Question Will the builtin renderer of unity be deprecated soon?

Hi,

My team is starting a new project. Some team members are more comfortable to the old unity builtin renderer. But if it will be deprecated soon, we will not be using it.

So will unity builtin renderer be deprecated soon or are we able to use it for new projects and expect support for it in the upcoming 2~3 years?

Thanks for advance.

 

i'd certainly pick builtin at this point, unless you must have some of those new features..
(based on seeing all the issues that users currently have with the new pipelines)
also for reference https://forum.unity.com/threads/join-us-for-srplife-week.915275/

 

More likely URP/HDRP will be deprecated in 2-3 years.

 

@Andrew_Bowell
Can someone from Unity confirm if the builtin renderer would be deprecated or not?
Is it safer to go with SRP for new projects?

 

What makes you think that?

 

I think that comment was more if you had to choose which renderer between the built-in or the URP & HDRP was more likely to be deprecated in (then) 2-3 years, the URP & HDRP had a higher chance than the built-in. Not because either are going to disappear that fast, but because there's still a lot of issues with both the URP and HDRP that prevent a lot of people from moving to them and away from the built-in renderer. Unity generally takes a long time getting rid of anything that's been in the engine for a long time, but quite good at announcing, releasing, and then immediately abandoning new features. It could be argued they already abandoned the original SRP, the LWRP, though it's more fair to say it turned into the URP than it being completely abandoned. Those of us who've been using Unity for the last half decade have probably gotten a little jaded by new things as they so often come out in a blaze of hype, only to be kind of half baked.

I don't think the URP or the HDRP are going away any time soon. These are very clear paths forward for Unity in terms of modernizing their rendering pipelines. And it's entirely possible that the built-in renderer will be deprecated and removed eventually. But as we're about 2-3 years into the URP & HDRP and there are still a ton of features that the built-in renderer has (or in some cases had) that those don't and that people still want, I suspect it'll be a while before that happens. There are also a lot of unanswered questions about asset store content and ease of customizability / modularity for both of the new SRPs that continue to make the built-in renderer attractive.

 

Hi,

Come end of 2022, what is the current status of removing the standard pipeline and how this will be affecting assets that still use it ?

Will it be completly removed or can still use it and will just not be updated for example ?

Given URP and HDRP are still nowhere near standard in features.

Thanks

 

Bump on this, is there any plan ?

I assume removing the standard would generally be a big disaster fot Unity as first is still the only feature complete pipeline and second is still widely used as such. Also is exponentially faster than URP.

So maybe the plan to deprecate it is generally off the table ?

 

I too would like to know this, currently it is a real annoyance that there are 3 renderers to pick from and I keep running into issues with URP because half the time new packages from Unity aren't tested with URP, only tested with built-in..

 

I think they will support built in all the way untill 2023.3LTS, so that will be quite some years of support.
By then srp coexisting also should be working properly, which is nice

 

Makes sense but also when they reach full feature-parity there is no real need to have two maintained systems that do exactly the same thing or in this case is URP does it better. I check this page a lot and most of the outstanding stuff is covered now https://docs.unity3d.com/2022.2/Documentation/Manual/render-pipelines-feature-comparison.html

 

Look at Legacy Animation. It was marked as being "deprecated" for a decade. And then it became the Legacy Animation system, when it was finally acknowledged that there's many, many common use cases where's it's vastly superior in both performance and ease of use - than all other alternatives.

This is much the same with Builtin.

Think of Builtin like that. There's no reason to deprecate it, so it'll become the Legacy Renderer.

Further, at the rate of actual improvements to URP, it's not likely that URP will be able to replace Builtin for another 5 years, even if they never do a single low hanging fruit improvement to Builtin during that time.

But, much more importantly, than all of the above, Builtin is a long known quantity, with a huge array of online tips and tricks and github repos and other facilities offering improvements to both the functionality and the performance... almost none of which URP can match.

Even more importantly, you can make your game, starting today, and work on it for the next 5 years, with Builtin, and then, just before release, experiment with the new version of URP then and there... rather than trying to keep pace with URP "improvements" and build your game across that time.

If you're starting today, use TextMesh Pro, the old input system (with Rewired if you need complexity), Builtin renderer and nothing else. You'll iterate your way to completion in a far shorter time, stay sane and be able to consider upgrades at the point of completion in far less total time than it would have taken to keep pace with the alternative "production ready"* "features"** that don't have the fuller features nor user insights.

*ha

**scare quotes, if you're wondering.

 

100% agree, removing the Standard will create so many massive issues that i think is not worth it versus keeping it on as a legacy system to choose if the user wants.

Probably in some respects is vastly faster than URP too, in image effects especially URP is night and day slower, so removing the standard would be a downgrade overall, while now there is always the fastest option for certain tasks.

 

BuiltIn isnt going anywhere any time soon. The bigger question is why are you worrying about it?. Its a known practice with Unity, that once you pick a version for your project (should be a LTS build), you never update or change version ever, for the life of the project.

Pick your version, create your project, and stop worrying about the future, as your basicly stuck with the version you picked for your project (in a good way). Ive actually saved every LTS version since 2017 to date, and they cant take them from me, or you, lol. Youll always have the version you picked, now get back to work!.

 

That only works for PC games, where you can happily release games made with Unity 4 or something and they will work (on Windows, at least).

On mobile you have to update your games once in a while: the minimum required SDK versions increase every year and only newer Unity versions support the latest SDKs (unless you're rich and buy source code access to patch them yourself).

On consoles you can release updates with the same Unity and SDK version you launched with until the end of time but the minimum required SDK to launch new games gets bumped regularly. You cannot start a new console game on an unsupported Unity version and need to upgrade mid-development if the version you started with becomes unsupported.

Making a game from scratch in URP is one thing, but migrating an existing game using built-in to URP can range from being a nuisance to being borderline impossible depending on what features you're using.

 

Totally agree, its hard on us devs with 3 SRPs even though i like them. Its a major hassle to publish a project with any SRP, as they are so different, and bug fixed/updated differently.

I feel the pain with mobile development, personally id never dev a mobile game, lol. BuiltIn isnt going anywhere for a bit, so relax for now...

 

This is not always true, depends on the nature and scope of the project.

Is not easy to relax, as i have more than 20 long term major projects in it and removing it would be close to a massive disaster.

It is same as Unity be discontinued for those projects, there is little difference as porting those massive projects with multiple assets to any pipelines would not make any sense time wise.

 

Hi,

I would like to ask if there is there any latest insight as to when Standard Pipeline is going to be removed and if it is removed in what way this will be (e.g. will we still be able to toggle to Standard to use its current features ? as a Legacy state)

This is a direct disable for more than 20 of my projects if happens, so would be thankful for any update on this.

Also some of my assets would not work in a Unity without Standard, as need to use it for maximum performance and multiple of its features, together with URP and HDRP, toggling between them.

Thanks in advance.