Unity 5.3 has been on my radar for one single reason, they finally have a modern OpenGL system! I really hope developers upgrade to it.
QuoteWith Unity 5.3, we’re shipping a number of new features which raise the bar for rendering quality and deliver improvements to rendering efficiency.
For starters, there’s a brand new OpenGL 4.x core, which will replace our legacy OpenGL 2.1 core. This allows you to take advantage of the very latest OpenGL features on Windows, OS X and Linux, whilst also being able to scale to older versions of OpenGL, depending on the user’s OpenGL driver support. Note that in 5.3, Unity will default to the new OpenGL core, but you can switch to legacy OpenGL 2.1 manually to maintain previous behavior. Our current aim is to remove the legacy OpenGL core in Unity 5.4.
See the full announcement here.
I would urge developers to update, as the Linux version should perform better with the new OpenGL system in. I am also pleased to see them aiming to remove the legacy system for the next major update, no point keeping it around. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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rustybroomhandle Dec 9, 2015
Quoting: Segata SanshiroHow easy is it for developers to upgrade? That's my concern here.
That would depend on the project. There was a blog post about the upgrade of Dreamfall: Chapters from 4.6 to 5.2 and all the issues they had.
In their case it was a bigger leap than, say 5.2 to 5.3, but some issues might still be the same, like having to wait for third-party components to be updated.
Last edited by rustybroomhandle on 9 December 2015 at 8:44 am UTC
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Quoting: YaakuroWhat? ROFL, didn't know that Unity was still using OpenGL 2.1 which came out 2006. OpenGL 3.2 came out 2009 and they used it in their engine? OpenGL 4 version started 2010 and they didn't change their engine all the time?OpenGL 2.1 was used as the baseline. Newer features were used where available via extensions.
OpenGL 3.2 came out in 2009, but it was years before the majority of cards and drivers supported it. (Example: the driver for the Intel GPU in the prototype steam box sitting under my desk, running SteamOS, reports that it supports OpenGL 3.1.)
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Quoting: edoWhat about the people than doesn't have a pc able to run gl 4.x? And is the linux renderer limited to 4.1 because mac os?Supported core profile versions range from 3.2 to (today) 4.5. Cards/drivers that don't support 3.2 will currently fall back to the legacy GL renderer.
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rustybroomhandle Dec 9, 2015
Thanks Tak.
Also wondering (and please, no pressure, take your time with this) - do you have any 5.3 editor plans? 5.2 works really well, and I'm kinda curious if you guys have any handle on what the maintenance effort of the Linux editor might be in future.
Also wondering (and please, no pressure, take your time with this) - do you have any 5.3 editor plans? 5.2 works really well, and I'm kinda curious if you guys have any handle on what the maintenance effort of the Linux editor might be in future.
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So Tak is the one to beg to to make the editor not crash on load and save project under non-GNOME environments?
Pretty pleeeease...?
Last edited by Eike on 9 December 2015 at 9:21 am UTC
Pretty pleeeease...?
Last edited by Eike on 9 December 2015 at 9:21 am UTC
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Quoting: EikeSo Tak is the one to beg to to make the editor not crash on load and save project under non-GNOME environments?
Pretty pleeeease...?
Eh, works for me on i3wm.
Downloading the files takes quite long, the server often closes the connection. Just use 'wget -c' to download.
And yes, please update to 5.3 on Linux soon :-)
Last edited by ljrk on 9 December 2015 at 9:49 am UTC
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Quoting: TakQuoting: YaakuroWhat? ROFL, didn't know that Unity was still using OpenGL 2.1 which came out 2006. OpenGL 3.2 came out 2009 and they used it in their engine? OpenGL 4 version started 2010 and they didn't change their engine all the time?OpenGL 2.1 was used as the baseline. Newer features were used where available via extensions.
OpenGL 3.2 came out in 2009, but it was years before the majority of cards and drivers supported it. (Example: the driver for the Intel GPU in the prototype steam box sitting under my desk, running SteamOS, reports that it supports OpenGL 3.1.)
The issue there is / was Unitys support for Mesa/Intel drivers, who completed 4.1 Support in the September release. Though, I think intel still didn't implement the GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_64bit extension in their driver (yet?), which Mesa supports since May 2015, but besides that they should fully support the OpenGL 4.1 spec now, even though, some features of 4.0 are missing as well (as the base function for GL_ARB_vertex_attrib_64bit, namely GL_ARB_gpu_shader_fp64 and GL_ARB_tessellation_shader). But we see a lot of work on OpenGL 4.x support in Mesa as well as in the intel drivers recently, but the issue there (as well) is the drivers / kernels shipped by distributions. Because Mesa and Drivers theoretically support it does not really tell anything about the features being available in the supported distributions. That's why Valve created SteamOS - to be able to support exactly that. They're usually packing newer intel drivers and by now switched to a 4.x and have pretty recent libdrm and xorg-video-intel packages.
Mesa is evolving pretty fast now due to Valve sponsoring some development on it. Even all 4.2 extensions are implemented already, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5 parts are still missing, but not too many. The only company being always on edge with OpenGL specs is NVidia as I know it. Though, they and AMD write most of the specs, so that was to be expected ;-).
[edit] good source for GL Support / driver support for mesa drivers is http://mesamatrix.net/
Last edited by STiAT on 9 December 2015 at 11:11 am UTC
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Quoting: TakThanks for the info, that answer my question. But I read in the blog than gl 2.1 support was planned to be dropped in the next unity 5.4 version, so I guess than for that time that old hardware will stop being supported.Quoting: edoWhat about the people than doesn't have a pc able to run gl 4.x? And is the linux renderer limited to 4.1 because mac os?Supported core profile versions range from 3.2 to (today) 4.5. Cards/drivers that don't support 3.2 will currently fall back to the legacy GL renderer.
And it's good to read than on linux, games can use features from newer gl versions when possible, so it's not limited to the mac 4.1 gl version. That is a nice improvement.
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Quoting: GuestThere is also the fact that WebGL is an officially supported build target.It needs JDK 6. That's "six", like in "the version before the version that just went end-of-life".
Do the world a favour, kill off JDK6. Now.
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Quoting: LeonardKQuoting: EikeSo Tak is the one to beg to to make the editor not crash on load and save project under non-GNOME environments?
Pretty pleeeease...?
Eh, works for me on i3wm.
It unfortunately crashes for several people. I can search for the bug report when I'm home and can google for the exact error message. AFAIR it was not one of these because the bug report page had someone tell they're not using GNOME:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ubuntu-14-04-crash-on-opening-projects.359648/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/crash-on-linux-mint-17-2.362439/
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