Thoughts on Unity 5.0

No, they stopped supporting that drive 1 1/2 after the HW went live in the field way back in October 2012. And only then after many complaints from customers, ASUS, and Microsoft did they even manage to wrangle up the manpower to simply repackage their last driver for Windows 7 for Windows 8. It took a year of complaints from countless customers for them to do that. It's an embarrassment for Intel really. Not really sure if I want to invest in computers without upgradable GPUs after that experience although I'm itching to consolidate Windows and os X on a mid range Mac Mini with Intel Iris I'll wait to see what Apple has in the Mac Minis this fall. I will not be chasing new HW every year or two.

 

New on Unity 5 - when someone tries to position a character with audio sources on, e.g. feet, it seems that eventually the 'sphere of audibility' for lack of knowing what Unity calls it grows very large. When character was 1st imported via prefab was only about a metre cubed but after moving character about and 'playing' the game in the editor it grew to say 50 meters cubed. Slows positioning down a whole lot, making it rather difficult.

Not sure if that's intended or not. Of course most creatures can hear something like foot steps without too much other ambient noise at that distance.

 

There is no need to be so snarky. Be forward-thinking and we can happily help you solve the problems you are having!

Firstly, who is 'everyone'? The response i've seen from the community at a whole has been incredibly positive and overwhelming! And this is going by studios I have visited and developers I have spoken to both online & in person. And there are alot of amazing projects and things being made with Unity 5 already (Even games shipped whilst it was still in Beta!) But if there are major issues, we would like to hear them and identify them, if a considerably large number of people have similar experiences.

In terms of your scene setup could you share with us:
- What settings the lights have. (Realtime? Baked? Mixed?)
- What settings you have in your Lighting Window.
- What your geometry looks like. Have you imported Lightmap UVs?
- Are your objects set to Static?
- Are you running Continuous Baking or Manually Baking?

Perhaps then we can help you.

 

I read a variety of 'forems'; ranging from this one to a variety of other places across the web, both gamedev-related and not gamedev-related. I also visit and talk to ALOT of game studios in Europe to understand how they use Unity and what their pain points/development suggestions may be. Yes, there may be some areas that need to be fixed or worked on and our engineers and developers are working on those as we type, but I would hardly say that Unity 5.0 (The first version of this iteration of the engine) is hardly a 'Vista' when there are thousands+ of people making games with it, and many successfully shipping them already too!

However, if you could link us to some other sites or 'forems' where other users may have some issues, I will gladly take a look and try to help them out.

Also, if you answer my questions on how your scene is setup, I could help you out too.

 

He doesn't need help, he just wants to bitch and moan.

 

Do you have screen recording software? Could you please record your usage of the Unity Editor and show the crashes happening? Im sure our developers would be interested to see what is causing it to crash so much. Also, if it is happening frequently, could you post some repro steps so our QA team could run through your actions and investigate exactly what you are doing? A .zip of your project would be handy too so we can investigate your assets and how they are setup in the scene.

 

From what I see and from my personal experience, Unity 5 is a success.

I had not a single crash since I've been using it. And a lot things have improved, even smaller ones, like the annoying 0.1 mesh scale at import.

Unity isn't perfect, but it's not that bad either.

 

Just 4 times? I'm pretty sure it crashes every second, you just don't want to sound negative.
Want your issues fixed? Report them and provide repro cases. Moaning won't magically fix bugs.

 

He's offered multiple times to help you solve the problem. I don't think he needs to grow up.

QFT

 

Hyperbole much?

 

As someone who is a community-engaging employee at Unity, I can assure you that the statistic you have given is incorrect. If you have evidence for your 99% statistic and the claim you make, we would be interested in seeing it.

Could you please link us to the observation you have made of all these issues? Perhaps then we can solve them!

 

Even assuming that's true, it's irrelevant. You supposedly have evidence of these problems that could help solve it. If it were truly not about you, and if you genuinely wanted the issues solved as quickly as possible, you'd accept the offer of help because assisting Unity in recreating the issue would achieve those things.

But, for whatever reason, you're not doing that.

 

Vista was only a flop financially. Technically it was head & shoulders better than XP. Windows 7 & 8 are in large part still Vista at their core and is what is enabling something like Windows 10 to even be considered.

Those few bugs I listed will be solved by Unity. I list them here as a caveat to other developers. And Unity can't do a thing about Intel's lack of support for Intel's HW.

I list general problems and general solutions to those problems more for gabbiness then any expectation they have technical or business merit for Unity Tech.

I like Unity 5, it's letting me make the game(s) (along with much better cheap mobile HW) that I wanted to make but couldn't 5 years ago.

 

A large part of the perceived "flop" was simply people running really crappy OEM systems and blaming Microsoft. I still occasionally run into computers that should be capable of running Vista and up, but because the OEMs never considered making their BIOS boot USB or DVD they cannot. This despite both being commonly available even then.

 

Wow, that is serious words. Windows Vista was a complete failure. Unity 5 is actually pretty awesome. I'd say Windows Vista and Unity 5 have nothing in common.

 

For what it's worth I thought Vista made a bunch of great improvements over previous iterations of Windows.

 

some people are just shallow like that though... If you don't "look" the part, how could you possibly play the part..

acting, anybody can do it.

 

Uh, I've seen people to avoid based on the way they look, the way they smell, and the way they act, the clothes they were. So let's not get carried away here. Anyway, to the point, why take the bait of the someone that liable to be wearing a t-shirt gave to him at the last tech fair he attended when you know he's only baiting you to overgeneralize about how enlightened you are about appearances and everything else?

 

If the aim is purely realistic, there is one engine that springs to mind that already has the inert lighting technology and post setup to near enough be completely physically accurate.

Although, I'm not sure how you could pull it off with the specs of your machine in any engine. UE4 would be a slow picture reel..

 

That pretty much depends on how you define the word 'technically'.
If you mean 'technically' as in 'from a technical standpoint', I have to a agree with you. From a technical standpoint it was 'more advanced'.
If by 'technically' you mean 'in theory', then I have to disagree with you. Vista, just like Windows ME and the old IE, are things Microsoft shat out that really deserved the flame it received.
I was lucky enough to not get my first Vista PC before SP1 was out. However, I have used Vista before (almost unpatched) and it was in no way superior to XP. All this eye-candy could not distract from the fact that it just wasn't a stable experience.
Besides that, Microsoft's stupid, stupid approach to introducing proper security measures was so good, it flooded the web with recommendations to turn it off after an installation. (I'm talking about the UAC here)


I wonder if wheretheidivides' issues were on his side, given that he crashed more frequently within one hour, than I have since I used the Unity 5 pre-purchase beta.
However, he isn't the only one having problems with terrains and enlighten. I remember that one of the bigger threads in the Pre-Order-Beta forum was about that issue. Unity 5 would bake and bake and bake, even for days, and either get stuck or end up looking far worse then Beast.


He is funny though:
"If I google 'Unity 5 issues', all I see are Unity 5 issues. Therefore 99% of the people have problems with Unity 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!" - Flawless logic.

 

vista has been one of the biggest nightmare os I've ever gone trough.

 

Regarding new Privacy Policy packed with U5, in a quick look, the new privacy policy looks like unity is commited in gathering as much personal data as they can.

 

Then you need to look harder.

 

Working in UE4 today and something I noticed that would be an awesome feature, which I'm surprised isn't in there already.

Export scene to .FBX, it's great for when you do level blockouts and then modify in your 3D program of choice.

 

There are aeady exporters to Maya so probably there are already to FBX.
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Little showcase on speedtree stuff. I was specting a flood of GI lit Infinite forests.

 

All I've seen is a .OBJ single export script. Not sure what you're talking about on the rest?

 

Oh, my games are turnkey art in cartoon style and I am customizing a game genre framework bought in the asset store. The art though can come from myself, Turbosquid (rarely), Blendswap, and the Asset Store.

Since it a hobby for me I may or may not getting around to replacing all the art with my own. I definitely won't be replacing the frameworks I bought because what little code I write anymore is integrated into those.

I delete asset when the framerate drops below 25 FPS or greatly exceeds 40 ms although I messed with the static checkbox last night and wow. 60 - 70 FPS and with the somewhat high poly character I want to use.

I have a lot of interests in the realism you are attempting but

1. Unity's terrain system (of which I've spent several posts complaining about) and my HW aren't up to it.

2. The importation of satellite data into tools like 3DDEM and then TerraSculptor won't allow me to use the effective mask that is used for water bodies like the ocean or lakes and such (it's -1 I think) to tell the TerraSculptor Engine to randomly generate ocean floors and such to replace the water masks based on the surrounding above water topography. The author of Terrasculptor does that code as a hobby and is sensibly working on generating realistic random landscapes as for the sataelitte data he's got that licked, except the one extension that would make all that data much easier to use. There are some sub water surface surveys but the are not near extensive enough. I'd like to try the Terragen tool but 200 quid is a bit much unless it can do such a feat.

So Unity that you for Pro features in Free! Static makes my borderline HW seem new again!

 

Uh, using 'quotes' and nasty language does not belittle the technical achievement of the Microsoft crew with Vista but instead devalues any merit that the rest of your opinion might of had.

I find it insulting to my sense of cleanliness and humanity when someone suggests that an operating system I bought and enjoyed using is the equivalent of myself playing in shat.

Quite clearly, it an attempt to stop others from fairly evaluating Vista independently and what I've said by associating Vista and myself with shat. I reject that association and I reject the motive for it.

No anger, no insulting analogies, just facts.

 

As far as I understand it, this topic is about Unity 5 and not about Windows (Vista). Please stay on topic if there is no actual reason to drift away.

 

I used Vista for years, up until 2014 actually It was such an improvement over what came before I really had few complaints with it. The only reason I upgraded to 8.1 is because Unity stopped working with it... but of course after upgrading I realized 8.1 is also a nice upgrade from vista in terms of speed/stability as well.

I don't really understand the Vista hate, as it simply doesn't jive with my personal experience with it.

 

This would, indeed, be a nice feature. I wouldn't put it very high up on the priority list though, given that the opposite direction is far more useful. Unity's 'level-design-tools' are barely good enough for placing things you created in third-party tools. Given that, you might as well create your entire level in Blender, 3ds, Maya or whichever tool you prefer.
Im- and exporting between various 3d applications is a source of pain with all the y-up/z-up left-hand/right-hand madness.

Spoiler: Spoilered for offtopic

@goat :
I was putting the word »technically« in 'quotes' because it has two very different meanings, which are hard to bring across via written text. It either means 'from a technical standpoint' or 'in theory'. Both were plausible in context, so I my reply covered both.

If my language is not politically correct for your tastes, then that is your problem. If someone takes the opinion of some random Internet stranger (which does include you btw) at face-value, it's their own fault if they miss out on something great or buy some crappy product.

When I say that Vista is a S***ty product, I mean that Vista is a S***ty product. Not more, not less. There's only one kind of person who takes offense in a random person on the Internet insulting a product of a multi-billion dollar corporation: fanboys.

Anyway, I enjoyed using Vista too. However, the general opinion is that Vista is S***, period. So if you want to argue against it, you better have something better than 'I liked it' to back it up.
Try to argue the UAC from a usability standpoint or, alternatively, the memory footprint.
Those are two points in which Vista failed catastrophically.[/quote]

 

I assume Pulov referred to this asset script that can export the entire Unity scene as a Maya scene: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/17079

Would be a nice addition to have as a built-in feature, but nevertheless we have some solution available for the time being.

 

Shame I don't use Maya , got to admit the BSP / blockout / level export system is so convenient for design and implementation..

 

Yeah, it's one of the reasons I love UE4. That said, using prototype and the export script mostly does me alright.