What are goals and HDRP roadmap for Unity 2024.1/.2?
I mean that depends on if you are asking about the entire year of 2024 or just 2024.1
Due note some of the stuff below is already testable in 2023.2 Beta and 2023.3 Alpha.
Biggest thing is 2023.3 Alpha has the Render Graph update which is what has been causing the major slow down of new features. With it starting to be finished in 2023.3 expect a lot better features, performance, and tools with less bugs.
Mainly the Render Graph big update which is in 2023.3 Alpha and able to be tested now in URP as well with the Render Graph Viewer update.
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Shader Foundation improvements
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Burst Occlusion culling System
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Improvements to the SRP volume System for performance in memory and CPU mainly using updated API.
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Scriptable Render Pipeline API
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Shader Foundry API
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Block Shaders which is the replacement for Surface Shaders built on Shader Foundry
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Shader Graph is is moving stuff to them as much as possible for a lot better shader systems
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Shader Templates for shader Graph that can be used in sub shaders and Shader Graphs.
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DXC Shader Compilation and Shader Model 6 upgrade with no more limitations on uses for DX11 and GLESS
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WIP tool to view the Shader Variants being created so you can see which shader needed work.
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The Heat Map tool built into the Shader Graph looks cool.
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URP and HDRP Cross pipeline coexistence so no longer need to worry about making shaders for different SRP. This is a big one for a lot of people.
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Possibly Compute Shaders for Web using WebGPU new platform which is in 2023.2 Beta and newer.
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New built in materials for Water, Ice, Grass, Terrain, and Rocks.
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New Node Reference for Shader Graph and Shader Example.
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2024.1/2024.2
I’m interested in new Reflection system, GI, SSGI, volumetric area lights.
You still cannot use URP shaders when you are in HDRP mode or vice versa, So still need to have a set of shaders for each pipeline? please correct me If I’m wrong on this.
Going to have to look around and see where I first saw it being talked about. There was talks about doing things like creating a uniform module using the new Render Graph API, Shader Foundry, and the Shader Blocks to allow that to be a possibility.
Since the new system let’s people create structs in C# and than they can be converted into Shader Structs it is possibly to have the C# be converted for both URP and HDRP uses. I hope this will still be a thing or at least have partial support.
Ah okay you are probably wanting information on if they have plans for the Bake Prefabs and the Light baking Management system for Batch Baking than.
Sorry on that front I don’t know too much if they plan on doing that or if they decided to change what it is called or found a new way to do it.
Baking Prefabs are a new scene independent lighting data asset that holds information for light probe calculations, reflection probes, lightmaps, and so forth. It kind of unlocks the ability to bake information into prefabs for use in like runtime generated procedural levels or spawned items.
I know they are finishing the new Light Baking API in 2023.3. It is a lot faster and better than the old one. Can bake light maps while editing the scene because it first takes a screen shot of the map than does the light baking in the background allowing you to work in editor without it stalling while light bake. Lot faster too.
Due note this would unlock things like baking Sky Occlusion.
There is also updates coming to the new GI/Dynamic APV System, but I don’t know much on that end sorry.
All I know it will help working with Real Time Global Illumination for both ray tracing and screen space rendering.
Are these basically thing you are wanting to know more about. If so I could possibly look back into them a bit more.
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I was hoping for Lumen equivalent no bake GI.
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So uh good news about that, but first due note what I am about to say could change since this is a future thing and not set in stone, but some of the stuff needed to do that apparently has landed already so assuming it is coming.
They first are adding optimizations and stuff to the SRP systems. One major optimization I saw a couple days ago on the GitHub merge list landed in URP for 2023.3 alpha which when Render Graphs get the same API for both HDRP/URP should improve performance a lot to help take the next step farther.
Link to the commit on Unity’s official GitHub.
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Graphics/pull/7972/commits/385d1173ecbbcebf4b525935247fb91ce20435b8
The above was the last commit needing merged for the phase of development focusing on the NRP Render Graph compiler. A 15% to 40% range of CPU performance increase depending on what you are doing with SRP.
To do the above they actually needed to fully update to Unity Collections Package version 2.2 which was a used in several places. So that is done as far as I know which means they can use the newer and much better collections code for SRP that is a lot better for memory and performance by default.
Link to the commit on Unity’s official GitHub.
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Graphics/pull/7972/commits/b817f913714efb32b2319ca675f57fdd8392b0e5
For other parts related more to the lighting. I somehow missed a Unity post that announced Light Data assets were actually ready an entire version sooner than I thought. Thought it was going to be in 2023.3, but it landed in 2023.2.
This also talks about the newer Light API I mentioned might becoming. Seems they are coming before 2024.1
https://discussions.unity.com/t/928079
This is where things are not set in stone and I could be wrong so please take this with a grain of salt.
The Light Data assets in the future could possibly be used to help with containing cache data like Lumen does for better performance and might be able to include information for stuff like the Generated Mesh Distance Fields. Note I don’t think Unity is currently implementing Generated Mesh Distance Fields, but just using them as an example of data the Light Data assets could hold that works like Lumen.
Unreal Mesh Distance Field documentation
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/mesh-distance-fields-in-unreal-engine/
Basically the ground work for what you want is actually ahead of the time I thought it was coming, so you should start seeing more stuff in the near future.
Can’t say too much, but there might be some information at Unite this year. I honestly am not sure 100%, but I would keep my ears open for it.
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+1000
all this baking is nonsense, even if with APV it only takes few seconds, it’s still baking
Baking isn’t non-sense many high quality AAA games like spider man 2 and horizon forbidden use baked lighting.
In triple AAA gaming world, I’m sure that is awesome.
But in the non gaming world, where we dont have hundreds of people working for years on a project, but merely a single person, 3 at most, that need to output a project from start to finish within a few days, baking is nonsense.
I don’t think we are getting that in any near future. Nobody from unity ever mentioned it. And once they will, it will take 3-5 years to build at minimum, looking at how long it takes them to build something as basic as APV’s and it still bad at rendering quality and stability. If you really need that, your best option is to learn unreal or godot and build a game in those engines. You will have a game ready by the time unity has it in their engine 
It was mentioned during the Graphics Dev Blitz Day 2023.
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Yet I still don’t expect it to come in upcoming year or two, unless they hire up some extra engineers. No official announcement or roadmap update makes it seem faaaar off any near future. Though great to hear they at least want to make it. I was hoping they would announce something like that during unite, but they mentioned no new roadmap at all.