The new Unity 2022.2 Tech Stream has been released with a more stable Unity version while giving early access to the latest features.
The end of this year is near, but Unity has a piece of great news for all its user. The final release of this year’s Unity version, Unity 2022.2, is now live and available through Unity Hub. This release allows Unity users to gain early access to the best-developed latest features and the power to provide feedback on future improvements. So, this is a great time to get your hands on the new Unity version and start enjoying the latest updates while helping Unity to improve in the long run by giving genuine feedback.
Here are some of the key points of the release.
Entity Component System for Unity
Unity 2022.2 now includes the ECS (Entity Component System), a data-oriented framework to build highly scalable games. As per Unity,
ECS is a data-oriented framework that empowers you to build more ambitious games with an unprecedented level of control and determinism. ECS and a data-oriented approach to development put complex gameplay mechanics and rich, dynamic environments at your fingertips.
ECS includes Netcode, Graphics, and Physics packages along with the Entity package. Being out of the Experimental state, it now has a stable workflow supporting massive data streaming, unprecedented simulation scale, and a lot more highly scalable feature.
Get your journey started with Unity ECS.
Netcode for GameObjects
2022 witnessed a boom in multiplayer games showing further signs of future advancements with a promising market. Tapping this possibility, Unity has been working on it ever since. With the new 2022.2 Netcode for GameObjects package, users can create simple and massive multiplayer games with more functionalities driven with less code. Additionally, the new Unity Gaming Services (UGS) is a great add-on to the multiplayer services. The UGS is a full solution for all the necessary backend features needed by a game developer to accomplish all the networking needs.
Graphics Improvements
There have been continuous efforts to enhance the graphics quality of games and rendering techniques used by Unity. This has led us here to witness more power of the new Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and High-Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). The new release includes Decal Layers allowing users to filter and configure the Decal Projector to its full potential. Additionally, it also includes LOD Crossfade and Custom Post Processing across the URP and Built-In Render Pipeline.
On the other hand, there are some most awaited releases for Unity HDRP. The new Unity 2022.2 includes Water systems, Volumetric Material, Volumetric Clouds, and Cloud Layers to create an ultra-realistic environment without compromising on performance. Moreover, with the HDRP Ray Tracing Denoising, you achieve the ultimate power of NVIDIA Optix AI accelerated denoiser to get the best graphics quality for your game. This also gives you the ability to choose between NVIDIA Optiz AI Denoiser and Intel Open Image.
Productivity Enhancements
Recently, Unity has made a lot of enhancements in the Prefab workflow, leveraging productiveness and efficiency. The new Prefab system allows more scalable use cases of Prefabs in the game with in-depth control over the entire workflow. This includes some of the best features like replacing prefabs on the go, reordering added game objects, deleting game objects from Prefab instances, etc.,
Want to learn more about Prefabs? Check out a short tutorial on Importance of Prefabs.
Additionally, improvements on Paint Brush have been made to seamlessly scatter multiple objects in the environment with a lot of options in hand to tweak the behavior. Building for different platforms? Unity now allows overriding the terrain settings inside the Quality Settings for various platforms.
Users can take the help of the new updated package Splines to create paths for several use cases, such as camera tracks, rivers, paths, etc., Now want some intelligent characters for your scene that can dynamically interact? Just add the new AI Navigation package to fulfill your needs.
Final Release of DirectX 12
If your scene is draw call heavy, then Unity has good news for you. The DirectX 12 is out of the Experiment and now is in the released state with a performance increment of more than 35%. Additionally, starting from Unity 2022.2, DirectX12 is the recommended graphics API for Windows and Xbox development. This enables the true power of Ray Tracing that can be harnessed to its full potential for platform-specific development, especially Xbox.
More Power to XR Creation
A new update to the existing XRI package is now live. XRI 2.2 now supports multi-grab, collection of standard assets, and locomotion methods empowering the creation of cross-device XR development.
Furthermore, the AR Foundation also got an update to transform into AR Foundation 5.0. With this update, a major problem is taken down, which is the Game Simulation; now, users would be able to test the AR app in the Editor using Play Mode, just the same as the normal development. Major platform support for the editor, such as Meta Quest Pro, PlayStation VR2, and Magic Leap, has been added.
Check the Full Release Notes.
The list is long, but you would have got the essence that there is a lot to explore. These new features certainly have a promising stand in enhancing productivity. With that being said, we are pretty curious and excited to check out the upcoming Unity Tech Stream of 2023, uplifting the standards to the next level.
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