Release notes labels too vague (graphics instead of HDRP)

Hi,

I see large numbers of release note entries these days relate to HDRP changes, but are just described as 'Graphics'. Relatively few of the descriptions for these go on to mention HDRP explicitly, so I am making this post because I consider this to be confusing. Any reason why these entries cant start with HDRP: instead? After all, plenty of URP entries already start with the word Universal, likewise shadergraph and VFX graph entries manage to be labelled explicitly.

Cheers

 

Thanks!

I expect it probably isnt news to you that it has occasionally been possible to spot things being mentioned in the fixes section that more properly belong in changes or improvements?

There are other issues to do with which section certain entries end up, just to give a few examples: In a10 the following HDRP changes are in the API changes section but these changes are very much relevant to people who dont touch the API, they are exposed via various HDRP settings in the editor user interface etc:

• Graphics: Added: Added a Falloff Mode (Linear or Exponential) in the Density Volume for volume blending with Blend Distance.
  
  
• Graphics: Added: Added a setting in the HDRP asset to change the Density Volume mask resolution of being locked at 32x32x32 (HDRP Asset > Lighting > Volumetrics > Max Density Volume Size).

I know Unity decided for several reasons to make the pipelines appear to be part of the core of each Unity release these days, but at this stage the changelogs for the individual graphics packages are still doing a better job of organising different sorts of changes into appropriate sections. Those changelogs do lack granularity at this stage though, eg everything for HDRP master branch changelog on github (and the changelog file we end up with in our projects Library/PackageCache copy of the current editor-bundled graphics pipeline) is lumped under 12.0.0 rather than it actually being clear which particular editor version of HDRP they have ended up being incorporated into. I'm also aware that one of the most obvious Unity forum responses to the commotion over the botched attempt to remove the Graphics packages from github over Christmas was to push the notion that people may not miss that form of open development & release if release notes & changelog quality is much improved in future. I'd say that if done right, that could deal with some but not all of the issues that this change in approach brings. I'm sure this is a work in progress so this is not supposed to be a big rant, but I do fear the risk of creating more harm & confusion than good on this front is still a rather present danger. I dont really understand why we cant continue to have HDRP as a package (or to be more specific, as a github release/tagged version) but with its own new version number for each new editor release, and HDRP-specific changelogs for each of those releases. Behind the scenes you can still bundle that specific HDRP version with the editor download, achieving that version-matching simplification agenda, best of both worlds? I fear that we will lose as much as we gain because some other 'make development private' agenda was part of the mix when trying to ditch the github repository. Please, please, please tread very carefully with this stuff.

I do like the fact that the order of these sections seems to have been changed recently, so that fixes come last and new features etc get higher billing.

 

Oops, I probably should of actually checked the tagged versions on github before saying some of that stuff. Some of what I was calling for is actually being done at this stage. So sorry about that bit of what I said (although it may still apply in future depending on what happens to the github repo in future).

So let me reframe some of what I was saying:

I can compare the differences in the HDRP changelog file on github between tagged versions, eg between the version tagged 2021.2.0a9.1306 and the one tagged 2021.2.0a10.1430 in order to get the level of granularity I desire, without having to resort to the overall unity release notes. I would prefer it if this evolving detail over time was just baked into the HDRP changelog file without having to perform a diff on it. I am aware that the overall editor release notes are trying to fulfil much the same mission. Three cheers to all those who will work to make the results of this better in future. Its just the longer and messier the overall release notes get by incorporating all this stuff, the more I start to wonder a little about the approach. Thanks for bearing with me whilst I stumbled my way through this topic.

 

Thanks very much for using HDRP labels in latest release notes.