What version of Unity is best for Hololens development at this time?

Jan 3, 2018
I’m developing with Hololens on Unity 2017.3.0.0f3 and have found that holograms built and running on the HL are incredibly unstable (color separation, judder, swim and a few others) while walking around them.
The exact same scene/project built with 2017.2.0f3 produces the desired effect; very stable holograms.
I’m reaching out to find out if there is an ideal Unity version or even an ideal combination of Unity version, SDK version, VS version, etc to develop with at this time (hence the date reference at the top)
I’ll add a usage case to further specify my needs.
I want to place a table size hologram, connect to it via another HL, android, iOS, and PC-standalone over UNET.
Additionally, a HL will be streaming its video feed and mobile devices will be using AR (vuforia or arKit)

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Hey lessthanproductive,

The current release of Unity on Start Your Creative Projects and Download the Unity Hub | Unity is the one we recommend. You’re welcome to file bugs in regards to your performance jittering and we would be able to take a look at your repro project from there. Hope that helps.

Version 2017.2.0f3 seems to be the latest version that does not experience the stability issues. I filed a bug report for the issue here. https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?982876_ta6idnss3f18g01m
I am hoping someone at Unity can confirm this issue and hopefully a fix, because I see more and more people running into it.

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I can report similar tracking issues along with the color separation. I’ve only tried it with the same app between 2017.1.1f1 and 2017.2.1f1 but this would be consistent with what’s been said above.

Knowing that the device is flashing 4 different color channels in succession leads me to believe that there’s one or more changes in the API that are making the processing slower, effectively reducing either the framerate and/or response to head movement.

Using the project rsmeenk posted I was able to reproduce the color separation. I promoted the bug on to our team and made it public so you can track the progress.

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Please add your vote if you would like to see this solved. Unity Issue Tracker - HoloLens jittering 3D model causing color separation possibly due to incorrect stabilization plane

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i also experienced this. 2017.2.0f3 was good, but 2017.2.p2 went downhill in Terms of Color Separation. MR Toolkit was used by the way.

The problem is supposed to be relationed with Unity as it dissapears with older versions, but how can we be sure it’s not a MRTK issue with Unity? I’ve benn trying different versions of projects with multipleversions of Unity, but in every probal I’ve obiously use MRTK as I need it to work… Maybe it’s making things work in a bad way.

Because it’s reproducible without the MRTK

Unrelated but 2017.3.0.f3 my anchors doesnt seem to stick to world but rather local coordinate system. So loading an anchor from the store makes it display at 0,0,0 (if the gameobject without the anchor is placed there).

@Unity-Nikos Unity Issue Tracker - HoloLens jittering 3D model causing color separation possibly due to incorrect stabilization plane states that the color seperation bug has been fixed and will be backported to two versions mentioned. What version is it already fixed in? And what backport version numbers will those be? Thx

It doesn’t seem to be released yet.

The fix is released in 2017.3.1p1, and 2018.1.0b7. It looks like the 17.2 release is running a little later but looks to be on track for the next release from what I’m seeing.

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Awesome, thanks. Just tested it with 2017.3.1p1

The original bug code was 982876 but the supposed correcetion is 993880 so, are we talking about the same bug?

They’re the same bug.

It seems that MS recommend Unity 2017.1:

Unity recommend 2017.2 but that has this stability issue, and the fix is only available in 2017.3+

Older versions had performance bugs and regressions, and would not recover if tracking was lost.

What versions are people successfully using for performant, reliable and stable Hololens experiences at the moment?
Is it even possible to find the older “f” versions any more?

Thanks

Stability issues bug, according to bug report, is fixed in beta 2018.1, what about 2017?

I´m still having stabilization issues in 2017.3.1p1 and 2017.3.1p2, less than previous versions but in my opinion it’s not still fixed. Is anybody feeling that too?

@jghospital I had the same feeling so I just retested my stabilization bug test project with 2017.3.1p2 and 2017.2.0f3. I could not see a difference in behavior between those two projects. I noticed some rotational instability in both, but I found that it is related to where you are looking. I use the Holotoolkit/MRToolkit and I believe that this automatically sets the stabilization plane to where the cursor intersects the 3D world. If I look at the back of a 1x1m flat plane and move my head up and down then the front of the plane seems a little more instable. If I look at the front of that plane and move my head up and down then the back seems more instable.

@jghospital how is 2017.3.1p1 not fixing the stabilization issue? It totally made a change regarding previous versions. Has it been even more stable at some point?