Unity 5 is coming and more!

I'd expect that should be up on the website once 5.0 beta is public (just like 4.6 beta release notes are online).

I think most of internal release notes of 5.0 beta aren't very relevant unless you're on 5.0 beta itself (in which case you do know about them)... for example, here's release notes for 5.0 beta9 (betas are coming out each week):

Beta 9

Features
Android: Support for x86 as a build target.
Android: Fat binary support (x86+ARMv7).
Changes
Debugging: Editor always runs in background when a debugger is attached.
Debugging: Players always run in background when "Script Debugging" is enabled.
Improvements
Android: Support for profiling Intel GPU using the Unity Editor.
Android: Added support for BGRA textures.
Graphics: Dynamic batching can batch non-uniform scaled objects together when normals/tangents are unused. Helps with shadow caster batching, and unlit shaders.
Asset Importing: Faster texture conversion into cubemaps & HDR image processing, by multithreading parts of the process.
Shadows: Added PCF (5x5) filtering for soft directional light shadows. Pick it in Quality Settings. We're considering maybe replacing the old "screenspace blur" with 5x5 PCF as the only built-in option, so feedback is welcome!
Fixes
Android: Compensate for polygonOffset bug on Mali 400 GPU.
TouchInput: Switched timestamps from ms to us internally, to avoid 0-length delta times.
Android: Avoid reading expensive metrics in DisplayInfo more than once per frame.
Android: Fixed frame rate on Tegra devices when doing GPU profiling.
Android: Fixed crash on Xperia Play.
Android: Disabled shadows for Intel PowerVR devices to avoid graphics artifacts.
Android: Dropped support for OpenGL ES 3 auto selection for devices running Android 4.1 and 4.2.
Android: Fixed some old devices that crashed when target graphics API was set to "Auto".
Graphics: Fixed occasional crash on creating and immediately deleting particle renderer.
Graphics: Fixed crashes on toggling Direct3D 11 mode.
Graphics: Fixed linear lighting mode being preserved but not editable when opening Pro project in the free version of Unity.Editor: Empty animation window no longer increases CPU usage.
Editor: Fixed: Error thrown when closing asset label list with escape key.
Editor: Fix keyboard shortcuts (home/end/page up/page down) in object selector.
Version Control: Revert recursively.
Version Control: Auto connect when connection is dropped.
Version Control: Fix plugin stop when reading a recent deleted file.
Version Control: Fix case handling on windows when downloading files.
Version Control: Remove out-of-sync state when file is deleted on server.
Version Control: Do not print a warning when saving scene and file is not opened for edit unless necessary.
VFS: Fix double slashes when enumerating directories on mac and posix.
Editor: Opening multiple locked inspectors works.
Editor: Select Dependencies operation no longer breaks editor fonts.
Editor: Tooltips use current skin instead always using light skin.
Editor: Fix errors thrown when pressing Esc to close asset label popup.
Editor: Fix navigation keyboard shortcuts in object selector.
Editor: Ensure screen width and height in player settings is at least 1.

Improvements to 5.0 features:
GI: Added ability to adjust how much processing power (CPU only) is allocated to realtime GI. Exposed in Editor UI.
AudioMixer: Auto dock AudioMixer window together with project browser and use vertical layout by default.
Fixes to 5.0 features and 5.0 regression fixes:
Shaders: Fixed scene load time regressions in Editor, due to excessive shader compilation.
Scene View: Fixed garbage background when legacy deferred & shadows are used.
Shaders: Fixed crash in shader loading code when not meeting GPU requirements.
Editor: Double click on GO in scene view now frames selected.
Editor: Fix Hierarchy custom sorting broke in beta8.
Editor: Warn when deleting prefab child GO's.
Editor: Double click on GO in scene view now frames selected again.​

 

Here are notes from two older betas, because why not.

Unity 5.0 Beta 7

Features
Android: Added proper support for MouseDrag event.
Android: Export now works for projects that use UnityPlayerActivity or UnityPlayerProxyActivity.
Android: Fixed support for external display when it is reconnected while app is running.
iOS: Added iOS 8 Metal support. Metal is used automatically on supported systems (iOS8 and A7 or later). There's an option under Player Settings to choose GLES if needed.
iOS: Added iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus support
Mecanim: Added Utility function AnimatorController.FindStateMachineBehaviourContext(StateMachineBehaviour behaviour) which return the controller, state and layer index containing this instance.
Windows Store Apps: Chinese Traditional and Simplified languages are now detected and reported, instead of always returning generic Chinese

Changes
GI: Renamed Renderer.lightmapTilingOffset to Renderer.lightmapScaleOffset. Handled automatically be the API Upgrader.
Mac OS X Standalone: Data folder has moved to Content/Resources, in accordance with Apple guidelines
Mecanim: AnimationUtility.SetAnimationClipSettings now public
Mecanim: Changed profiling detail to see more information for the Animator evaluation pipeline
Scripting: C# compiler defaults script encoding to UTF8.
Windows Store Apps: Removed support for C++ Visual Studio projects .

Improvements
Animation: Support the case that both SkinnedMeshRenderer and Animator are on the same GameObject (optimised mode).
Deployment Management: Display Enlighten's build stage when building player
Editor: Unity will output a proper error regarding incompatible CPU architectures on Mac OS X when failing to load native libraries. For ex., You cannot load 32 bit native libraries on 64 bit Editor
Shaders: Massively improved shader loading performance, and reduced memory consumption.
By default, internal shader variants are only loaded when actually needed (typically a lot of shader variants are never actually needed).

Added ShaderVariantCollection asset type for ability to manually preload/warmup shader variants, to avoid hiccups later on. This is like Shader.WarmupAllShaders, done in a better way.
Editor can track shaders & their variants used in scene or play mode, and create ShaderVariantCollection out of them (button in Graphics Settings).
Graphics Settings have a list of ShaderVariantCollection assets to preload at game startup. Can also warmup them from a script.​

Fixes
Asset Import: Fixed possible crash when upgrading metadata files
Asset Importer: Support the manifest file in text importer
AssetBundle: Fix the typo in .manifest file
AssetBundle: Remove duplicate objects when building with BuildAssetBundleExplicitAssetNames(). Also output more meaningful log information for assetBundle object.
Assets Management: Fix the "input objects must be of exact same type" error message
D3D11: Fixed an issue which caused some objects not be rendered if shadows are enabled in the scene on feature level 9.x
Debugger: Allow evaluation of methods with string literal parameters
Deployment Management: Simpler "Force Single Instance" error message on Windows
Editor: Don't ignore assets whose names contain "StreamingAssets"
Editor: Fixed editor errors when undoing the insertion of a new LOD level in LOD group.
Graphics: Make sure to never use soft particles when in orthographic camera, since depth-based fadeout does not work there.
GUI: Fix line spacing when multiple sizes are used in text markup
GUI: Fix text cursor vertical position
Mac OS X Standalone: Fix crash changing resolution in batch mode
Mecanim: Delayed the graph rebuild when deleting transitions to fix a bug when deleting multiple transitions
Mecanim: Fixed evaluate of Curves with only one key
Mecanim: Propagated Animator invalidation on modification to AnimatorOverrideController to fix a crash when changing speed
NavMesh: Fixed crash when calling NavMeshManager::Triangulate without baked data
Packages: Fix importing package with long paths on Windows
Physics: Fix crash when applying force to inactive Rigidbody
Scripting: Fix some cases when using a class name that collides with an internal class name in a different namespace (e.g. BuildSettings)
Scripting: Fix StackOverflowException handling on 64-bit Windows
Scripting: Fixed issue with generated projects (.csproj) sometimes not having a reference to UnityEngine.UI.dll
Serialization: Fix the error message when removing an object in a custom inspector
WebPlayer: Correctly verify generic reference type constraint for generic parameter with type constraint which is a reference type
Windows Store Apps: fix UnityScript breaks exported solution with SDK 8.0
Windows Store Apps: fix WebCam not being detected first time creating WebCamTexture with empty device name on x86
Windows Store Apps: regenerate test certificate, if it was deleted
Windows Store/Phone: Cloth.coefficients now work correctly

Changes to 5.0 features
GI: Renamed MaterialProperty.PropFlags.NoTilingOffset to MaterialProperty.PropFlags.NoScaleOffset and the corresponding shader tag as well. The shader tag is upgraded automatically.
Graphics: Removed Hemisphere render settings ambient mode; Sky+Equator+Ground is a better superset of it anyway.
Graphics: Renamed "Skybox exposure" in render settings UI to "skybox amount" to be less confusing.

Improvements to 5.0 features
Editor: Added StandardShaderGUI.cs to builtin_shaders.zip
Editor: StandardShader GUI now has tooltips for all maps describing what channels of the maps are used
GI: Fixed a bunch of harmless errors about the geometry not fitting into maximum-system-size sized texture. In such case the resolution is clamped.
GI: Added Renderer.realtimeLightmapScaleOffset property.
GI: Allow for cluster resolution to go down to 0.1 instead of 0.25.
GI: Exposed MeshRenderer.additionalVertexStreams scripting API.
GI: Improved albedo and emissive rendering; removes occasional bleeding between charts.
GI: Introduced bake settings into Enlighten system build parameters; lightmap atlases are automatically split for different bake system parameters.
GI: Reworked scripting API docs for EnlightenSystemBuildParameters.
Merging: Rephrase merge selection dialog to make it less confusing
Merging: Special case MonoBehavior script change and serialized fields for the script
Reflection Probes: Component has its own icon now.

Fixes to 5.0 features and 5.0 regression fixes
Editor: Fix crash when Unity is launched from path that contains non-ASCII characters.
Editor: Fixed material / inspector previews being somewhat wrong when using Linear color space.
Editor: Fix that Standard shader inspector doesn't offer to fix texture that is not marked as normal map
Editor: Select all text in TextField on mouse up if selection is empty
Editor: Set minimum drag difference for move tool
GI: Fixed baked lightmaps to not be called reflection probes.
GI: Fixed building standalone players with Enlighten data.
GI: Fixed static batching messing with realtime GI.
GI: Fixed the object preview in the Lightmapping window being rendered in the wrong place on Mac.
Graphics: Do not add default skybox & light in new scenes if editor behavior is set to 2D.
Graphics: Do not explode player build time if Standard shader is included into "Always Included Shaders" list in graphics settings.
Graphics: Show note in scene render settings inspector if fog & deferred shading is used.
IL2Cpp: Fixed exception when using FindObjectOfType
Mac OS X Standalone: Fix wrong handling of Cmd-Key combinations
Mecanim: Fixed bug for StateMachineBehaviour.OnStateMachineEnter/OnStateMachineExit, in some case the callback was made on the wrong state machine
Mecanim: Fixed StateMachineBehaviours always overidding OnAnimatorMove even if function was not implemented
Merging: Abort on missing YAML header because it is probably binary serialized scenes/prefabs
Merging: Break transform cycles for more than one level cycles
Merging: Handle breaking transform cycles on prefab instances
Merging: Handle case of one side deleting a prefab and the other side breaking prefab link
Profiler: Fix memory used total always being shown as 4GB on OSX.
Reflection Probes: Fix incorrect behavior of 'Render Dynamic Objects' in the component.
Reflection Probes: Fixed box projection issues when objects are crossing the probe box boundary.
Reflection Probes: Renderer's AABB now has to only intersect probe's AABB instead of being completely inside to be affected by the probe.
Shaders: Fixed normal map not taking effect if switching legacy shader into Standard shader.
Shaders: Fixed parallax mapping not working in Standard shader when in deferred shading.
Shaders: Fixed wrong lighting on non-uniform scaled objects in Standard shader.
WebGL: .htaccess file is now simplified to work on more servers
WebGL: Alpha channel is now correctly handled in back buffer
WebGL: Left/Right modifier keys are now properly distinguished.
WebGL: Properly invoke virtual methods as targets of delegates
WebGL: Shadows now work in Safari
WebGL: SystemInfo now reports more information, like the OS and browser used
WebGL: Updated emscripten with various fixes
Windows Store/Phone: Fixed a crash which occured when trying to pass structs through SendMessage()
Windows Store/Windows Phone 8.1: Native DLLs are correctly copied to the target directory once again
Windows Store: Fixed building project with Debugging C# projects checkbox checked​

Unity 5.0 Beta 8

Improvements
Graphics: Added MaterialPropertyBlock SetFloat/Vector/Color/Matrix/Texture functions. They add a value or replace an existing value.
Graphics: Rendering code optimized to reduce amount of material SetPass calls. Reflection probes, light probes and lightmap UV transform state changes are now internally applied via MaterialPropertyBlocks without requiring a full SetPass. This reduces cost on the main thread to send commands to the render thread, and on the the render thread the driver overhead is reduced.

Fixes
Editor: Fix GO not selectable by label icon
Editor: Fix rename overlay is not removed when undoing
Editor: Fixed Skybox components not taken into account in camera preview popup
Editor: Warn in Render Settings UI when a skybox with nonsensical shader is used
Graphics: Fixed Skybox not rendering with some edge cases of supported vs. not supported shaders
Physics: 2D physics colliders now correctly transform under full 3D rotation.
Shadows: Fixed some cases where alpha-tested shadow caster objects were wrongly batched together, even if they used different textures.
Windows Phone: Texture2D.ReadPixels now works correctly in landscape modes.

Changes to 5.0 features
GI: Moved shadow samples from light to lightmap parameters, as that's the granularity supported by Enlighten. Property is called directLightQuality as it affects not only shadowing, but also lighting calculations.
GI: Renamed EnlightenSystemBuildParameters to LightmapParameters.
Graphics: Renamed BuiltinRenderTextureType.CurrentTarget to CameraTarget.

Improvements to 5.0 features
AudioMixer: Show a toggle button for editing the current target snapshot in playmode in the inspector for mixer groups
Editor: Simplify Cubemap convolution UI in texture import settings.
GI: Exposed more Enlighten lightmap parameters: AODistance, AOQuality, AOAntiAliasingSamples, postprocessingFilterSize, directLightQuality.
GI: Switched realtime lightmaps to use RGBM encoding. Decoding is now cheaper and matches baked lightmaps.
Graphics: Improvements to CommandBuffers:

Added SetGlobalFloat/Vector/Color/Matrix/Texture.
Added optional MaterialPropertyBlock to DrawMesh.
Ability to specify texture filtering mode to GetTemporaryRT.
More variants to Blit (taking RenderTargetIdentifier to cover more cases).
Camera inspector displays command buffers set on the camera.
Exposed BuiltinRenderTextureType.PrepassLight and PrepassLightSpec.
Added Camera.RemoveCommandBuffers, RemoveAllCommandBuffers, commandBufferCount.​

Shaders: Shadows from alpha-blended objects using Standard shader are much better now. Not ideal, but not as bad as before
SpeedTree: Wind animation now smoothly transitions when wind zones change. Optimized internal memory usage. Please set proper "responsiveness" parameter in SpeedTree Modeler so that trees stop animation quickly enough when wind is gone. Please also make sure to regenerate all the tree materials.
WebGL: Improvements to reduce build time

Fixes to 5.0 features and 5.0 regression fixes
Android: Fixed text rendering on Tegra devices and possibly other graphics issues.
AudioMixer: Fix that no mixer properties was showing in the inspector if the AudioMixer window was not showing
Editor: Fix multi-edting of blend mode in the Standard shader gui
Editor: Warn about non-trilinear reflection cubemaps in the UI.
GI: Fixed an issue with empty meshes causing GI to not be able to get past the geometry stage.
GI: Fixed baking rectangular terrain.
GI: Fixed GI being broken in play mode when it was baked in On Demand mode.
GI: Fixed the standalone player failing to open some GI files.
GI: Fixed various lightmap snapshot bugs with reflection probes.
Graphics: Fix light culling with custom projection matrix
Graphics: Fixed dynamic batching performance issues on OS X.
Graphics: Fixed issues with dynamic batching and vertex colors on Direct3D.
Graphics: Fixed occlusion culling performance on large scenes.
Graphics: Fixed reference counting in Camera.GetCommandBuffers.
Graphics: Fixed swapped front/back stencil modes with Direct3D 11 render to texture.
Graphics: Renamed "Legacy Deferred (two pass)" to "Legacy Deferred (light prepass)" in the UI.
Graphics: Fix Image filters targeting a render texture when a camera doesn't clear the color buffer
Merging: Fix premerge fallback when run from inside the editor
MonoDevelop: Fixed missing main menu bar on OSX.
Reflection Probes: Remove obsolete ghost gizmo, which was visible when rotating reflection probe.
Reflection Probes: Restore Refresh button in Render Settings, which can be used for refreshing global ambient reflections.
Reflection Probes: When baking probes, sun light will be ignored.
Shaders: Added "[HDR]" texture property flag. Textures marked as HDR in shaders will show warnings in material inspector, if an incompatible texture is assigned.
Shaders: Fixed "#pragma enable_d3d11_debug_symbols" crashing on Mac.
Shaders: Fixed crash when removing runtime-unsupported shader variants.
Shaders: Fixed occasional error messages when using Standard shader and switching graphics emulation to Shader Model 2.0 in the editor.
Shaders: Fixed wrong shader name printed in log messages on GLSL platforms, if particular GLSL shader was not supported.​

 

Unity-built games will work on 32 bit systems just fine (just like in 4.x).

The Unity 5.0 editor will ship both 32 bit and 64 bit on Windows, and 64-bit only on Mac (because it looks like no one is using 32 bit Macs anyway).

 

Short answer: if you're running out of memory in current Unity, then 64 bit will likely help.

Longer answer: Typical things that are different between 32 and 64 bit. Can use more memory in the process (less likely to run out of memory - even if you only have 4GB of RAM since address space is larger). More registers in 64 bit, so some code can run faster. But pointers are larger than in 32 bit, so some code can run slower.

 

That sounds like "a crash", and not "it ran out of memory". Crashes should be fixed, and we fix a lot of them each week. Report a bug with the information & a repro project.

 

"Access violation" means "a crash", and it means some code did something it wasn't supposed to do (in access violation case -> accessing memory address it shouldn't have). Could be a bug in Unity, or a bug in whatever game you're referring to, or in a plugin that they might be using, etc.

Anyway, that doesn't sound like Unity 5.0 specific at all.

 

Yes, GI is supported in both DX9 and DX11.