Discussion Preview version of new UVS with High Performance Interpreter and new UX for users for testing?

Hello Unity, would it be possible for you to make available the preview version of new UVS with High Performance Interpreter and new UX for users for testing purposes? I think that if users could try the new version, it could help you speed up the development of UVS and get the necessary feedback for you. 2 or more years to develop a new version is too long period.

 

They can't really do that until Graph Tools Foundation ships with the engine, which hasn't happened yet as far as I'm aware. GTF has been moved from package to internal engine tech, perhaps to remove the impact on iteration times. Unity 2024.1 is the soonest we can expect anything in this front I'm afraid.

 

I understand. If it was available in version 2024.1, that would be quite acceptable for us, at least for me as a Unity newbie. Although it probably also depends on UI Toolkit improvements on the editor side. As far as I know, the GTF frontend will run through the UI toolkit.

Apparently it depends on multiple teams within Unity Technologies. I assume that one team works on UI Toolkit, another on GTF, another on UVS, another on Shader Graph, VFX graph, etc.

Refactoring a large part of the UVS API from the Bolt plugin so that they can fully integrate it with the rest of the editor seems to require a lot of work on Unity's part.

I understand it correctly?

I welcome the solution, so that all Graph based tools are unified and work together well, but unfortunately it takes a long time for them to develop new tools.

If a preview version of the new UVS was publicly available as soon as possible, it could speed up many things in development.

 

Yea, it's something along those lines. There are many teams across many offices and time zones. And as you mentioned, reworking Bolt into something that will be long lasting and viable takes time. Personally, I don't think it's simply a refactor, I expect a full rewrite using current UVS as a starting point, but nothing more. Too much of current UVS is problematic for any of it to remain in anything but spirit.

It's been mentioned that they won't wait for all of the GTF migrations to be completed before shipping improvements to existing tools. And DOTS product manager has mentioned that DOTS Animation, which will be GTF based, is just around the corner so I expect GTF surfacing in the next year.

 

That's a good news. If GTF is released next year, nothing would stop the UVS team from publishing a new version with High Performance Interpreter, either as a preview or at least as an experimental feature with the option to disable HPF in the settings if it would cause major problems.

I assume that the new version will not be tuned right away at first.

Because in UVS there are more things that need to be adjusted, the event system, that is the biggest stumbling block in UVS, variable management, debugging tools, etc. And I'm just a beginner in Unity and sometimes I program websites and I found potential problems from UVS in the first day I tried it.

Where can I find more information about the upcoming DOTS Animation and GTF?

 

DOTS Animation status is here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/animation-status-update-q4-2022.1377234/

Here's confirmation that it will use GTF, it's also the thread where the tech is discussed: https://forum.unity.com/threads/graph-tool-foundation.1057667/page-3#post-8768380

 

Thanks. The new GTF looks very intresting. I hope that UVS will move forward in the near future.