2020 Roadmap Q&A - Core Engine & Creator Tools

[CodeMonkeyYT]

I just want to say that the “Released”, “Prerelease” and “In Development” is a great format!
It’s much easier to understand compared to “Verified”, “Preview” and “Experimental”

Reply:

@""

Thanks for the comment on the format - just to be clear, these are NOT replacements for our nomenclature - we are simply telling you the story of what we have released (core engine and verified packages), what is coming in prerelease (preview and alpha / beta) and what is in dev but not locked to a release number yet.

[SideSwipe9th]

In Unity 2019.3, you released a preview for disabling domain and scene reloading when entering play mode in the Editor. Disabling domain reloading requires some additional code for static fields to be properly re-initialised when exiting and re-entering play mode. Unfortunately at present the experimental feature breaks a number of third party Asset store plugins because they use static fields in their code.

How set in stone is the RuntimeInitalizeOnLoad boilerplate? If an asset creator updates to enable support for the 2019.3 experimental feature, will that code still work in 2020.1 and later? Or is there plans to change that boilerplate? Or even eliminate it entirely?

I personally find the experimental feature of huge benefit. For one of the games I’m working on as part of a studio, entering play mode in the editor goes from taking between 40 and 60 seconds, to less than 4 with reloading disabled. Unfortunately it breaks at least one of the plugins we use, and the creators of at least one of them has expressed that they’re not willing to update to enable support for this feature until they can be sure the boilerplate stuff is stabilised.

Answer:

@""

We aim to remove the experimental label for disabling domain and scene reloading when entering playmode for Unity 2020.2 and thereby also settling on the behavior for it. I currently find it unlikely that we will make major additional changes to the behavior in 2020.1 and 2019.3.

[rz_0lento]

Roadmap stream mentioned this:

Number of publicly available Preview packages are reduced.
We are transitioning to a new definition of Preview.
Experimental items will be kept to focus groups.

As enthusiastic tester for various new Unity packages, this makes me really sad. I loved that Unity opened the development early on and this makes it sound like we are going back to the old direction again

I’d wish Unity would reconsider this, like, even making people fill out forms (so they understand it’s experimental / or to have possible NDA) to get automatically in the experimental versions for thing x would be nice instead of just locking most out.

I do understand why this happened (there’s a lot of people complaining about previews publicly) but this could be handled so that it wouldn’t lock out people who actually understand the nature of earlier development stages.

Anyway since this is QA, I’m going to ask what are the requirements in getting approved to these focus groups?
Also, is Unity planning to close access to already public github repositories like SRP, input system and ml-agents?

Answer:

@""

Hi. First some clarity; intent is not to take anything away from you. In general the intent is not to close currently open repositories or blackbox this going forward on new repositories. Equally we still want to hear your voice in development on things that are in beta / preview / experimental (pick your term). What we ship, when we ship and in some cases, if we should even consider shipping it is dependent on your input.

What we will do is be more distinct about when we are ready to go into preview and what should be in there, when. We want to ship a strong foundational product you can rely on, while enabling collaborative development with our community on new features that are not as baked yet.

The community at large has spoken and is asking us to ship a stable foundation and be deliberate our feature work and roadmaps and be explicit when we will ship them. As we are learning how to do this best, we’re taking a step back on what package lifecycle should be (so you know what to expect, when in terms of development and support) and how we offer that to our many users with different needs; generally we don’t want everyone to have to deal with areas where we are still looking for feedback, or have unclarity on that we are still making decisions to ship or not; but make sure that we can hear and incorporate feedback from engaged users. That’s a balance that we are trying to find.

I’d say that currently there’s a number of packages we should not have shipped yet while there’s others we should absolutely polish and get shipped. What we are saying here is that not all packages will be available directly in the editor and that we will work on clearer lifecycle, so you know when we are still in active development (and it’s probably not ready for your production yet) and when we are feeling it’s solidified enough to be part of the core editor/engine. Hope that helps.

We are also focussing on assembling user-groups that have a shared interest in a new feature that is not in public preview. The exact mechanics behind and when for this are still under discussion.

Hope that clarifies.

[MechaWolf99]

Is there somewhere we can follow along with the editor QoL improvement development? And/or know which QoL features are already in the queue to be added?

[yahorkleban]

Hi! Thanks for the mini presentation!

I wonder if the VFX sample projects shown in this presentation are available somewhere to have a look? (like github or learn portal)

Cheers!

Answer:

@quixotic

Yes, our VFX Graph sample project is here, and here’s a blog post that goes into detail on them.

[liam_unity628]

Will RenderPass API be supported for mobile VR (Quest specifically) in 2020.1 for custom SRPs?

Answer:

@mfuad

We don’t have any plans to share on this right now. We’ll share here as soon as we have an update.

[Onigiri]

Long time ago there were plans for new better roadmap page/site with up to date info. Is this in development or dropped?

Answer:

@""

It’s still planned - something we need to get on with - we know! Sorry for the delay on this front!

[atranson]

Concerning what’s in development for the editor evolution (creative workflows section), you talked about multi-document workflow and contexts to edit assets independently of one another.

Does this mean that we will be able to create our own workspaces through editor scripts ? I had in mind something like the prefab editor which would allow to enter a specific workspace with its own “scene” view and windows when focusing assets or components of a given type.

Also, when do you think this kind of feature will be available to preview?

Answer:

@""

Thanks for the interest in this! We are exploring different approaches. The principle behind this is to make the content you are working with to be front and center, to keep you in the flow. In a sense, this is like the prefab editor. The exact how and when for workspaces is still TBD. Watch this space.

[Jokerminator]

Reaching Your Audience:
Will you change the Asset Store share/split of 70% for the creator and 30% for Unity Tech., that creators can offer their assets for less money and reach a bigger audience?

Answer:

@LeonhardP

There is no change to the split planned.

[Jawsarn]

When will the remaining of DOTS tech get their own sub-forums?

Answer:

@AskCarol

Hey @Jawsarn ! That’s a great question and sub-forums for DOTS is in our plans this year. We just want to make sure that we align with the teams to include all of the product areas that DOTS touches.

[optimise]

From the roadmap 2020, I see there is New Entities Debugger in development. Will New Entities Debugger include Logic Flow Map feature as shown below? I have been waiting for this awesome feature since 2018.

Answer:

@""

Hello,

+1 to the feature request. The new entity debugger is still very early, but expect update throughout the year.

I do want to mention some what related, that visualising job dependencies in the profiler is coming in 2020.1.

[willgoldstone]

Linked in the description of youtube video, but specifically here - Unity Roadmap 2020: Core Engine & Creator Tools | PPT

[HermanLederer]

Are there any plans for documenting HDRP and URP in 2020?

Answer:

@""

Hi Herman,

The docs for HDRP and URP are available now and linked from the main manual page on render pipelines:

Unity - Manual: Render pipelines

But here’s the direct links too (you can always get the docs for a specific package version by following the link from within Package Manager)
Redirecting to latest version of com.unity.render-pipelines.universal
Redirecting to latest version of com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition

Were you aware of these docs or was your question about updates to these?
HDRP and URP are important features and high on our priorities list so we aim to improve and keep these up to date.

We recently added the Feedback feature to package docs too so please feel free to give feedback directly via the rating and report a problem links at the bottom of every page.

Thanks for the question.

Best,
Olly

[FI0rian]

question about the visual scripting system:
Is the plan eventually to have the system be integrated in the engine in such a way that it should be used side by side with normal C# scripting (similar to UE4’s blueprints) or will they just be there as an alternative to C# for non programmers?

Answer:

@""

Hi Fl0rian,

Yes the plan is to have the system integrated so that every feature can interact with visual scripting. This will mostly take the form of specialized high level nodes that will be added to support every aspect of Unity. We have a few teams testing this as we speak but the full integration will be done gradually and will extend beyond launch.

We also have features that will use the visual scripting framework, like animation graph and state machines, enabling full interaction.

Cheers!

[MechaWolf99]

In the World-building section you talk about foundation APIs, are you able to tell us a bit more about them? What are they, what will/can they be used for?

You also talk about being able to create your own manipulators using the APIs(?). The demonstration video is small, and hard to read the text. What are they exactly? Are they custom shaped gizmos/handles that are made using GameObjects? Sounds like you can have them even play sounds and things from within the editor?

Answer:

@""

Hi MechaWolf99,

We are working on several APIs; we want the Scene Tools to be generic concepts that are used as frameworks both internally and externally. We propose solutions out of the box but let you extend it to your liking.

In that specific case we are talking about the Prefab Handles that let you create handles through gameobjects and provides a framework that works in any context. You basically create your own prefab that can be used to replace/create gizmos, handles and manipulators.

Hope this helps!

[ecurtz]

The session only vaguely overlapped with the items on the existing roadmap at https://unity3d.com/unity/roadmap - will that be updated to better reflect current priorities?

Similar question + answer:

@Onigiri

Long time ago there were plans for new better roadmap page/site with up to date info. Is this in development or dropped?

[AskCarol]

@_cinoS

Dark Mode for free?

No new news today. We’ll share here as soon as we have an update.

[MechaWolf99]

In world-building, the in development section says “Customizable toolbars and windows”. That sounds very cool! Can we get some more info on what that could look like? What things we may be able to customize, and in what way.

Answer:

@""

Sure - we are working on a scene overlay framework, initially for our Environment system v2 but generally open for you to build tools you need in the scene, we want it to be easy to develop nice contextual UI much like the great work seen in asset store tools like Peek.

[spryx]

Any news on the status of collaborate 2.0?
I’m tired of waiting for the scanning dialog to complete on launch.

Answer:

@AskCarol

We have evaluated several options on how to best reach our stability, performance and scalability goals for the future of the product. In taking an honest assessment of our roadmap, it has become clear that leveraging proven backend solutions such as Plastic SCM, Perforce, and GitHub is more likely to succeed at reaching those goals within a reasonable time frame. The Collab backend as it exists today will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future while we are working on a new solution.You can reach out to us via these forums or at collabsupport@unity3d.com if you and your team need assistance in the meantime.Thank you for your patience and we are looking forward to sharing our plans with you in the near future.

See further here .

[talila]

Thanks for the roadmap presentation!
Since it was not mentioned in the talk at all, any news or a timeframe for Project Mars?

Answer:

@""

Hi Talila! MARS is currently in open beta (email to join the beta - mars@unity3d.com) and will be released this year. No other specifics than that right now i’m afraid!