Hi, in the graphics roadmap Ray Tracing for URP is listed as “Under Consideration” for a while now, alongside many other things like Blob shadow, SSR, Volumetric clouds etc… When are they going to be planned, especially Ray Tracing and Volumetric Clouds, I imagine they have to be in URP for a smooth transition to Unified RP in the future.
I asked about Ray Tracing before and I was told it’s not a priority, and one reason was mobile isn’t capable enough, well that changed for like 2 years now when all Apple and Samsung and Qualcomm started releasing mobile chips with hw RT, and URP is used for PC/Consoles as well so we’d appreciate the option, games without RTGI look flat, and backing lightmaps compromises dynamic lighting, and you have to wait ages for a single bake which basically kills iteration time =]
I’d also like to see hardware raytracing support in URP, as well as more use of compute shaders on platforms that support them. I’ve found a lot of workarounds for these missing features though.
We are carefully selecting which features to add, considering feedback from the “Under Consideration” section as well as other sources, to ensure URP remains lean, extensible, and stable. That’s why it’s great to see the ecosystem growing with community-driven solutions. Thanks for sharing these projects!
At the same time, we are working on a low-level graphics backend refactor to create a stronger, more scalable foundation for Vulkan, Metal, and other modern systems. Unity runs on billions of devices, so this requires a large team and careful execution to maintain performance and stability across a vast hardware range.
As part of this, we are exploring ray tracing on more platforms, but adding it (especially to URP) introduces significant complexity. URP is designed for scalability, so we need to ensure any solution works beyond just PC and consoles. That’s why it remains under consideration, with the roadmap card gathering feedback on priorities.
Right now, our focus is on completing the refactor. Once that’s in place, we’ll evaluate the best way to expand ray tracing on more platforms, while balancing performance, scalability, and usability.
I do have additional feedback if you don’t mind me sharing here:
This is the first time I’m hearing about a low-level graphics backend refactor, Unity is long overdue for a backend upgrade so that’s great to hear, if anything I want to stay updated on its progress.
This is true, but I want to emphasize the importance of having options and allowing developers to make informed decisions. URP is designed for scalability, and while I understand Unity’s goal of ensuring features work across a wide range of devices, nobody expects ray tracing to be universally supported. It’s perfectly fine if RT is reserved for PC, consoles, and high-end mobile devices.
Scalability is great, but if ensuring broad compatibility ends up delaying or canceling RT for URP, then it’s not worth pursuing that approach. Developers who understand the feature know better than to enable RT on low-end hardware. If there’s concern about beginners misusing it, the editor could include clear warnings stating that RT is intended for high-end hardware only. But for those of us who understand its limitations and use cases, having the option is invaluable.
A scalable approach—similar to HDRP’s full per-pixel RT with a ray-marched fallback—could work in URP as well. And if ray-marched RT isn’t performant enough, there are other cost-effective solutions, such as voxel-based RT. For example, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 uses Sparse Voxel Octree GI, which is both visually superior to Unity’s ray-marched GI and at dirt cheap to run at the same time.
Restricting RT in URP risks limiting the engine’s flexibility—the very reason many developers choose it over HDRP. Unity has an opportunity to stay competitive by offering scalable RT options, rather than holding back a feature that could significantly enhance URP for developers who need it, and you mentioned Metal and Vulkan support, those are great, but also DXR, we use URP for PC games as well =].
Fine goal, I hope we keep hearing more updates about it, and I hope RT lands on URP. With Metal support we’ll be able to score some marketing points with Apple if our game supports RT on iPhone.
RT (especially RTGI) is going to allow us to create dynamic worlds as a fraction of the development cost of traditional baking solutions, and it’s visually superior, I can’t wait to see it on URP:
You could also allow HDRP to run on devices that support raytracing, like apple iphone 15 and up, or Android devices that support raytracing,
If that is not allowed, then URP raytracing would be the best option. even if it’s just for Ambient Occlusion Raytracing, or some improvements to reflections. There are plenty of things that are part of URP that can kill mobile performance, it’s up to the developer to make sure the game is optimised. And I feel HW raytracing can help a lot here, the alternative is to do everything in software
But here also HW raytracing can boost its speed.
HW raytracing helps more than it harms. so please unity make it easy for devs to use HW raytracing in URP.
Also HTrace: World Space Global Illumination is going to be ported to URP and it will also benefit from Hardware RT support in metal etc.
From an engineering standpoint, the work is complete, and the code is already included in the package. However, the public release (which involves adding documentation and changing a few classes from internal to public) has been pushed to 6.3.
Why not make raytracing a toggle that can be enabled/disabled in URP? I as the dev (or the player in the game’s quality settings) can just enable it on PC and disable it on mobile. This will solve all the problems right? Wuthering Waves does that.
I think one concern is that there will be more shader variants, but I am fine with longer build times if it will make my game look nicer.
