The road to 2021 - Q&A

chanfort · August 14, 2020, 8:49pm

quixotic:

With the focus being on stability, current systems are being prioritized. Meaning we’re working on terrain bug fixes and bringing terrain tools package out of preview

A recap what we’ve done lately (since having a terrain team):
2018.3 terrain performance improvements were shipped (many things from the CPU to GPU). 2019.1 introduced terrain tools package (blog)
2019.2 improved terrain tools package (blog)
2019.3 terrain holes were added to the core terrain system

Since then we’ve been focused on a new environment system. We did announce it too soon, and our release target was too ambitious. Recently (last couple weeks) we have pulled engineers off of that to bring current terrain into a better state. A better state for current terrain means bringing our bug count down, proper URP/HDRP support, and we’re working on improving mobile performance. We’re also working on getting terrain tools package out of preview - that work is bug fixing, some UX improvements, and moving APIs out of experimental. We’re also hiring so once bugs are under control, there will still be a dedicated person for terrain (JD, should any of you be interested or know a good fit!). We want to bring current terrain to a stable state and keep it there - so we can work on a new modern system (as we can only facelift a system built ~13 years ago so much).

While engineers are focused on terrain stability, we do still have UX designers, technical artists, and some tools engineers working on the new system as we are committed to pushing it forward.

Hi there, I was a bit disappointed recently that my submitted bug to enable millions of trees on terrain won’t be fixed in URP (https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/urp-pink-shaders-appear-near-camera-when-using-billboard-renderer). This means URP is likely to be the end for massive forests if no alternative shader will be written. So was wondering if there are alternative plans to address large number of trees in URP?

Answer:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/804185 page-2#post-6216134