I tried asking this in one of the Unity 3 threads, but didn’t get an answer, so I thought I’d start a thread
I’m curious about Umbra and it’s implications for iPhone Basic licenses. From what I’ve read around the place (though I think it’s all just guesses at this point), Umbra is only included in Pro licenses. I was wondering if this means that iPhone Basic users will still get the existing occlusion culling in 1.7 carried over to Unity 3, or will they lose that feature and need to upgrade to Pro in order to get occlusion culling (Umbra)?
Does anyone know the answer to that at this stage?
I’m trying to weigh up switching to Pro while the promotional prices are still around, but the decision relies on information that isn’t available.
Unity 3 is not available to anybody but preorderers. And there its only available to Unity Pro and to the Unity iPhone Pro addon (not the cheaper unity iphone addon, even if you own unity pro)
For the trials you can get on the page:
Unity 2.x on desktop has no occlusion culling
Unity iPhone 1.x has occlusion culling support on both sides, you just have to setup the view areas and bounding areas before doing the calculation
Agreed – how can you expect to run a full 3-D game on the iPhone without occlusion culling? Thanks, but no thanks. That was an utter waste of $300. sigh
Logically, why allow Unity Basic to access “beauty” effects, such as light mapping? Light-mapping is cool, but it is not an essential like occlusion culling and/or SVN support. I’m certain that Beast and Umbra cost more or less the same – so why not let developers access what they actually need?
Unity does some real great things, but whoever in charge is really missing some big things. Having to pay 1,500 dollars just for SVN support, IMO, is ridiculous. There’s no argument to it – it’s a standard for any programming team. To be frank, requiring devs to pay 1,500 to access SVN support is just being money-hungry. Put it this way, apple doesn’t even do something as ridiculous as that. :lol: In addition, having to pay an extra 1,200 dollars so that your iPhone game won’t lag like nuts in a town or dungeon is also, IMO, absurd. What’s the point of having a beautiful game if it’s going to lag? So people can flame at you and say, “Make the graphics lower, so that it will run on my 3G iPhone?” Seriously…
Just think about it. We’re paying 300-400 for iPhone Basic. Basic – the essentials to getting a 3-D game working as intended. Some basics include working with a group and not having a game lag. Hmm…SVN support and occlusion culling seem like basics, no? Basic does not mean automatic asset switching, light-mapping, etc. These are all eye candy features – something I’d expect to see in a Pro-license.
Leave Basic with SVN, occlusion-culling, and basic scripting and asset importing, and we’d all be happy campers. Let the Pro-license include the lighting and effects – those aren’t basics. Those are something that make your game look AAA.
Think it’s time I go and brush back up on my C-Objective skills…
I fully understand that beast and umbra are heavy weights and need to be paid, and it’s not possible within price range of iphone basic. But taking out occlusion culling at all, I don’t like either because I will have to use 1.7 (still good software!) although I own 3.0. That’s kind of weird. Now I have even 3 editors running instead of the expected one for all…
Yes, it’s true occlusion culling is only required for certain types of games, but why do you think Unity improved occlusion culling? Because no one uses it? … Or is it because occlusion culling is a highly sought-after feature required by many iPhone and PC games? Hmm… I wonder…
Unity doesn’t just go and buy whatever looks cool – ** “Oh Umbra! Probably only a few hundred thousand dollars to license this! Impulse buy!” **
No, they look at the community and see what types of games their users are creating/want to create. Also, they look at what is essential in a game engine. Occlusion culling is needed. If you’re looking at a castle, you don’t want to render the entire town inside of it – you just want to look at the castle wall. If you’re looking at the outside of a house, you don’t want to render the inside. These are just some examples I have made from the top of my head – occlusion culling is needed in just about every 3D game that features buildings and/or walls. That’s a lot of video games.
In addition, the whole, “I don’t do this, and don’t intend on doing it” – implying it’s not necessary for the rest of the community – is annoying to read and holds no weight. Congratulations in that you can create a game that doesn’t require occlusion culling. Many of the games I have in mind do require occlusion culling. I’m assuming many of the games the Unity community wants to create also requires occlusion culling, hence why Unity has added the feature to 3.0.
all get some part of beast but GI among other high end features are pro only
And the occlusion culling was not replaced.
Keep in mind, before Occlusion culling was a iphone only thing, with U3 its fullscale thing for all platforms and there Umbra made sense cause its available for all but the mobile ones by default.
So now they integrated a system that does not take the hours you have to waste on iphone 1.x, is more performant and outside the unity world costs $30k per title you release (you get unity pro + iphone pro licenses for a smallscale team at less than a single project umbra license … not considering the 80k of beast)
As I’m the one who asked about occlusion and mobil platforms, cause I expected that iphone / android would have it in the normal and pro license, I understand how some feel. I definitely didn’t expect it to be cut.
On the other hand, M2H have released an own occlusion system. likely not as performant but none the less it seems to work pretty solid if you use it right, so its not like it will be the end of the world
Hahaha, true. Blargh, enough whining about not having occlusion. I guess it’s time to save up … a lot. Does occlusion come with Unity Pro? Or, is it only if you buy Unity iPhone Pro that you get occlusion?
