Unity Technologies' Unity 2022 LTS Release Explained

Introduction

80.lv: Please introduce yourself. How long have you been with the Unity family?

Ralph Hauwert: My name is Ralph Hauwert and I’m the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Unity’s Unity Editor, Runtime, and Ecosystem, and I’ve been at Unity for 12 years now, since 2011.

In my time here, I’ve overseen the global Core Engineering and Product teams encompassing the Core, Scripting, Mobile, Desktop/Web, AR/VR, Platforms, Foundation, Cloud, and Emergent Technology groups. Unity's mission to democratize game development is one deep to both my heart and mind – it’s an absolute joy to go to work on that mission every single day.

Unity 2022 LTS

80.lv: You describe the latest Unity 2022 LTS build as the most stable Unity release. What do you mean by that? How did you ensure users get a smooth experience?

Ralph Hauwert: Each annual LTS release is designed to offer the most stable, dependable, and supported version of Unity. It’s supported with bi-weekly fixes for two years, and it doesn’t introduce feature or API changes so you can lock production with confidence. These releases are what games that lasts for years are built with and we treat them as such.

Part of being able to provide stability is the process for collecting two years’ worth of feedback (from tens of thousands of users) to be implemented as product improvements and new features in a LTS release. We collect feedback through various channels, including the Unity Roadmap, the in-game editor, and our beta program.

Then prioritization happens based on a holistic assessment with consideration to impact, reach, and our confidence in being able to foresee the outcome for users. We also take into consideration how sequencing will work on different parts of the engine and what changes we should anticipate when the new feature is expected to ship.

Entity Component System Integration

80.lv: Could you tell us about DOTS and Entity Component System (ECS) integration? What capabilities did you expand with the release?

Ralph Hauwert: DOTS (Data-Oriented Technology Stack) is a combination of technologies and packages that delivers a data-oriented design approach to building games in Unity. Applying data-oriented design to a game’s architecture empowers game creators to scale processing in a highly performant manner.

This release marks an important milestone for DOTS, as it is now production ready after a multi-year effort since we first introduced the vision for it to our users. Successfully delivering the multiple-year effort that is Entities 1.0 was a tremendous effort by our teams. While there are already many games using DOTS, this really solidifies DOTS as a staple in our tech stack that we will support for years to come.

The Entity Component System (ECS) integration with Game Object-based code, comprising DOTS, is now fully supported for creators with all levels of experience in the Unity Editor and allows the ability to toggle between authoring and runtime data easily.

ECS for Unity expands the Unity game engine’s capabilities to deliver greater control and determinism over data in memory and runtime process scheduling, enabling the creation of complex gameplay in dynamic environments and across challenging device-processing constraints. 

Multiplayer

80.lv: What tools did you add in the latest release to make sure developers can set up seamless multiplayer experiences?

Ralph Hauwert: The 2022 LTS offers Unity’s netcode packages that give developers the choice between simplicity (with casual co-op games), or more complex scenarios (such as competitive action multiplayer games) built on ECS for Unity with scalability and performance in mind.

They’ll also be able to easily leverage solutions from Unity Gaming Services like Relay, Lobby, Game Server Hosting, Matchmaker, and Voice and Text Chat to build, run, and grow live games and deliver immersive player experiences.

Tools for Environment Artists

80.lv: What new tools did you prepare for Environment Artists with HDRP? Could you tell us more about your new water system?

Ralph Hauwert: Our latest High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) tools will enable developers to immerse their players in beautiful, physically based environments. They can add oceans, rivers, and underwater effects with the new Water System, and create advanced procedural fog and volumetric effects with Volumetric Materials and Shader Graph. 

They can create even more realistic skies with improved Cloud Layers dynamic lighting, and blend between different weather conditions using Volumetric Clouds.

Their worlds can be populated with the new Spline package, which offers them the ability to procedurally generate paths, roads, or fences in your environments with greater precision.

Updates to URP

80.lv: What can users expect from URP with the latest release? What tools do you offer to scale visual experience across different devices?

Ralph Hauwert: Upgrades to the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) provide more realistic lighting and a focus on higher-quality visuals that scale across devices.

Developers can achieve nuanced real-time lighting with Forward+ Rendering, which enables them to use more lights in a scene. They can produce smoother graphic transitions with LOD crossfade, and reduce aliasing problems such as pixelated and flickering edges with Temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) and add extra texture details in their scenes with control using Decal Layers, as well as customize their rendering experience with Shader Graph Full Screen Master Node.

Developers can also significantly improve build time and memory optimization with Shader Variant Prefiltering, and easily upgrade their existing projects from the Built-in Render Pipeline to URP with Built-in Converter.

Other Notable Improvements

80.lv: Could you tell us about other notable improvements introduced in the latest version?

Ralph Hauwert: With the Unity 2022 LTS, we’re also enabling developers to maximize platform potential and interaction speed.

• They can optimize their games for the latest platforms, including incremental build for consoles, enhanced performance with DirectX 12, and new platform support for PlayStation VR2.
• They can increase performance and stability with DirectX 12 graphics API on Windows and Xbox, and experiment with the latest ray tracing support for Xbox Series X|S.
• Developers can also iterate rapidly and deploy more efficiently on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch using the latest incremental player build process.
• They can better manage WebGL memory usage and gain native C++ multithreading along with support for touch controls and texture compression on web builds for mobile devices.
• As well, they can expand their XR reach with updated tools to build faster on PlayStation VR2 and Meta Quest 2. 

Ralph Hauwert, SVP/GM of Unity’s Unity Editor, Runtime, and Ecosystem

Interview conducted by Arti Burton