After a long wait, Godot's newest major version is finally here. The Godot 4 series moves forward with Godot 4.7, described by its developers as the "Director's Cut," a feature-rich release aiming to eliminate the last obstacles between you and your vision.

Some of the key highlights we've already covered include the new Asset Store, which replaces the Asset Library. This update improves the browsing experience with cleaner asset displays and zoomable preview images. Under the hood, threading has been introduced so the Asset Store can handle tasks in the background without interrupting the editor.

Inline previews for text-based shader operations are a long-awaited quality-of-life improvement that lets you preview Godot text shaders in real-time within the editor. In the past, you had to compile the shader and check it in a separate view. Now, you can see the results instantly as you work in the editor.

Godot's GUI system now supports transforming Control nodes, allowing translation, rotation, and scaling without breaking container behavior. This is especially useful for UI animations like buttons sliding or scaling in and out.

Developing for Android and XR has been possible for some time, and with the stable release of the Godot Android Build Environment, developers can now also export and publish their games directly. It's a companion app for the Godot Android editor, providing Gradle export support on Android devices. In Godot 4.7, several quality-of-life improvements further enhance integration with GABE, making it easier to build and manage projects directly on Android.

As promised, HDR output has arrived in Godot 4.7 for Windows, macOS, iOS, visionOS, and Linux (Wayland). HDR allows for a wider range of brightness and color than standard displays. While Godot has long used HDR internally for lighting calculations, SDR output previously limited what could be shown. With HDR output, developers can now fully utilize modern display capabilities for both 2D and 3D visuals.

Instead of relying on emissive materials and global illumination to fake the effect, the new AreaLight3D node lets you render real-time rectangular lights in 3D space, producing softer shadows and more realistic reflections.

Also, drawing directly onto textures is now much easier in Godot with a solution in the form of DrawableTexture2D:

Read the official overview for all the details on these changes and beyond.

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