Hey there! If you are a pre-order customer or Unity Pro subscriber, you can now download the Unity 5.0 pre-order beta.
Head over to the blog for more information: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/10/27/unity-5-0-pre-order-beta-now-available
On the Learn site you’ll find tutorials for using the Unity 5.0 beta:
Don’t forget to report bugs: http://unity3d.com/BugReportingFAQ
You can also learn all about using the beta over at the Learn site -
Excellent stuff, plenty to get my teeth into today then, cheers 
Sent my first bug report before even starting to use it 
Fortunately it was just the store, which never seems to work quite right. Everything else I’ve seen so far is very nice. Pressing play now actually plays almost immediately! I’ve had amazingly long waits before a scene starts even in small projects before.
Awesome. Like probably a few more people I am already using it since someone found the working page yesterday. And so far I love it.
Now that the new learning site is live as well I also know what I’ll be doing today
Thanks a lot, Unity. I’m really looking forward to working with this.
Will there be a Unity5 Beta forum for all the preorderers now as well?
Also will you release a Unity5 Sample Assets pack in the near future?
Awesome
I’m going to try to contain myself and hold on until next patch or so, so that the most important initial bugs that people find will be fixed by then.
Right now i don’t really need Unity 5, so i can wait a bit.
After that i’ll be all over Unity 5 Beta 
Congrats on release
Just a heads up regarding the learning material - it’s been done with beta 10, though pre-order beta shipped with beta 9, we just wanted to future proof a little way forward, so if you see some settings named differently, don’t panic.
Oh just wanted to ask about the match between close and pre order beta number , does the pre-order beta will match also the one released from close beta ?
What are the plans for betas now? Will you try to release them weekly, or will they all go through QA first and take whatever time it takes?
Awesome!
Can I install the Unity 5 beta side-by-side with 4.5.5, or will I have to uninstall 5 and reinstall 4.5.5 if I happen to encounter problems on my current project?
You can always install as many Unity versions as you want. Just search the forums for the numerous threads explaining the process
I’m fairly blown away. I just copied a version of my massive project for the beta, and I was expecting a lot more stuff to break. All of my game logic and most of my editor extensions are working fine. Pretty much everything I made in shader forge is broken but I expected that. The new shadow filtering is amazing. AMAZING. I can finally say goodbye to shadow softener. There’s so much stuff here that you guys didn’t even mention. My game seems to run about 20 fps better now (though I should note that some of that is because many of my shaders are broken). And a full set of highly polished video tutorials on first day is appreciated and highly praiseworthy. Its a beta release for Pete’s sake! You guys are on the ball.
As Will mentions, pre-order is beta 9, which gave it some time to publish and assess stability. In general, closed beta should regularly be ahead of pre-order access to address these tasks.
so when do beta10 made public??
I’m confused…there is a 4.6 beta and now a 5 beta? Are they both active? How long before 5 goes live, I’m still trying to learn with version 4.5.5 so not sure which i should download?
The 5.0 beta is for pre-order customers and Unity Pro subscribers, so if you fall under one of those categories you can go ahead and download the 5.0 beta
I was wondering why the Lighting tutorial had a tab I couldn’t find in my copy. Hope we get the next beta version soon.
Correct. 4.6 adds the anticipated UI system to the 4.x line of Unity. 5.0 is everything else that’s been discussed (and of course UI) and a much bigger set of changes and features.
If you’re learning Unity, the general fundamentals should remain the same regardless of version, and we are always striving to making things easier to use. So, your learning should transfer well. It would be the new features of 5.0 you’d be missing in staying with 4.5.5. However, as with any beta there is always the risk of stability issues as it’s still a work in progress.
As projects go, 4.5.5 projects should shift to 4.6 easily. 4.5.5 to 5.0 may require some extra work to get properly running, but we trying our best to minimize that pain for you.
Thanks to your public Unity 5 Pre-order Beta!
I’m trying to make some assets/projects in Unity 5 Pre-order Beta, and there are a few questions.
Yes, but if it would be about some serious issues, then we’d ask you to report these as bugs, instead of blogging about them There’s a reason it has a “beta” label afterall.
Yes, but no guarantees that they will work in final 5.0 version. They may, or they might not.
Yes.