So tired because regressions after each update !!!

The really problem with Unity is the regression at each update ! : Performance, Lights, Shaders, etc...
I pass my time to search if I made something wrong since 12 years, and each time it's a Unity regression problem.
I'm really tired of being slowed down by these problems !

So, with last 2022.1.20f1 / URP / ANDROID, it's the same problem than : https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...ot-when-the-platform-is-set-to-android-or-ios

After the fix, we start again... and if I sent to every regression I found, I can't imagine how many problem reports I would have posted in 12 years.

So to get through this regression, just switch from Forward to Deferred, but that's really a bad thing because the mobile performance in Deferred are bad.

I'm posting here because I'm tired of it.

2022.1f and 2022.2b bugs/Regressions or missings features are not listed by Unity :

- Ray tracing artifacts around objects in HDRP (under certain lighting circumstances or when not using the SSAO, GI or Lightmap)
- Raytracing no longer reflects the part of objects that has a different material (on an object with more than one material) in HDRP (regression) Only the first material is taken into account.
- The additional light bug on URP on Android (regression)
- Raytracing does not reflect transparent materials (I tried everything)
- Not in HDRP, but the SMAA is totally broken with the FSR in 2022.2b URP
- An transparent Object is not visible through another transparent object in HDRP (works fine in URP)
- When you using OnSceneGUI(), all changes in inspector appear only when the mouse is on Scene View (No more updated like before) (Regression)
- Some GUI draw ignore Colors (Regression)

- New Light bug with nearest or FSR upscale in 2022.2.12b on Android + Deferred (with bloom, all lights are broken) (Regression, not present in 2022.2.10/11)

And other things that I don't have in mind right now.

 

I wonder, given how much pain Unity upgrades are giving you, what is the strategy you follow when you decide to upgrade a project to a newer version?

 

Before, I make a backup, after I go back to the old version...

This is not a real solution, because to take advantage of new features, you often have to wait a year or more after the final version (two years for LTS), but as in the case mentioned earlier, the same problem can come back several years later...

Moreover, on Issues Tracker the problem is normally corrected in version 14 of the URP... This is no longer the case, since with the latest beta version of 2022.2, the problem is back.

 

While I understand your frustrations I don't think there's a real solution to be had aside from slower release cycles both from Unity's perspective and yours. Which would just lead to the problems they had before they started this practice of releasing major updates multiple times per year.

 

I'd argue that saying this ignores the core of the problem. We have slower release cycles but it feels like the problem is only getting worse, even between minor version updates and even LTS updates. There needs to be a more definitive internal strategy when it comes to handling the development of the engine and performance testing.

 

We're only having slower release cycles from the perspective of the previous system but I was thinking more along the lines of what we had back in the 5.x and earlier days where we received one massive update every few years.

 

I'd argue that wasn't extremely the case either, largely because the releases back then were often extremely large as far as what changed between versions. For instance, 4.2 -> 4.3 brought us a whole new 2D workflow and a pretty substantial overhaul to animations, we got a whole new UI system in 4.6... I'd argue the pace stayed largely the same and did end up slowing, it's just it's easier to see when releases happened thanks to the changing of the version numbering.

 

I said it before and I'll say it as many times it takes: the problem is that Unity doesn't make games.

"But Unity has close relationships with some game studios! They don't need to waste resources making games!"

That's not enough: it only catches bugs/regressions after they made into production releases.

External studios have negative incentive to be using Unity betas/alphas in production (it's too risky and unstable) or to be updating their Unity version regularly (too disruptive the larger your team is).

If something breaks after an upgrade, the studio will be the one losing money rolling back, looking for workarounds, filling bug reports, and sometimes even delaying their launch while they wait for a fix from Unity. This means studios which make in-depth use of Unity are unlikely to be providing enough data points (feedback, bug reports) on betas/alphas, TECH releases, and even the first few LTS versions (as result of bad LTS stability reputation).

It's obvious whatever internal testing processes Unity uses have been getting less reflective of "real world usage" over the years. Combined with the "hardcore devs" reluctance in using their own time and money to test pre-release Unity software, the visibility of possible bugs and issues becomes limited until it's too late and lots of devs are affected.

Unity needs their internal testing to better simulate real world usage. This means having one or more groups of people using Unity on projects that are significantly more complex than just demo scenes, build at reasonable times and run well on their target platforms, and are maintained after completion.

We almost had that.

 

And I've said it before and I'll say it again: it doesn't F***ing matter if Unity makes games or not when the fundamental problem is that management will not allocate resources where they're needed in the first place and increasingly fragments the development of packages and engine components themselves. Making games is not some sort of panacea for internal operations and what we've heard from former employees shows that that's where the problems truly lie.

 

Even if they fix their management, not using their software as it's used in the real world before releasing will still cause major bugs to make it to production.

You're right in that the current state of mismanagement won't even allow Unity to get to that point. It's like a 50 person game studio trying to make a 100 hour open world RPG while having a two-person QA department and expecting the developers testing their own code is "enough".

 

Anyway, the problem is that when a final version comes out, we must have a debugged product...
But when I see that the Alpha version 2023.1 does have the bugs of the final version 2022.1 and the version 2022.2 beta, I find it mind-blowing...
Each time, I look for solutions to circumvent the problem.
I'm not a beta tester to report all the bugs every time.
In the change log, compared to the versions of 6/8 years ago, there is almost nothing... However, there are a lot of bugs or regressions to fix.
I've loved Unity since my debut in 2009 on Mac in its version 2, but I'm getting tired of looking for problems that slow me down and that aren't mine.
And it's getting worse and worse...

So, before starting a new version (2023), finish the previous final version.

Take a look at the next major update 2022 (2022.2 beta), in scene view shading mode, all views are broken the same on Mac, Raytracing (HDRP) does not reflect objects with more of a material...And all bugs of the final version (2022.1) are here too ! I don't know if I want the next version...

 

I gotta agree. It's been increasingly annoying how, even without extreme changes to the engine on my side or using any 3rd party binaries, the engine just... feels so unstable.

But the worst part is the TIME it takes for them to fix an issue.

-WEBGL build still has NO SOUND(fixed in the past, issue came back a few updates later, still here)
-TextMeshPro Input Field is Broken
-Lack of .NET process class ever since IL2CPP has been released, over 4 years ago, no interest in changing it
-This that exists since unity 2020

 

Yes, we can consider that the LTS is the "Final" edition (and I'm nice), the final version is a Beta and the Beta is an Alpha version...

And at the same time, the future version is in alpha (preview?)

As a result, versions still not finished, fewer major updates, much less fixing in the changelog and reporting of bugs to be corrected, always more regressions and the price of the pro version which will increase...

Find the mistake?!

 

2021.3LTS has been the most frustrating release so far. Unusable inspector in .3 and .4, and then Unity refused to perform GetComponent in various, seemingly unconnected edge cases. Seems like my main scene got corrupted, rebuilding it so far fixed GetComponent with the same exact code, I was troubleshooting the issue for weeks and couldn't find anything - no reports anywhere, can't reproduce in other scenes or fresh projects. I thought I was going nuts for a moment there. These issues, together with the recent Unity news, have really taken a toll on me. Never again will I start LTS project before .20 release unless I'm forced to by some SDK requirements.

Not that waiting helps much, they've been actively porting confirmed 2021 regressions to 2020LTS as well.

 

2022.1.20f1 (and 2022.2b) + Android plateform + URP

Additionnal Lights bugs exemple...

First light + Forward : OK !


Second Light + Forward : OK !


First + Second light+ Forward : WTF ?


First + Second light + Deferred : OK !


I love it !!!!!

 

About this one, what is the max lights per object in the urp settings you use for android?

 

New Project, simple scene, defaut values !

 

It's definitely gotten worse ever since 2020, especially with 2021. *Something* has changed. We've had speedy updates ever since post 5.0, so it can't just be due to that.

If your "ultra stable" LTS version is constantly breaking, something is wrong.

 

Better exemple : 1 light per object... same Issue :

 

Same issues, with Mobile Cfg...

@DevDunk,Do you have your answer ?
1 directional light, 2 additionnal max in VR (Quest 2), but you can push (when it work) up to 8 per object on good mobile, depend geometrie

 

Yepp, saw a few people on the forums who just used the wrong urp settings, but your setup should definitely work.
For now making a bug report is all you can do I guess :/

 

I think since I've been using Unity, it's hard to go wrong.
But I don't see the connection?
If I put two lights, with one light per object, you wouldn't have seen two identical lights...
But just one, like my penultimate exemple

 

My question is a little more fundamental than that. Given how disruptive the upgrades are, why install them at all? I know that with mobile you need to keep current-ish, but I thought that the compatibility window was still long enough that you wouldn't need to install updates more often than once a year or so? Has that changed?

My team has been pretty lucky installing updates lately, even with a bunch of custom SRP stuff in the mix. But mostly they don't bother us anyway because we don't update unless something in there is worth the effort and risk.

That doesn't excuse the problems some people report, but it might be at least a way to mitigate some of it?

They haven't been discreet versions for ages. There is no "finished" and there never will be and that's a deliberate strategy they moved to a few years ago. The year in a version number is just when they started putting a release together with a given set of target features. And with LTS, Tech and alpha/beta, they often have multiple versions in dev in parallel.

I have nothing against that approach in principle, and it's not unusual for large software dev. But I agree that in this case it appears to have contributed to the... challenges in handling some bugs. My go-to example would be transform order instability in nested / variant prefabs, where if you want a fix you have to move away from the LTS branch.

 

This is a reason to not use non-LTS releases, unfortunately the regression bugs started appearing in those too, to an unbelievable degree - broken UI, lighting changes from editor to runtime. Luckily, I avoided the worst by not frequently updating even an LTS version, but at least one of these problems was caused during code refactor by the Unity team, which should not happen in an LTS release.

Current advice - do not update unless specific fix required!

 

Same War with LTS version...

Look on previous messages, some person talk about bugs / regressions on LTS versions.

Or, Unity should not talk about new/important/missing features until 2 years before the version is stabilized...

Technologically, Unity loses the game.
Unreal, provided a large number of sources of their technical demonstration for free and a lot of tools too (All Unity productions are paid, like SpeedTree, Ziva)
A long time ago, I would have liked to see how "Adam" had been designed to have better reflexes

Now the "Enemies" project to see how to have such a result in real time and without bugs with raytracing which is a disaster.

I always prefer Unity, because I am freer... But, Unity no longer innovates at all.

Where did David Helgason and his innovative vision of game engine go ?????

 

David Helgason stepped down as CEO 8 years ago.

 

Yes, I know, it's just a cry from the heart...

We discussed before for my first product and he advised me, He's a good man and UnityEngine was doing like a charm

 

My advice: find a version of Unity that has the least issues for your project and stick to it. Don't upgrade mid-cycle unless you absolutely have to (console support versions or a bug that you really can' hack you way around).

 

Unfortunately I'm stuck because I need render layer support (URP on 2022.2) and many features of 2022.1(URP).
Without it, I wouldn't use the "final" version of 2022.1...
And as you can see from the number of my posts over the years of using Unity (I took a break for a year only), I wouldn't waste my time on the forum.
Same, I don't have to waste my time doing the beta tester and sending reports...

This is good advice, but if everything was working normally/professionally in the releases, we wouldn't need to do this.
Because, here, we are talking more about simple bugs, but about an accumulation of bugs that make Unity unusable because never fixed...

 

Why do you need Render Layer support?

 

Why is Render Layer support in the next release?
Simply to manage the shadows on my dynamic objects by avoiding creating an infinite number of classic layers for each dynamic object...

 

You are creating a layer per dynamic object??

 

No way !

I use 3 main layers:
Dynamic, Static, Unlit

With Render Layer support, I can make sub layers for my dynamic objects and thus use shading on some and not on others.

It greatly simplifies my workflow.

But I don't see why you ask this question?! I'm not talking about version 2022.2 for the moment, I'm talking about all the bugs of version 2022.1!

 

I was mostly curious about why you required Render Layers support because you said you needed it.

 

Ok, I found it very useful !

 

Good News !!!! Or Not !
I had a little hope that the latest Beta version fixes some problems of the final version (2022.1)...
Well not at all! Now after the lighting issues in Forward, the deferred lighting is totally broken (I hope this engine modification part never comes to Unity 2022.1 final)

Unity 2022.2.11beta + URP + ANDROID (I know is a beta version, but it's a regression... again):

Same issue in Forward :



Worse in Deferred (In scene view, works normally in Game view) :



But all is not lost !!
They finally corrected the Shading Mode view (bug not present on version 2022.1) and we can finally have a Wireframe preview of the scene (before all are broken) !!


I think I'm going to take a few vacations before freaking out!

 

I definitely agree with the argument "don't update unity mid project". EXCEPT: If you're following Unity's advice, you'd have switched from builtin to SRP. Of course, this is an essentially unfinished product, which means you'll probably be needing to upgrade once you realize it can't support a feature you assumed would be supported / realize you need. Unity's been heavily pushing switching, with their material converter and completely ignoring builtin. It's no surprise that people feel pressured to switch.
Of course, the correct answer is don't switch to SRP midproject, and you probably shouldn't be using SRP in general unless you want an incomplete product, needing to update to get features like point light shadows.

 

Yes, and now we can't revert to an older version of URP, or find the repository...
Obliged to have the bugs and impossibility to change it manually.

At this state, from URPs 13.1.8 version (2022.1) to 15 (2023 alpha), Unity + URP + Android + Vulkan (I didn't try with OpenGL) is completely unusable... All additionals lights are broken. (I had try all versions)

To believe that nobody uses this version, since nobody complains about it except me.

Since I began on Unity, I think is the worst experience I had, and worse version ever !

 

On top of that, new package updates are often rated only for newer Unity versions even though there are no new dependencies introduced. If you need a package bug fix or a feature, you often have to upgrade Unity.

 

Indeed, and that's the problem...

 

Eventually I reported the bug, because I'm not sure it will be fixed one day.

 

Isn't it time for Riccitiello to hit the road, I knew right then something was fishy, never liked the guy.
For me I'm more intrigued as to where Joachim Ante has been, maybe swallowed up by DOTS wormhole?!

 

Through my rhetorical question, I was of course criticizing the commercial policy of Mr ex-EA.

Thank you for bringing body to my words

 

Are they serious?

Today's beta update doesn't change anything !

There are really people who work to debug Unity or just use unity for Android creations????

Will they ever find this bug?
However, it is enough to simply test Unity on Android platform...

This problem has existed since the final version 2022.1 and affects all versions after and no one has found it?? Seriously ?
It's scary for everything we don't see and which can affect our development!!!!

Pay me, and your list of "Known Issues" will be three times longer or more, guaranteed!
Like (2022.1f, 2022.2b, 2023.0a):
- Ray tracing artifacts around objects in HDRP (under certain lighting circumstances or when not using the SSAO, GI or Lightmap)
- Raytracing no longer reflects the part of objects that has a different material (on an object with more than one material) in HDRP (regression) Only the first material is taken into account.
- The additional light bug on URP on Android (regression)
- Raytracing does not reflect transparent materials (I tried everything)
- Not in HDRP, but the SMAA is totally broken with the FSR in 2022.2b URP
- An transparent Object is not visible through another transparent object in HDRP (works fine in URP)
- When you using OnSceneGUI(), all changes in inspector appear only when the mouse is on Scene View (No more updated like before) (Regression)
- Some GUI draw ignore Colors (Regression)

- New Light bug with nearest or FSR upscale in 2022.2.12b on Android + Deferred (with bloom, all lights are broken) (Regression)

And other things that I don't have in mind right now.


Forward... No comment


Forward+ (The worse result, but not for mobile, I think)


Deferred... Same, No comment

 

New Major Light bug with nearest or FSR upscale in 2022.2.12b on Android + Deferred (with bloom PP, all lights are broken) (Regression, not present in 2022.2.10/11)

It becomes catastrophic !!

I think I'll leave it at that out of respect for the incompetence of beta-testers/debuggers.

I am wasting a lot of time here, hoping for a correction. But since no one notices simple bugs, my confidence in this engine is no longer the same.
I'm stuck with the final version (2022.1) and its bugs, and I don't really have hope with the next version !

I remember why, I paused for a while.
When there is a bug, we not only correct the bug, we also test all possible combinations to resolve it definitively, and especially on all platforms.
So, I know, it takes a long time to do, but it's your job, the one you get paid for.

This is not a beta, there! But, at best, an alpha...


Forward


Deferred + Nearest Upscale


Deferred + FSR Upscale

 

Imagine being surprised that a beta version has bugs.

 

Yes, except that these bugs, it didn't have them before... They are regressions.
And these are bugs that are also on the final version...

 

Imagine reading this whole thread and acting like this isn't related to long-standing bugs that have already been discussed.

 

Even then. I can understand the frustration with the 2021 LTS bugs; believe me they've been a thorn in my side.

But in a 'preview beta' version... it shouldn't be surprising that there's a few broken gears. It's literally a preview of what's to come in an unstable state. I wouldn't use it for anything other that screwing around.

 

Have you started Unity since registering on the forum?
Because, if that's the case, you really can't understand the situation we've been living through for years.
Did the 2021 version hurt you?
Now imagine, from version 4, what your little problem with the 2021 version means to us !


EDIT : It's not only Beta version !! You really didn't read the thread ?
The final version is in the same case