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Unity 3 Beta Release Notes

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by antenna-tree, Jul 29, 2010.

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  1. zumwalt

    zumwalt

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    @Dreamora, yea I bought 'everything' GarageGames, even early adopter on T3D, iT2D, iT.....nevermind, same things their as starting to show here, wonder why...

    Its good though, it is all good, they will fix it by patch 1 or patch 2, all of the larger corporations do this, Microsoft ALWAYs does this as they are broke on all major releases and not until the real produt is available on service pack 1 does the stuff work, GarageGames, this is standard operating procedure for them, release it broke, fix it later, I have found when a company grows beyond a certain point like Unity does, this type of operation is typical bar none. Sure it can be denied, but it is just fact, they got to get the product out to pay their employees.

    Look at it this way, release now, ask forgiveness later, fix the problem patch 1 or patch 2, all is happy 6 months later. I am not concerned about it, actually expected this outcome. Look at how large they are now. I mean issues alone, like Andriod Nexus still doesn't work right when deployed to it, Google marketplace deployment packages don't want to work, iPhone glitches left and right, the product is definately rush to market ware right now, not saying it is a bad thing, but it is what it is, just got to accept that and move on. Just don't use U3 for iPhone at the moment or Andriod, well not for the Nexus, I still can't get the little white ball to react in Unity yet and touch response is iffy at best. Bugs the crap out of me, going to work on that more today and just presume it is ID10T error on my part, all of these problems, all my fault somehow.

    No way all the bugs I have found so far could have made it through the Q/A, they can't reproduce what I can clearly do on my end so it has to be my PC (qualify this statement, render to texture issue I have) or my MacBook Pro. I am NOT upgrading any iPhone work to U3 until U3 release 1 is out and someone else says it is gold for iPhone. No way, no how.
     
  2. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

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    Release notes updated, same link.
     
  3. Maulkye

    Maulkye

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    This is such a "pet peeve" for me. With respect, I must say that while this is true, it's simply terrible. I believe that the only reason this sort of behavior is prevalent in our industry, is because so many people allow it.

    People strangely seem to accept that they will get buggy software on the first round, and they shouldn't buy that because it isn't necessary. If enough consumers start "sending it back" or asking for a refund, I think we'll see quality gain more rank against "first/quick to market".

    And that goes for M$ too.
     
  4. 3Duaun

    3Duaun

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    +1!

     
  5. David-Helgason

    David-Helgason

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    I don't think it's fair to suggest that the Unity 3 release is something we have to push out in order to pay the team: we have a solid buffer and could delay the release until March 2011 if that were needed :)

    Unity 3 is a /huge/ release - feature-wise, optimization-wise, platform-wise, polish-wise. In many ways the biggest we've ever done, as though you might say that it's relative size is no bigger than 1.6 -> 2.0, we're working off a much bigger base now.

    What is really important is to get this into the hands of developers who are waiting for them.

    Bug-free software doesn't exist, but we are at a point where we feel that Unity 3 RC1 is more solid than the current live Unity 2.6.1 release. We will naturally keep updating and fixing it after it's released (who doesn't) and these updates will be free of charge for a loooong time. We will also - different from a lot of other software companies - keep pushing major features into "minor" releases, also free of charge.

    Of course you're welcome to wait to upgrade to Unity 3 until we release 3.0.1 or 3.1 (whichever comes first) - the result for you is the exact same as if we waited, except that a lot of other developers who aren't held back by specific (and very regrettable) bugs would be forced to wait too.

    PS. Regarding the Unity 3 iPhone and Android products, there's already games launched using them, so in that sense they're "gold enough" for at least some uses.
     
  6. 3Duaun

    3Duaun

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    ouch, David with the "smackdown". J/k (pardon the immature tone):wink:

    Thanks for taking the time to post :)

    I for one just was mostly speaking of microsoft, and the fear of using a pre-SP1 M$ OS. Unity 3 since b4 has been performing VERY well for me. I'm VERY glad Unity chose to have a semi-open beta as well. This is an approach I appreciate from the developers willing to do so.

    My sincere thanks to the entire Unity Team!!
     
  7. FierceForm

    FierceForm

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    Is 3.0.0f1 an RC release or a final release?

    EDIT: Nvm, saw the post above.
     
  8. loopyllama

    loopyllama

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    The beta previews are a blessing.

    I definitely hope Unity continues down this path.
     
  9. Peter G

    Peter G

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    I'm still having plenty of problems with joints. Is anyone else having similar problems. Riccardo emailed me on the first one and asked if I could attach some more files in another report, but I haven't heard from him since beta 6 so I don't know whats going on.

    Case 370507
    Case 371455
     
  10. David-Helgason

    David-Helgason

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    @zhx: no "smackdown" intended :) ... it's just that if one could never release only bug-free software, nothing would ever be released... or forever stay in beta, which isn't super helpful either.

    We really think that Unity 3 is our best release ever by far, but there's no denying that it sucks (big time) when developers encounter bugs which we aren't subsequently able to reproduce and solve, so that bugs are left in the final release... and with hundreds of thousands of developers someone's product is bound to be hurt or delayed by some of these. But we work as hard as ever and there's more people doing the work, and thus we can be very effective at this now. But in a bigger product there's more lines of code for bugs to hide, so it goes both way!

    @FierceForm: it might in theory be final, but it's more likely that there'll be another couple of release candidates before it's over. At any rate we're getting awfully close!
     
  11. crafTDev

    crafTDev

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    I like you! :D Very reassuring.
     
  12. trthing

    trthing

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    Anybody please confirm (or deny) this problem still exists in 3.0.0f1?
    We are thinking of making the jump to 3.x but a flaky ODBC would be an issue for us.

    Thanks in advance
     
  13. zumwalt

    zumwalt

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    The code is in the threads, just search for Access, you will come across it. I didn't expect it to actually get fixed on their timeline. I didn't see his post as a *smackdown* either, those are just facts he is pointing out and that as they say, is that. I know there are people with iPhone and Android releases using this version of Unity, it just doesn't work for my Nexus, thats all, and there are dozens of different andriod phones, I just don't have any of those to test with, not yet anyway.

    I speak for more than myself on some of these issues, from which are people I converse with daily that own Unity 3. Am I happy with U3 release candidate 1? Sure, do I know of bugs, yes, did I expect there to be, you bet, are they show stoppers, not really, do I want Unity to go live tomorrow, yes, I want this thing to be officially launched.

    FYI LINQ still doesn't work right for me either on my Windows 7 machine, and that is a feature of U3, again, not a show stopper, just another bug issue. There are bound to be issues, but I have seen this software grow from 1.6 -> 2.x now -> 3.x, so I have lived through many updates, and bar none, this is the best product on the market, hands down and it is getting so far above and beyond that of GarageGames T3D, that it is now in a new league of its own and practically has left GG behind.

    I take no offense at DH post
     
  14. trthing

    trthing

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    Thanks, zumwalt, for the prompt answer.
     
  15. MikeHergaarden

    MikeHergaarden

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    Yikes, I thought the complaints were over exaggerated. But my U3 windows stanadlone builds keep crashing..I can't explain why it somethign crashes in-game. But the other crash always happens when calling Application.Quit from the main menu (only after having loaded at least 1 level). Filing bug reports today.
     
  16. jcarpay

    jcarpay

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    My biggest concern aren't the bugs, most of them can be fixed within a reasonable timeframe. It's the backwards compatability I'm worried about.

    For example, it's somehow decided that it's ok to *completely* drop support for spot/omni shadows for othographic cameras in R3... Why on earth are they stripping the Pro version like this?

    My initial choice for the Unity engine was based on features like this.

    This is the first time for me to see software that has *stripped* key features in a new version without offering a proper replacement.
     
  17. Aras

    Aras

    Unity Technologies

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    Unity 3 Pro does support point spot light shadows (in fact point light shadows were improved quite a bit), so I'm not sure where "completely drop support for" comes from.

    Yes, built-in point spot light shadows in 3.0 require you to use Deferred Lighting. I think this is a reasonable tradeoff: Forward rendering shaders are smaller, hence load faster, shader compile times are shorter, game sizes are smaller; also if you use more than a couple of realtime lights you probably need to use Deferred Lighting anyway for performance reasons.

    If you really, really need to have point/spot light shadows without using deferred rendering, there's nothing stopping you from implementing that manually. Create a depth render texture, render objects into it; it's your shadow map. Use that in your shader, do shadow distance comparison and you've got your shadows.

    Is Deferred Lighting not a proper replacement? Why?
     
  18. taumel

    taumel

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    Actually this sounds awesome, a Unity which isn't backward compatible but on the other side is bugfree and does a number of things in a more reasonable way.

    That's the one i would like to have!
     
  19. jcarpay

    jcarpay

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    You've missed an important part of my qoute. I said shadow support for *orthographic* cameras has been dropped, which seems to be the case indeed...
     
  20. Aras

    Aras

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    Whoops. Right, sorry about that.

    Yes, point/spot light shadows were dropped for orthographic cameras indeed. We just didn't find a way to make deferred rendering work with orthographic projection, without sacrificing performance of the perspective cameras case.

    A usual workaround would be to use very low FOV perspective camera, put it very far away, and use large near plane. If you do any mouse-based on-screen manipulations, they would get slightly more complex, but Camera.ScreenToWorldPoint and related functions could help there.
     
  21. jcarpay

    jcarpay

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    No problem.

    Hopefully you'll find a way to bring this feature back in a future release, it's positioned highly on my wishlist!
     
  22. siliwangi

    siliwangi

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    if the complete demo source is too big to included why don't make it as separated download?i assume the current demo in f1 is the one going to given in final?not the complete demo?the complete demo just a standalone exe/webplayer?if yes is there any plan to release complete source one?
     
  23. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

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    It is likely that we will release the entire demo source in some form in the future.
     
  24. dpentecost

    dpentecost

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    I'm a little late to the bug reporting party, but I have a question about the f1 version (also tried some of the earlier betas):

    I am using a plugin (Omnity, from Elumenati, a dome display company) that relies on render to texture to create a custom fisheye view for dome projection. Their plugin works fine with 2.6.1, but does not work with any version of U3 that I have tried.

    Are there changes in render to texture in U3 that we should know about? We have the Pro license so that is not the issue. Is there anything else related to this that might help their troubleshooting process?

    Thanks!
     
  25. Aras

    Aras

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    Without knowing what the plugin does it's hard to know what in 3.0 changes could have affected it.

    Does it by chance use object instanceIDs as OpenGL texture names? If so, they no longer matchin Unity 3.0 (object's instanceID is not OpenGL texture name). You need to use texture.GetNativeTextureID() to get OpenGL texture name.
     
  26. dpentecost

    dpentecost

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    Thanks Aras - I'll pass this along to the developers, and PM you a link to the plugin and to the user guide if you want to take a quick look. I'm speaking at Unite 10 so it would be great to get this working before then.

    What does the plugin do? Essentially, it sets up 3 cameras, renders their views to 3 curved meshes which together form the fisheye curve. These are shot by a main camera and presented to the viewer and the projection system.

    Thanks again!
     
  27. dpentecost

    dpentecost

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    OK, thanks for your patience, folks. I'm posting all this for my own benefit but also for anyone else finding mysteries with Unity 3.

    Since I could see individual cameras but not the final view, I started poking around.

    In the shaders folder for the demo project of the plugin in question, I found the FinalPassShader. In the Inspector, this comes up:

    Upgrade NOTE: SubShader commented out; uses Unity 2.x per-pixel lighting. You should rewrite shader into a Surface Shader, at line 19

    Is this the smoking gun? Or one of several?

    BTW I looked in the code for uses of instanceID and didn't find any.
     
  28. siliwangi

    siliwangi

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    glad to hear that,btw i found some bug either on demo or unity?,if you shoot bullet hole on the bridge,the black decal will be 'flashing' if you see it from different angle,and there is some problem with the lod and decal,when you moved away couple inch sometime there is a shattering,i will upload the video to youtube just a moment..
     
  29. siliwangi

    siliwangi

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    have reported the decal and lod problem,case #374744,included on the report the youtube link...
     
  30. hjbaard

    hjbaard

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    I was trying to convert our U2.6 project to U3. When trying to compile the project for the web I got this error:

    "ArgumentException: The Assembly System.Web is referenced by Jayrock.Json. But the dll is not allowed to be included or could not be found."

    So how should I make U3 work with JSON? (with multidimensional array support?)

    Is there a way to make the Jayrock dll a 'thrusted' dll?

    Update: It seems the error also occurs when trying to build a stand alone version! So I don't think it as something to do with security :?
     
  31. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    No

    Anything that uses unsupported Frameworks just won't work.

    You can look at litjson / jsonfx for example, as they use what a json library is meant to use (nothing to System.Xml), not arbitary stuff they shouldn't even be touching.
     
  32. hjbaard

    hjbaard

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    But why does it work in U2.6 then?
     
  33. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    because U2 had far less modern security standards on the webplayer.

    those are likely also the reason why system.web is dead, cause if they were present, system.web could be missused to bypass the policy security, which isn't possible now cause WWW will check it.


    Its new major version of unity, so there is always a chance that stuff that used to work won't work anymore.
    thats why you have the option to remain on u2 with your project if u3 doesn't fit it
     
  34. hjbaard

    hjbaard

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    Thanks for answering so quick! I will try litjson :)
     
  35. hjbaard

    hjbaard

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    Does anyone know if I could use Json.NET in stead of LitJson in U3?
    Json.NET has more features.
     
  36. hjbaard

    hjbaard

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    I get an error in U3 f1 when using: Application.isEditor

    Error:
    ArgumentException: get_isEditor can only be called from the main thread
    Communication..ctor ()

    Is this a bug?
     
  37. niosop2

    niosop2

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    f2 release notes forthcoming?
     
  38. PolyMad

    PolyMad

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    F2 just downloaded and installed :D
     
  39. antenna-tree

    antenna-tree

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  40. spentak

    spentak

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    Maybe in some release there will be a fix for the looping mp3 iphone problem??? I can no longer get any mp3 to loop for the life of me!(since beta 5) In the middle of the track and it just restarts. Our company is supposed to release our game in just weeks and we don't have working audio :( .
     
  41. appels

    appels

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    U3 is still in beta, it's generally a bad idea to port a project to a beta release if your working in a timeframe.
     
  42. spentak

    spentak

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    Well I had to upgrade because unity iphone has a broken implementation of .net 2.1 (reflection) which we have to have in our game. So its a lose lose situation.
     
  43. PolyMad

    PolyMad

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    U3 should be out in days so I think your problem will much probably be fixed soon.
     
  44. NitroPye

    NitroPye

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    Oh great... on iPhone builds I thought the Classes directory stays untouched?

    f2 just steam rolled it.
     
  45. txmikester

    txmikester

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    Spoken like someone who has never used software before. :D

    The correct answer is: U3 should be out in days, which means they are probably going to ship f2 pretty much as-is and patch it later.

    I'm not really knocking Unity for this - as a programmer, I know how it goes. If you wait to squash every bug, you would never ship anything. The best we can hope for is that all the major bugs have been fixed and patches will be forthcoming regularly.
     
  46. dcp468

    dcp468

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    Hi

    I recently upgraded to Unity 3 + Unity iPhone and received my new license and a separate email containing a link to get the Unity 3.0.0b7 download. Now I downloaded the "Editor for Mac (No Demo Project)" dmg file however when I run it I get a dialog saying Warning, ... The following disk images couldn't be opened.

    Any thoughts? better still how do I get my hands on the f2 version instead.

    Cheers
     
  47. Dreamora

    Dreamora

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    you have a download error, redownload it.

    the integrated update notification system of unity will then take you to the page where f2 is
     
  48. SteveB

    SteveB

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    Just downloaded 3.0.02f with the Demo Project (500+ megs) yet I'm unable to find the said project anywhere.

    Any thoughts? :D

    Love,
    -Steve
     
  49. impla007

    impla007

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    @SteveB
    It's in /users/shared/unity
     
  50. SteveB

    SteveB

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    S*** yes...been awhile.

    Thanks Impla!

    -Steve
     
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