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Unity 5 release date?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by PROTOFACTOR_Inc, Mar 20, 2014.

  1. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    Thank god i pre-ordered U5, can't wait to get my hands on Enlighten. Beast drove me crazy for the last 2 years
     
  2. deram_scholzara

    deram_scholzara

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    Did you order Unity 5 Pre-release? Yes? Then you're a pre-order customer.
     
  3. Devil_Inside

    Devil_Inside

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    Oh god, can't wait!
     
  4. elbows

    elbows

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    Could someone from Unity confirm here that all pre-order Unity 5 customers will definitely get access to the beta? I know thats what was said in the keynote, but I don't want to pre-order now and then find out later that someone misspoke. You don't have to confirm the precise timescale, as I know such things are subject to slippage.
     
    djweinbaum likes this.
  5. Aras

    Aras

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    Yes. The current private beta is a bit rough around the edges; we plan to give pre-order customers beta access slightly later. Like, in a month from now or so.
     
  6. im

    im

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    i think they said in the keynote speach that unity 5 beta will be out in 4-8 weeks to preorder customers
     
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  7. jemast

    jemast

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    Since we're on the topic, one quick question to avoid opening a new thread. Is the new in-editor ray-tracing tech from Img Tec still on for 5.0 release? From the keynote yesterday it was unclear if the live update of lighting was Enlighten only or ray-tracing was indeed used while Enlighten is baking.

    I'm asking because it didn't look one bit like the first ray-tracing tech demo we saw from GDC if I remember correctly where you could see the ray tracer take a few seconds from noisy results to good quality preview. Then again the scene demoed yesterday was probably simple enough (and demo machine beefy enough) for real-time ray-tracing?
     
  8. andmm

    andmm

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    Another thing is Umbra. Is Unity 5 still shipping with Umbra?
     
  9. Aras

    Aras

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    No, that was postponed to a later release.
     
  10. Aras

    Aras

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    Yes, but a newer version. From current notes: "Updated occlusion culling (Umbra) version; contains improvements for mobile Umbra culling performance, and improves occlusion culling robustness in some cases."
     
  11. jemast

    jemast

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    Thanks for taking the time to reply. I understand this is complex and new stuff that is complicated to integrate in a "it just works" manner. Anyway new gfx features of Unity 5 look awesome, keep up the good work!
     
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  12. VIC20

    VIC20

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    What about subscribers? I've subscribed when subscription was introduced and I'm already in the flexible plan - not possible to preorder anything this way.
     
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  13. Don-Gray

    Don-Gray

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    Seems it was mentioned somewhere subscribers would be included in the open beta.
    Found this in the Unity Subscription FAQ:

    All questions regarding your subscription can be sent to subscription@unity3d.com.
    All product-related questions should be sent to support@unity3d.com.
     
  14. elias_t

    elias_t

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    Just watched the unite keynote.

    Good job! It seems unity5 will be the best and more robbust unity release ever.
     
  15. Deleted User

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    Well as it turns out I am actually allowed to talk about it with a * for certain things. Being honest as a beta, it is pretty stable by all accounts. Not really noticed anything major to scream about, looking to get a speedtree beta license so I can add some pretty trees and what not.

    Most of it is business as usual without the 32-bit limitations, not explored too much into Enlighten yet bar messing around with directional light GI and a couple of point lights. But plenty of time..

    IBL stuff is cool, just add a skybox and it creates a DL with some color for you and sets a mood.

    * This is from the Unity 5.0 closed beta.
     
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  16. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    I am really excited that Unity is doing an open beta for Unity 4.6 and for 5.0. This is awesome. Thanks.
     
  17. Don-Gray

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    Unity has been pretty aggressive it seems in optimizing memory usage,
    though I've seen some higher than 32-bit-able memory usage in GI jobs,
    nothing very high in regular scene memory usage.
    Thinking about creating a topic with some of the cool things I've noticed.
    Yes, we have been given permission to talk about some of our experience with the new features
    *as long as we mention it is from the closed beta.

    *Experienced in Unity 5 closed beta :)
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2014
  18. Deleted User

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    Unity 5.0 is in closed beta, I'm not sure when it's coming out for pre-orders.
     
  19. Archania

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    4 to 8 weeks is what they said in the keynote for pre-orders. which was posted several times already
     
  20. ShilohGames

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    I realize Unity 5.0 is currently closed beta. I watched the keynote. They said an open beta of Unity 5.0 would be available for pre-order customers in 4-8 weeks.
     
  21. Don-Gray

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    Sorry to annoy anyone with this "closed beta" talk, that is how we were told to present it,
    though not necessarily in any particular format.
    In my case, the smilie was an acknowledgment to copying ShadowK's notification with the asterisk.
     
  22. Dabeh

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    Sadly, it's pretty stable, it's making me feel pretty useless right now, I don't have a whole lot of time to find bugs and they did too good of a job with Unity 4.6 and 5.0 is proving to be the same. Great job guys, really. I'm pretty impressed so far and I really like where it's heading; out of the box ;).
     
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  23. Deleted User

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    Well from some chitter chatter, it sounded like a butterfly flaps its wings in China and Unity fell over. But I've found that not to be the case. The auto-conversion tool has sorted out most of scripts for me (in regards to scripting changes) just a bit of tidy up here and there, we had a fair few of them so it made life much easier. Another bonus for people wondering about migration to Unity 5.0, I don't believe you should have a hard time.

    What else can I say? People have access to the new GUI via 4.6 and Enlighten is better than beast. The system I'm testing on is a laptop with an I7 4930mx and 780m SLI, with one of the 780m's disabled, if I unplug the power (psu) from the laptop it runs at half speed (roughly) so the GPU runs around the same speed as a GTX460 or Radeon HD 7770 and I can't really tell that much difference in the way of performance. Umbra is better in this release, had a quick mess around with cloth sim and all seems to work as it should.

    * Unity 5.0 closed beta.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 22, 2014
  24. sqallpl

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    @ShadowK @Dabeh great to hear that

    any word on real time reflection probes? (not baked, movable)

    what about movable/dynamic light probes (as far as I knot they've showed only static one in the keynote), any chance to just attach a light probe to a dynamic object and move it with the object instead of placing a lot of them in the whole level?
     
  25. Reanimate_L

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    more.....give us more info...!!!! :p
     
  26. LucasUylings

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    Hi, Graham, I payed the preorder on march 29th. Yesterday I received an email from Joana Kodyte proudly announcing beta 4.6. Since Unity does not want to make pre-order customers wait forever and summer has almost ended, when can we expect Unity 5.0?
     
  27. Alk Studios

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    Its pretty :).
    Not yet sure if we are allowed to post any images yet, but they have given the start-up and project wizard a nice make-over and the inclusion of the WebGL (preview) is a nice touch :).
    I am sure some of you shall also appreciate the inclusion of game templates, which currently include 2 place holders: "3D Endless Runner" and "Tower Defense", both of which are currently in development as of beta version 1.

    Overall it appears to perform better than previous versions on my testing system, most likely due to me utilizing the 64-bit editor.

    [Note]
    Unity 5.0 is in closed beta and as such any features expressed in this post may not be reflective of the final product.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2014
  28. superpig

    superpig

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    They said in the keynote that they expect to ship Unity 5.0 to pre-order customers in about 4-8 weeks time, on the condition that it's become stable enough by then.
     
  29. Archania

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    Still have till almost the end of September for summer to end.
     
  30. Deleted User

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    Reflection probes work LOL, I'm not sure what more there is to it and they are baked. Which is nice, as to your second question. Good one, I'm not sure I'll check and get back to you..

    P.S I'm stealing ALK studio's notification.

    [Note]
    Unity 5.0 is in closed beta and as such any features expressed in this post may not be reflective of the final product.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 22, 2014
  31. superpig

    superpig

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    Are you sure about that?
     
  32. Deleted User

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    Nope, sorry you are right it's baked or you can use a custom cubemap. I'm doing 10 things at once, so I missed that apologies again.
     
  33. Alk Studios

    Alk Studios

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    It is my pleasure :p

    I have just received confirmation that I can post some images, so I have attached 3 images showing the start-up and project wizard.



     
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  34. Reanimate_L

    Reanimate_L

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    Hmmm so subscription user don't have access to 5.0 beta??
     
  35. Devil_Inside

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    I envy you, guys :)
    GIVE ME UNITY 5 NAO!!!!!
     
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  36. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Not until they have a public beta.

    --Eric
     
  37. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    what not for 5.0? but on the feature thread of unity 5.0 there was something like:
    • Real-time lightmap previews
    and it was for a 5.0 release, so will it make it to 5.1 or 5.2?
    I understand that this is a very complex technology to wok on. and I wouldn't mind a 5.5 release for this. i just need some clarifications.
     
  38. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    My god... I really want to get my hands on Unity 5. thank god i pre-ordered it :D
     
  39. Aras

    Aras

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    That's called "prediction is hard, especially about the future". Unfortunately, we could not finish the feature in time for 5.0. Hopefully it will make it to 5.1 or so.
     
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  40. sqallpl

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    There is a option called "type" in the reflection probe inspector, it's visible in this video (20:07).
    Are you sure that there is no option different than bake there?
    I'm sure that there was a slide in the GDC presentation that said, that you can update them real time but it's expensive.

    If they are baked only, I don't see a way to use them correctly in the dynamic scenes (time of a day, clouds, weather etc.) Am I wrong?

    Even if not real time, it would be nice to be able to update them every X seconds or something. If I remember, you said that UE4 can update reflection probes in real time. Is it true?
     
  41. superpig

    superpig

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    The feature was in earlier builds, but they've taken it out for now as it wasn't working how they wanted. I believe the intention is to bring it back in a later release (either a later beta of 5.0, or one of the 5.X releases).

    That particular dropdown has 'Baked' and 'Custom' (i.e. you can just give it your own cubemap). It might be possible to implement your own dynamic cubemaps with Camera.RenderToCubemap and the custom setting at the moment, though I suspect it'd be missing the specular convolution step.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2014
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  42. Deleted User

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    I double checked just to make sure, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post screenshots. But all I can see is baked and custom underneath the type. When you click on custom you can add a cubemap, yes UE4 does support realtime reflection probes although they are expensive to render and you can view the scene in reflections only to see what's going on.

    * Unity 5.0 closed beta
     
  43. Don-Gray

    Don-Gray

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    A quick video to show how fast Unity 5.0 (beta) launches, especially the Asset Store.



    EDIT: Uploaded higher resolution video and music.
    I lost about 85 "views" but I think I'm done messing with it.
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2014
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  44. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    I have no problem for 5.1
     
  45. shkar-noori

    shkar-noori

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    what about the video of unity 5 feature pre-view, the reflections were dynamic, see 0:31
     
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  46. Andy-Touch

    Andy-Touch

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    Is that a scene of Violins and Cellos? Are you doing something with the new Audio tools? :)
     
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  47. sqallpl

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    Thanks for the info.

    Now I'm wondering how it can be implemented to work good enough for dynamic scenes (time of day, weather). PBR shader generally needs some image based reflection. I will probably try to use skybox for reflections. Anyway it probably wont look to good as it will be just simple, gradient, clear skybox. Things like clouds will be placed on a different layer so they won't be included in the native skybox cubemap that Unity 5 can use. I hope that there will be some way to generate a cubemap from the scene in runtime (even only for sky and clouds, without additional objects), even if only one per few minutes for one reflection probe that is moving with the player camera.

    Im little worried now because assets with pbr shader can look just weird without proper reflection map in most cases. Just imagine metallic, reflective sphere that uses a generally clear skybox texture and your scene is covered with dynamic (sepearate objects) clouds. Now you have a sphere that is reflecting blue sky even if whole sky is covered with stormy clouds.

    Maybe it can be don by baking XX-XXX number of cubemaps for different hours of day and weather types. Lets say 24 hours x 4 different weather types. So you have 94 cubemaps and you can change them accordingly based on time of a day and weather.

    I really have no idea, I'm just brainstorming. Maybe I'm totally wrong? If anyone have some idea for this please let me know.
     
  48. Deleted User

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    I wouldn't worry about it to be honest, our game is massive 4 X 16KM squared map right this moment. Which will be scaled down but I like to give an engine a good testing. We use TOD and I actively avoid real time reflections for the world map, only place we leverage them is indoor scenes which are loaded on another level. Trying to stream that many meshes with the huge terrain and foliage with real time reflections in places is a recipe for performance disaster.

    Also it's not to say that Unity won't implement them like Superpig says, what you'll want to use is Enlighten for the TOD stuff as it's geometry pre-cached. It'll look good no worries ;).
     
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  49. sqallpl

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    Do you use PBR shader alerady or do you plan to switch to unity standard shader later? If so, what are you using for a reflection? Just a color input? AFAIK you need to have some image based reflection for PBR pipeline. Here is what I have in Quixel with some shiny metallic material and no IBL reflections.

    BTW. I'm not worried about real time (true real time ;) ) reflection probes at all. The thing I would like to see is to be able to just 'refresh' the cubemap (maybe even the global cubemap) from time to time to match the scenery.

     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2014
  50. Deleted User

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    Yeah we use Quixel too :), I've messed around with the PBR standard shader. I also used LUX with Unity 4.X, I use the specular map that's output from Quixel. But were mainly an Unreal house now for our main projects, so I haven't messed around with it too much.

    All I use as a base with Quixel is color ID and mesh. Let all the normal / specular / AO etc. get generated..
     
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