Unity 5.0 pre-order beta now available

@djweinbaum, just to be clear here I'm not intending to throw stones. This is just an open discussion from my perspective. Unity 5 Beta is awesome in my book, and I'm not using it to try to release software on in the near future. I've been in the software business a while now and know how 'unpredictable' software releases can be. With that said, I think in hindsight one of two things could have been done differently.

Either have had a freely available open Unity 5 Beta that used a 'time-bombed' product key, either common to everyone or assigned per user. This release would have the caveat emptor not to be used in production. This model has been used by big OS releases for a while. As an example both Microsoft Windows Technical Previews or Apple Mac OS X Previews are freely provided with product keys to their development base. And sure, I get that there is a nominal development network subscription required in some cases.

Or to have released a Pre-order Beta that was more complete and predictably closer to RTM than Unity 5 seems/seemed to have been from an external perspective. In my experience Betas have been code complete, albeit with many open issues, or minimally feature complete prior to hitting that milestone.

 

I think the pre-order happened WAY too early in the process. It's understandable that the product takes time to develop and reach a release point, but when people "bought" it so long ago and it still doesn't look like it's near finished, it's a little annoying in my opinion. They shouldn't have run the pre-orders until the product was more mature.

 

I've been prototyping in Unity 5 so it isn't broken and is certainly usable so I think people are getting a bit over the top as there are now a number of early access games on 5. I do think Unity still suffers from communication problems though.

Software is infamously difficult to schedule, but consistently off target releases are generally indicative of something that needs fixing. "When its done" is both silly and antiquated. I'm not sure how Unity was many years ago, but in the four years I've been paying attention its pretty clear they don't hit their dates or they do an extremely poor job communicating that schedule to their customers. So if Unity doesn't consider 5.0 behind schedule they didn't set good release expectations.

I actually thought 4.0 while perhaps not 'late' shipped in a rough state with most of its features really only complete in subsequent releases 7 or 8 months after the fact so if 5 is being delayed to make its .0 release more stable I think that's good but Unity could make its intentions clear.

 

Of course it's usable for prototyping - it's a beta

It isn't usable for production development though until it's released and (so far) that's 7 - 8 months after the preorders opened. That's all I was referring to as pretty excessive.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw WebGL before summer with so many browsers disabling plugins.

 

Checking the autoupdate plist it seems there will be no beta 23 anymore. Let's see how many public f versions we get from next week on ;-) Really looking forward to the sample projects!

 

Thats a poor comparison, since the new GUI had a very long history that did not involve users getting their hands on it.

I am very happy with the Unity 5 beta so far. It doesn't feel quite finished yet, but it feels a lot closer than it was in October, and I don't expect it to take most of this year for the initial version to come out. I would guess they are hoping to have 5.0 out within a few months, not 6+ months.

My biggest sympathies go out to those who already owned version 4 and then did a 5 pre-order subscription in the first months after the announcement, which effectively ended up being a waste of 6-ish months money. I was aware of this possible pitfall so I waited as long as I could before pre-ordering in this way.

 

Yes thats why I was thinking people saying months, makes no sense to me?
And we usually have RC1 or RC2 builds, huuum maybe a change in Unity tactics not sure whats going on as not in the internal beta testing team..

 

@elbows honestly I think full release date is 2015 UNITE but There is always uncertainty like ugui. ugui had to be released in the summer but full release version is november.. ugui's delay affects 5.0 release date

One year has passed after announcement of 5.0 this situation is not a situation unity want
Unity still don't talk about release dates Why unity do that? That's because they do not know about release date. This means that the release date don't close. No one knows when to finish. Now the situation is the same situation with the ugui..

 

Unity 5.0 is not another Unity UI. the first RC just came out if anyone was wondering.

 

For internal Beta testers?

 

Seriously - it can't even build lightmaps for the terrain and an RC came out?

 

Told you guys, something was going on..lol

They may start the module upgrades after, who knows - for testing

 

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/...new-announcements-at-gdc.html#~p3wJ3p43hZvL88

 

I think they will do the PowerVR in-editor lightmapper or something like, so you guys gotta wait until then, but it's just my guessing..

 

We can only hope right now, hope the next one fixes it as you say..

 

4 minutes for what terrain GI resolution? Was it reasonable for good results?

 

Does this fix the dreaded "2/11 Layout Systems" infinite loop?

 

Can you tell me which Steam games already use Unity 5?

 

Probably not too many yet bt I think at least Rust has upgraded.

 

Distance and rust, and some others that i don't know.

 

I have been away for a while and have a simple question: The website says "The Unity 5.0 pre-order beta is available only to Unity 5 pre-order customers" but nowhere that I can find does it say how to become a pre-order customer. I click the banner that says Unity 5.0 Pre-order Beta Available now, but I click it and there is no option to buy it. If I click to buy Unity 4 pro, there is no mention of 5.0 being included. Somehow I came across the unity.com/5 page and found a mention of $750 to upgrade. The FAQ page seems to say nothing relevant. What is going on? Assuming I am not missing something in plain sight, can UT make their website less confusing? Thanks.

 

https://store.unity3d.com It hasn't been possible to buy Unity 4 for months now; all purchases are Unity 5 (though a Unity 5 license also covers all previous versions).

--Eric

 

Thanks Eric. I wonder why the page doesn't say you are buying Unity 5. It gives a teaser in the banner to lure you to another page to pre-order a beta (version 5), as though that's not what you're doing on the present page, but then doesn't give any instruction on how to pre-order 5 (aside from the subscription approach). I hereby file a bug with the website!