I’ve been reviewing the public roadmap for the upcoming Unity alpha release and found some of the details a bit unclear. I’m really looking forward to the next version (possibly Unity 2024.1 or Unity 7?) and was wondering if anyone here has more insights or official information on the main goals and features that the Unity development team is focusing on. Any specifics about new tools, improvements, or the overall direction they are taking would be extremely helpful!
Thanks in advance for shedding some light on this!
I don’t think we’ll see Unity 7 anytime soon. Unity 7 won’t follow immediately after Unity 6, instead we’ll get Unity 6.1, 6.2, etc. They are increasing the development cycle of existing releases and transitioning away from yearly releases.
Unity 6 is currently in beta. There is no alpha version currently available, and nothing about Unity 7 has surfaced yet to my knowledge, at least not beyond the few Unity 7 directions mentioned in the Unity 6 announce.
I think he mis-typed Unity 7, but meant Unity 6. The stuff on the roadmap are being spread over Unity 6 Preview which is the extra cycle they chose to do after the beta ends to make sure it is stable and ready for devs and the Unity 6.1 Alpha.
Main thing to know about big features is:
New animation system built on DOTs to make all animations vastly faster and better performant. This is probably aimed for past Unity 6.1 just a heads up.
There are new team members being hired by Unity to make QOL tools or improve upon already existing tools by leveraging modern stuff like DOTs and CoreCLR when it is ready.
Example of point 2 is in the Navmesh forum there are new members of the Navmesh team that are aiming to improve the Navmesh tool to help developers. They have made a forum post introducing themselves and they are actively talking with the community for feedback, examples, and ideas for features. This was just this week so not a lot of people know about that yet.
Game Objects are slowly being built on top of DOTs so performance by default. No major API changes are needed for most things, but game objects will leverage DOT data operations with Burst compiler behind scenes to make everything and I mean almost everything that affects game objects faster in editor and run time.
New Terrain system work was announced. I don’t know too much about this so I apologize if I get some information wrong in the next sentence. Looks like we are getting Terrain built on top of DOT, just like game objects, with a brand new Terrain non-destructible layer system. Some of this is on the roadmap already for public, but the thing I don’t know about is if it is Unity 6.1 or closer to 6.2 for release.
WebGPU stabilization to allow better rendering API potential like Compute Shaders, Block Shaders, and so forth for web development. This is what is allowing VFX Graph to now work on Web build targets.
The really cool new Build Profile system to make building for multi platforms or tests releases easier. And I mean way easier. Do note I would use Unity 6 beta 16 because it comes out today and has even more for this system being released today if you want to test it out.
There are a lot more stuff coming out, but I don’t have a good enough confirmation on that stuff to confidently type it out so someone else could mention more new things coming.
To add on to my post above, here is a link to that Navmesh forum where a Unity Dev is being onboarded to the Navmesh team and taking feedback. Please if anyone goes here be nice and respectful. This is the best way to get new features and QOL stuff added to Navmesh.
Ted Wikman is the new Unity Navmesh team member and seems to be spear heading the conversation with the community. So please thank him for being transparent with the community, listening to our concerns about Navmesh, and helping find ways to improve it for us based on our feedback. I think he would be happy to see the community support a Navmesh update.
Side note what I am about to say is in Unity official roadmap video on their YouTube channel. Near 41 minutes in.
What I am about to say goes for the new Animation System and the new Terrain Tools.
So I don’t have a lot of information on the full editor tooling of it like workflow or UX, but the first stage is converting over to DOT using the new DOT backend Gameobjects are being converted to. It goes like this.
All Gameobjects are now also entities the data type that DOTs use to make everything faster and better memory usage for all platforms. This allows for controlling managed and non-managed memory.
This is a big part of the Animation thing so heads up for this part. This means Gameobjects Transform components are now leveraging the DOTs data structure meaning they can be batched process for anything effecting the transforms. For this part think about the transform components of a 3d models bone structure in the Unity Hierarchy that is used for key framing, avatar masks, and rigging objects using object target binding. The objecting target binding is used for let’s say having a characters hand perfectly grab a cup and pick it up or things like keeping a characters feet aligned with stairs/slopes as they walk up it. This is already some what usable with the Animation Rigging package. This update is just improving the workflow, UX of devs making the animations, and so forth.
This also could allow for component data to be more readable/writable via animations. Since components could have their data read through the DOTs system allowing for easier things like calling events during animation signals, settings objects in Timeline, and improving the Playable System Assets used in Timeline/Sequencer.
New tools are aimed at making simpler things simpler to do and make creating full complex animation sequences easier to fully control on a piece by piece level. This includes new tools for Runtime Animation control not just working with animations in Editor mode…I can guess cool possibilities with procedural animations coming from this part.
I can look into it more and see if I find more things about it.
Well two minutes after typing the post I found that Chinny, the lead Unity product manager of Animation Systems, made a huge post literal day before yesterday to start a conversation about the new Animation System on the forums with the community. Will post a link below for you. I haven’t read the post yet, but wanted to link it down below.
Have they said that this is the pattern they are going to follow? (I mean releasing 6.1 with new features etc?).
In any case, the new animation system is going to be released along Unity 7 or even further into the future, which is probably around 2 years away now.
Edit: Wanted to clarify Nav Mesh Links from the old built in navigation system in Unity Editor is not the same as the one in the AI Navigation package. So next sentence when I say NavMeshLinks I am not talking about the old system, but the system being added to the AI Navigation package.
In the same thread he actual mentions some of the new features they are working on already.
One of them is the next iteration of OffMeshLinks called NavMeshLinks. It came out last year in the Navigation 2.0 package, but they are iterating on it and improving it even more. So they already started preparing for the first update to tool systems for Navigation thankfully.
He has also been in a lot of forms lately for bug fixing NavMesh stuff to fix bugs.
Hmmm from what I recall from this video, the statement was that there will now be a 1:1 mapping of GameObject to Entities, eg each GameObject creates a corresponding Entity.
I don’t think this was meant to say that all GameObjects are entities internally but rather that this is a change that was made to Entities to more easily transition from GameObject to Entities - provided the user uses Entities to begin with.
So yes and no. I am meaning the new Navigation Package not the old Navigation System that was once built into the editor. The AI Navigation package had some stuff like the Off Mesh Link which is similar, but not the same as the Nav Mesh Link. The more I think about it the more easy conversations about Unity, becomes confusing because there are still the older names and pages for the out dated stuff so when talking about the newer systems it just gets lost in the messages on the forums.
The coming updates he mentioned is updating the Off Mesh Links in the AI Navigation package to be able to do more than the Nav Mesh Link AKA the old way.
I guess it would be easier to say the data structure mapping of gameobjects to an entity. Wonder if we will get a more defined way to describe it by Unity itself, because when typing it out on the forums some of the meaning can be lost in the messages or accidentally mistaken. Two people probably will never read the same thing and think the same way, but yeah the mapping of gameobjects to entities behind scenes it was I mean. I just was tried to avoid the topic of mapping for those that haven’t used DOTs yet.