core will be integrated directly into unity. If it is to serve as the basis for other components of the engine, it will have to be anyway.

 

Yesterday at 5:27 PM

The anticipation is real

 

Don't worry, they did this once already. "Hey, we know you're waiting for answers, we'll review the thread and get back on track"... and then another six months went by (although that wasn't Martin and wasn't DOTS). I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.

 

1. All questions are collected (1 week)
2. The questions will be answered (1 week)
3. Forwarding to check that you are not saying anything wrong (1 month)
4. posting the answers (if any remain)

 

Imagine all this was just a matter of affecting shareholder's confidence
Something like
- Thou shalt not overhype things that aren't already done.
- Thou shalt keep major setbacks a secret.

Still, I think it will be worth the wait, as long as this isn't because of some kind of major fallout between tech leads or something.
It kinda reminds me of the feeling of waiting for the patch notes of your favourite game.

 

What if it was all just a dream...

 

Our pressing issue is that we have a game going gold this year on next gen and current gen using DOTS 0.17. Of course we knew the risks of adopting HDRP and DOTS, but to us it felt like the thing to do, especially seeing Joachim commitment to DOTS. We thought familiarizing ourselves with the newest stuff would be more future proof as it always have been with Unity.

But now it has been months of unknown and this is scary. The pressing issues are all very well listed by PhilSA above, so please respond to that at the very least. We've been using Unity since Unity 3 and it is the first time such a thing happens.

Yesterday we had hope to read some responses, but your comment was followed by two days of silence and who knows how long still.

 

Oh dear. If you really knew the risks you wouldn't have.

Best of luck with getting a fix going. If staying on 2020 including LTS is a good bet then you have a decent chance.

 

Well to be fair we're on LTS and we have no issue with DOTS 0.17. We're just wondering if we'll ever be able to upgrade to newer versions of Unity.

 

I would say you should be locked down now if release is this year, I think it's very much safer to bunker down but that's my 2p! I think it's great you are talking about release times because it lets everyone including Unity kind of chip in if they can. Best of luck and I hope there is a response soon.

 

Hi @hippocoder or @LeonhardP, long time Can you please clean this thread a bit (after this post https://forum.unity.com/threads/not...with-unity-2021-1.1091800/page-5#post-7251629 including my current message). They're completely offtopic and just pointless. Thanks!

 

Agreed, the posts have been pruned and authors thread-banned permanently.

Be mature, everyone, especially on official Unity topics. Moderation will as we've said before, be stronger on official topics where information matters a lot more to people. Thanks!

 

Can BurstCompile a IJob for ISystemBase in next version?

 

Unity's Hackweek started this week, so it shouldn't be surprising if we don't hear anything further for a few more days.

 

Hi, please wait for an official reply on this thread from Unity staff. Don't add meaningless "Unity please reply" posts because it's pointless. Unity will reply when they can actually reply.

I've cleaned up some posts as it's just noise at this point and there will be no change until Unity staff replies. Thanks!

Edit: it is not permitted to discuss moderation in this thread either. Please use meta forum to do so.

Of course any discussion about dots compatibility with unity should continue. But not spamming "when it is coming?". There were many immature posts that caused moderation to become active that are no longer visible, so please do not make assumptions.

 

It's probably not the place to try and get this solved; but I want it to be considered in relation to my understanding of the different stages of development of the various DOTS components; If I'm wrong let me know and I'll delete or edit my post.

As per my understanding: DOTS has some parts that are deemed release ready (aka Burst and Job system); and some that are still in heavy development. (ECS, Net, Audio, Animation, etc)

I believe it's not an issue for some of the minor or leaf modules, but the case of ECS is a bit different. As I see ECS is not a separate tool but a very core part of the system. Since I understand ECS release is not coming anytime soon (and that okay), will the development move towards making the system less interdependent? I believe JOBS right now relies heavily on also having ECS for a bunch of things and I'd be nice to see introduced new features that allow us to take full advantage of the available release modules without feeling like we are getting only half the cake.
Just to point out one example: Debugging JOBS code using Native Array structures relies on having ECS package installed to be able to activate Leak Detection and other debugging tools.

 

This is true.

This is not.

Surprisingly jobs are integrated into unity "core" so you don't even need a package for working with them. Get a burst package and you have everything you need to have hi-speed multithreaded code. I made a few in-house "assets" in my company with only jobs and burst. Just to be fair all of them were single MonoBehaviours so I didn't need to worry about dependencies and such. It's especially good when you want to use a new job-based raycast API or Graphics.DrawMeshInstanced.

Edit: As for ECS. It's still in development, and as you said. Most of the additional packages are in early preview. So you need a lot of work to get something from them. That being said, ECS was used in a few games already. There are showcases in another thread if you want to check.

 

(⊙o⊙) So I've been stuck on the LTS for a while anyway and il2cpp hasn't worked for a year too. A real shame I can't use betas anymore because I enjoyed playing with the new toys from Unity. From one of the linked threads, it appears Unity changed the way they handled updating packages after the IPO, which seems like the main difference here. Maybe that gives Unity more time to polish it before release? Either way I hope the update isn't too breaking in the future 0.18 or v1 ecs release. I hope to keep reusing my Unity ecs code base for many years and truly believe this tech is the future of games. So I guess for now I'll have to stick to LTS with its older UI styles and it's linux broken editor cursor locking.