State of DOTS in 2019.3

Im not testing 2019.3 but was wondering how stable it is with DOTS. The latest bog post comments got me really nervous about upgrading. How long do people wait before making the leap for current projects.

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/12/1...-final-stages-of-beta-testing/#comment-419753

 

I'm still on the first release candidate. Compilation is slow, even with the fast play mode enabled. If I do too much crazy windowing while Unity is busy, it will sometimes lock up and/or crash. A lot of the frustration I've seen has been with URP, the new editor UI, and some lingering issues with nested prefabs. URP was almost entirely a communication issue as well as it lacking good NPR extensibility (that might be fixed now, but it doesn't support the new DOTS material property instancing so I haven't tried yet). For the UI, some things are better, some things are worse. It is a lot less consistent.

I think a lot of people outside of DOTS wish that Unity would make the 2019 LTS based on 2019.2 instead of 2019.3 and had done the same with the 2018 series as the major 2018.3/4 issues were cleaned up in 2019.1.

But in DOTS world, 2019.3 brings lots of cool stuff, so it is at least worth downloading it and playing with the DOTS sample and the other samples.

 

Thanks for the info I guess I’ll just jump in and see what happens. On a side note what is the issue with nested prefabs.

 

We're alwayls on latest version, currently on 2019.3.0f3 (today we migrating to 2019.3.0f4 (unityhub://2019.3.0f4/91ed33c208f3) but not tested yet). Yeah it has some annoying things like long compilation\entering play mode (of course part of this problem is our code and structure, but first things first, when we will done all features in our project, we'll do cleanup like we does previously on every major project step), prefabs edit mode sometimes looks wierd etc. But in general it's fine. And we're on built-in rendering pipeline.

 

Entities 0.3 had magic IL gen error which is fixed as far as I see in 0.4.
The IL gen is a new feature in 2019.3

 

I think ive asked you this before but are you on SRP for your project.

 

I think hes on builtin? "And we're on built-in rendering pipeline."

 

No )

 

I know following answer may not be what you are looking for, however, I was on 2019.3 and DOTS just for a moment, then tried 2020.1a, as I wanted migrate DOTS project to later Entities 0.2 version and I am quite more happy so far.
Even in alpha, besides all UI redesign stuff, editor itself is much more responsive, with significant performance improvements. Other than first runtime / compilation, which is sluggish for me.

Using URP at the current. That since 2019.3 I think. None ideal, but can be workable. At least for now. But with many shaders, with dynamic properties, which changing at runtime, it may be quite nightmarish to work with. Sure, there may be things I didn't discover (learned) yet, in terms of rendering, for my project need.

 

Would you recommend for my youngish Dots game I skip 2019.3 and wait for 2020

 

I wouldn't say 'wait'. I would say keep developing.

But whether you want to stay on more stable Unity, however with some annoyances, or more developed DOTS, but alpha editor, is up to you. Depending what you need. Personally I haven't faced issues with 2020 alpha, regarding DOTS. So I am happy to work on with it.

I converted for example Octree systems from 2018, while DOTS injection was a thing, directly to 2020.1a, entities 0.2. Also migrated my current project, which was more up to date.

So, unless you have other Unity features which may hold you back, I don't see reason, why not to move to 2020.x and DOTS 0.2+.

The only other reason may be in my thoughts is, if you want to release game, DOTS based, within next few months.

 

Hi! How production ready is ecs for using it as a framework? I know it doesn't have support for ui or animation, but is it stable enough for creating a build and have it working for what it supports? Is it stable to use it as a template?

 

This is still too high level of a requirement. Even not considering UI/Animation/Audio/Physics there are multiple parts of API that you should evaluate. For example, in the latest version (0.4) the serialization has been changed for SCD, so if you thought serialization was stable then that is not true, but if you avoided using SCD in serialization maybe it was. IJobChunk hasn't been changed lately, I judge it as stable enough for production but do you want to write everything as IJobChunk? Entities.ForEach got optimization recently inside JobComponentSystem scope and got .Run() to play with, so that API is not rock solid yet either. (Though I go with Entities.ForEach rather than IJC, while IJC make a code that wouldn't break on updates it make a code that I don't want to edit.) In summary this make it hard for anyone to simply state that the package as a whole is stable.

 

when will get the ecs ios build?

 

OK Updated to 2019.3 and latest 0.4 version. Wondering if someone could help me with this error

Code (CSharp):

1.  
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3. ../Library/PackageCache/com.unity.entities@0.4.0-preview.10/Unity.Entities/Types/TypeManager.cs(431,13): error: Cannot find the field `TypeInfos` required for supporting TypeManager intrinsics in burst
4. at Unity.Entities.TypeManager.GetTypeInfo(int typeIndex) (at ../Library/PackageCache/com.unity.entities@0.4.0-preview.10/Unity.Entities/Types/TypeManager.cs:430)
5. at Unity.Entities.ChunkDataUtility.ReplicateComponents(Unity.Entities.Chunk* srcChunk, int srcIndex, Unity.Entities.Chunk* dstChunk, int dstBaseIndex, int count) (at ../Library/PackageCache/com.unity.entities@0.4.0-preview.10/Unity.Entities/ChunkDataUtility.cs:268)
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Is 2019.3.0f3 the version I should be using? Having quite the day trying to get this running

 

You should be using Entities 0.4 and 2019.3.0f3. Are you on the latest burst preview?

 

Got it working , issue was package manager was showing incorrect version installed. I delete the manifest and package cache and restarted unity. Reinstalling packages after that fixed the problem.

 

So far I’m glad I jump to 2019.3 worth from the pain of project migration. One question , I’m really struggling to see the icons and window frame lines with the new design . Do we have any settings that can help me out or a way to make icon larger or colored. I’m using dark mode. Maybe I need an eye check, I swear I can’t tell if the play button is pressed.