5.4 Released

Unity 5.4 is now available!

Read the blog for details on what’s new in 5.4. Remember to back up your projects before downloading the latest version of Unity.

Unity 5.5 Beta
If you’re looking for the Unity 5.5 Beta, never fear, it’s coming soon. While we’re getting it ready, why not take a look at our guide to being an effective Beta tester or check out what’s coming in Unity 5.5 on our Roadmap Page.

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Why now there is “5.5 alpha” and “alpha” in the roadmap and most of the cool things are in the new separated alpha?

:smile:

  • Android: Deprecated UnityPlayerNativeActivity and UnityPlayerProxyActivity; these will now print warnings to the logcat if in use.
  • Android: Removed native activity implementation. An activity with the same name based on a regular activity is still in place for backwards compatibility reasons.

:hushed:

Not entirely sure what the implications of these are? Has the process of creating Android plugins changed completely? No more Native Activity?

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5.5 alpha (soon beta) is because it’s the plan for 5.5, while “alpha” is undefined internal.

Runs on Sierra every time I launch. That alone is a vast upgrade for me :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ok but most of the features have just been moved out of 5.5 then, including the Director(delayed forever) and the splash screen. Or does it mean that they can also appear sooner than 5.5?

Well, there’s “alpha” - as in it’s getting customer and user feedback on how to shape the feature.

Then there’s “alpha” as in this bundle of features are being prepared together, still getting some feedback and looking to move forward as a set towards stabilization. However, there’s a reasonable confidence that it can stabilize for the release.

Things still sitting in the former set, means we have feedback to still process (as well as actually land the changes).
However, as you suggest, the 5.5 alpha is not yet locked. The lock basically comes in going to beta.

I can confirm though, we are still incorporating lots of feedback for Director, so 5.5 is not in the cards.
Splash screen, has a fair chance.

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The fancy almost-but-not-quite-a-presentation-app splash screen system is like a bugfix to some, so I expect them to add it in a 5.4 update soon-ish. Been waiting long enough :wink:

I noticed there’s a button for joining the feedback panel on the roadmap, so I signed up. I hope UT open a nearby office so I can make full use of it :slight_smile:

hmm, unity 5.4 does not let me upload any package to the asset store!
i grabbed the latest version of the “asset store tools” and let it be updated.
then i tried to upload from mac: unity prompted that “uploading webplayer bundles is not supported anymore”.
trying to upload the same asset folder on win simply stalls in “Building asset bundle” – for more than half an hour now.
what shall i do?

With the current “locked” features of 5.5, seems like a very minor release.
Sound like Director is out of the running for 5.5. I really hope that NavMesh baking doesn’t suffer the same fate.
Ooo the new Video API was added the to roadmap. I’ve been waiting on a fully cross-platform MovieTexture replacement forever!

Minor means fast. Let’s hope compiler upgrades make it at the very least.

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Now that DX12 is supported with better multi threaded rendering, does that mean we now can get those insane amount of draw calls without choking the pipeline?

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Noticed that the installer (on MacOS) no longer has MacOS as a component to select during the installation. Is that a new thing - that it installs Windows/MacOS automatically if that’s the platform you’re running the installer on? Or am I going to find that I can no longer build for MacOS :slight_smile:

Nevermind - I RTFM’d!

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There is one annoying bug in this version, i have scene where there are no cameras but just ui canvas. And i can’t get rid off message “No cameras rendering”. Someone already reported bug on issue tracker while this was still in beta:

Edit:

One more thing to report, unity cloud build cant’ build iOS version now. It worked in previous version:

This is the error:
[Unity] Player export failed. Reason: Shader error in ‘Sprites/Default’: Internal error communicating with the shader compiler process
558: ! build of ‘default-ios’ failed. compile failed

Update:

At the end, unity cloud builded game after second try, not sure what caused problem before.

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Really appreciate the quality and compatibility of this release!! Everything works like a charm when upgrading our project.

instanced surface shaders broken in unity 5.4.0f3

instanced surface shaders produce heavy light flickering when using forward rendering and a point light as the shader compiler does not add “#define UNITY_USE_CONCATENATED_MATRICES”!

reproduce this by creating a new instanced surface shader.
select the “NewInstancedSurfaceShader” in the project tab and click “Show generated code”
you will not find any “#define UNITY_USE_CONCATENATED_MATRICES” as mentioned in the docs:
“You need to tell Unity to always calculate the vertex transformation. To do this, multiply by M first, then by VP (VP * M * v) in add passes. This allows you to avoid conflict in the base/first passes caused by small floating point error. Define UNITY_USE_CONCATENATED_MATRICES before including UnityCG.cginc. You don’t need to do this for surface shaders, as it is automatically generated.”

Bug Case 818543

By the way, the blog post talks about motion blur effect and link to the asset store but that effect is only available in bitbucket and only on an experimental branch, so a bit hard to find.

Could anyone explain to me, in a language I can understand, what are the real differences between 5.3 and 5.4, beside the fact that we can now zoom in and out in the game view? :wink:

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How about actually updating the contents of the items of the roadmap? For the newly released 5.4 we read (on instancing):

  • OS X and mobile platforms support might come in 5.4.

As Unity continues to play “shiny feature dominoes”, I’d say it’s pretty important they make these overviews accurate.