Originally it was just ‘built-in’ gfx. 1 pipeline could scale from mobile to high-end PC.
Now I have been experimenting with HDRP and it is nice pipeline for real-world creations (very focused on recreating real-world cameras and lighting). It is a lot more scalable than I expected and can be heavily cut-down to run on slower hardware if it must! No mobile version on the horizon.
So then you have to switch to URP for mobile (can be for all if enough) - you may have a project that has mobile and desktop versions that need to be split across 2 projects - same-ish code, different graphics pipelines!
I haven’t looked at URP, how close does it get to HDRP?
Do you wish we had 1 scalable pipeline again or is that a (ahem) pipedream with the gap between mobile and high-end PCs/consoles?
Let’s not forget the asset store and all of it’s amazing third party assets.
Like these node-based shader editors. First one is a direct replacement for Shader Graph, but the second one fills a role that Unity has yet to fill themselves which is being able to create custom post processing effects and with a node-based interface at that.
I already own Aura, Amplify Shaders, Amplify Imposters, Next-Gen Soft-Shadows 2, etc. That will get you a decent looking game that can still export to mobile, but then you upgrade Unity and they are all broken. They should be built into URP.
Unreal has them all built into its scalable renderer that can also export mobile games…
Yeah, and I’m not sure it’s the ‘good’ AO, like MSAO that built-in has, but I don’t use URP.
I haven’t looked into it myself, but note that you can also make your own SRP. So if you have known requirements that neither of the existing ones fit the flexibility is there to do your own thing.