I hope Unity only published one finished feature one time. These preview features sometimes are just used for talking big.
Itās important to remember that not everyone is qualified to work on the same sections of the engine, and that adding more people to one area wonāt magically make development progress faster. If anything adding more people would likely slow it down, but even if that wasnāt the case the fact that some people arenāt qualified would just lead to them being idle.
Furthermore I donāt agree that these features are just used for talking big. Unityās ECS paves the way for the engine to do things that canāt easily be done in other game engines, and the LWRP and HDRP will allow for both less demanding and higher quality games. You may not see any value in these features, but many of us do need and want them now.
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THAT SAID
We should all also remember that was the UGUI when it came out (effectively useless thanks to performance concerns), and Enlighten when it came out as well and also just the entire UNET situation. Oftentimes there are certain features, usually much lauded ones, that Unity drops the ball on. This mostly seems to be better thanks to more community oriented previews and betas, but itās important to remember how Unity does have a kinda rough track record that can lead to that sort of thought process.
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I totally agree that a lot of what Unity promotes is talking big, itās exactly that. Iām not sure how to measure the success of that or how effective it is at execution though.
I like to pretend that Unity 5 never existed. 
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Unity 5 was the equivalent of the weird teenage phase where you have pimples all over your face, braces and weird long hair that doesnāt suit you.
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I understand the pain. But I would have abandoned Unity and switched to another engine if they had not shown this level of ambition in recent years. I am very happy with where things are at right now, but if upon ācompletionā of various features they repeat too many of the past mistakes again, I will look elsewhere again.
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I knew the streak of betrayal was rife among forum citizens. Itās time for big brother to watch and whip all that dare rise against the FAITHFUL.
Or we can just list what the actual problems are and put the [feedback] tag on, post in the closest area of the forums and the CM team can gather all these tags and push it on Unity when neededā¦
Until some sort of feedback thing Unity invents from scratch in a burst of hipster innovation bears fruit (or not Iām just not totally serious hereā¦)
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I donāt mind the preview stuff. Iāll never use them, but I donāt mind them. Yes they are used for talking big, but we were in the same situation anyways and they would pretend the features were finished (is Timeline usable these days?).
I just wish they would stop breaking the stuff Iām already using while they work on the new stuff though.
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Like what though?
In my case I just want high perf speedtree working in HDRP and in numbers that make my hair stand on end. Instead of having what looks like zeusā purple pubes (which occasionally flash cyan) in a fashionable moment of wonder.
Donāt get me wrong, I love Unityās gfx teams to bits and they do care, just not in timelines that help my project as have a deadline in August
My fault of course and Unity has never pretended that Iād get high perf vegetation at any particular date.
From the last few weeks : Input.GetButtonDown stopped working properly on iOS/MFi , I donāt know the exact reason, but Iām guessing itās because of changes made to facilitate the new input system.
Go a bit further back : Nested prefabs no longer support āThe concept of creating a completely empty Prefabā, and I was using those and I had to figure out a workaround, because obviously the upgrade guide mentions nothing.
I donāt want to go on another rant, but frankly I canāt remember the last time Unity announced the launch of a feature (not in preview), that I then tried and was excited about.
Iām just excited for dots and SRP. And Terrain vegetation Cannot believe how lucky I am to be part of a community here, enjoying the best engine Iāve ever used badly.
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I donāt care about the terrain stuff since Iāve long since rolled my own solution but DOTS is going to be a game changer for my workflow when itās done and SRP is going to make making my games run lean but look good a lot easier.
Also the new new input system will hopefully make me have to rely on rewired a lot less.
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Wellā¦
2018.3: Getting Started!
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/10/10/2018-3-terrain-update-getting-started/
And in 2019.3 weāll get holes! Itāll only have been a hole yearā¦
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My custom solution allows me to generate and optimise overhangs and supports special culling groups for seamless cave transitions. I still need to rework in a detail tessellation system so itās no longer relying on fixed values. I am well beyond whatever Unity can offer me terrain wise :v
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This, particularly the ājustā part. Yes, marketing is a factor. I expect that iterative development is also a significant factor, though.
If they keep something to themselves then they canāt get feedback on it prior to finishing it. The āPreviewā stuff is a way they can get feedback from real world users before locking things down. Since itās clearly marked as āpreviewā I think thatās great.
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There is just one problem with preview packages:
- If you stay 100% within the boundary of these packages, then upgrade would be largely painless.
- If you build stuffs using their API, good luck updating them to the next major release.
A quick count for our project:
- Addressables (current 0.6, API going to change on 1.0)
- LWRP (current 5.x, we are on 4.x, already facing breaking API update)
- Shader Graph (same as above)
I canāt quite imagine how people are using ECS in production. Perhaps they stick to a certain major release?
I calculated the risk and decided if something happens Iām willing to
a; wait for updates
b; make a workaround for myself and then wait for update
c; work on something else while they update
Using preview packages/solutions is a risk and should be handled as such, but itās better to have them than not have them. People just have to start to think like a manager and measure the risk/gain ratio and make their own decisions instead of expecting the decisions from someone else (Unity for example).
Do not use preview packages/solutions if you think the constant tinkering/changes are āpainā or unacceptable.
Edit: I also calculated that Iām willing to submit bug reports in the unlikely event (there are teams here who use these features or more clever/more experienced game developers) Iām the first who comes across a bug.
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Also if youāre that worried about API changes, just abstract the issues away so you donāt have to deal with as many rewrites.
There are difference between tinkering / changes, and actual API deprecation (where a bunch of classes / interfaces goes from public to private).
Anyway, my point isnāt preview packages are bad. Just the fact that upgrading isnāt āsmoothā or āeasyā, which is a problem for many (not me, but canāt say I am happy to see things break either).