Update December 2021: Unity has officially reopened their public communications regarding Unity ECS, with some news on the next release of Entities and when it will be compatible with Unity version 2021 - watch this for more information: ua-cam.com/video/iLpvWp1y23A/v-deo.html
I just watched their keynote from 3 years ago where they announced they wanted to move to ecs, alongside a dozen other huge changes. Of course they’ve not finished a single one because they’re seem to have no focus at all
People are overreacting, lts is still there, and using spearhead version of such packages for a production version is a big risk anyway. They are obviously working on something big and changing parts of the engine and editor, all we have to do is wait and see.
Unfortunately Unity has a pattern of hyping a new system heavily for a few months, and then just going silent about it for months or years until ultimately a replacement is announced.
@@TurboMakesGames I'm sure that fits, too! But I was thinking of all their UI systems over the years. I've hardly heard a peep about UI Toolkit after their initial hype. It's still very much unfinished despite existing in some form for like 3 years now.
@@vargonian UI toolkit is actively developed.. they have changed their releasing pattern .... here is the news about it:- forum.unity.com/threads/ui-update-q1-2021.1043680/
i guess would be better for them to make new engine with new title, unity name is like not promising anymore with all these messed features incooperate one another.
I might be wrong about that, but unity has started to finally put loads of effort into the long task of upgrading to newer runtimes. These changes are starting with 2021.1 and are probably also effecting entities at a very low level. So it would very much make a lot of sense to make them compatible only after the upgrade is finished. This could also explain why there were no errors yet.
I would just say, there is a huge difference between whether it works, and if it is supported. I have been playing with it on 2021.2 and everything works fine so far.
That's a fair point. Glad to hear it's been working for you though! I know there were a few people in our Discord community that were experiencing some issues in 2021 - at least as of a few months ago
Thank you for mentioning DOTS :) Depending on used packages, porting between 2020 and 2021 and Entities 0.17.0 may, or may not cause issues. One of the project caused range of required changes after upgrading to entities 0.17.0, including requirement of HRP and even Unity Entity Editor upgrade. And few other more packages were forced to be upgraded. Eventually made it working fine. I have also two Independent projects, one on 2021.1.0b5 and 2021.2.0.a8. Installing DOTS related packages from scratch, went completely smooth. Also, with latest entities and burst packages, there are multiple additional checks, which may surprisingly throw errors in the console, when didn't before. Technically these are probably own code bugs, which went under the radar, before upgrade. Good vid. keep it up.
Thank you. That was really necessary to know. I guess for production code we have to wait at least a year or two to gain benefits of ECS. Thank you agin.
Glad you found the video useful. But remember, you can still use the burst compiler and C# job system with production code to get some performance benefits!
I can't help but feel that Unity has too much experimental technology with no tangible idea of when it will be production ready. I'd rather have one system ready than 10 systems that I can't depend on.
That's fair, I totally understand not wanting to rely on experimental technology for your project. Luckily Unity has tons of great features that are stable and work reliably. Unity has a pretty good track record of bringing things to a full certified release. Sure not everything pans out, but they have many teams dedicated to making new features, and I'm glad they make them available to the public in some capacity so we can battle test it and make a better product in the end.
I think they should split it into Unity DOTS, it is so different that it could make things easier for game devs and unity devs that way Also, could you please make a video about what would be the best way to use burst and other production ready dots components in normal unity programs. Which ones you’d use yourself and how. Thanks for all the amazing content
One of the theories in the Unity forums was that they are planning on creating a separate version of the game engine for dots/ecs - I don't think that will actually happen though. Thanks for the video suggestion, noted!
@@TurboMakesGames On one hand it may seem difficult to create a separate version of Unity with DOTS profile, because a lot of things might need designing and building from the start but... on the other hand developing DOTS while still keeping it fully compatible with the "old ways" might seem at least as difficult if not more. Then if they make a new product they don't risk alienating developers who are too used and comfortable with the "old ways".
I don't understand why its so hard for Unity to do this. MonoGame (I know its lower level and systems are not done for you) has had ECS in its extended packages for years. At least make a stable core version without all the Unity systems because its still useful as is.
The concept of ECS has been around for decades now, but Unity is doing something quite ambitious by bringing it to a wider audience in a more approachable fashion. But I have no idea as to the true nature of the problems they are facing in development. Hoping for some more news soon!
Thank you for making this video. Was having issues with LocalWorld not populating a prefab from a RenderMesh in Unity 2021. Downgraded to Unity 2020 and it worked.
Frustrating for someone who plans to start a new DOTS-based project. It's all well and good to say if you are currently using Entities to stay on 2020 but for new projects, I don't really want to start a project in 2021 with 2020 and not be able to upgrade later.
I understand where you're coming from. They claim that they should have this figured out by the end of the year or at least prior to the release of 2021 LTS, but we haven't heard anything definitive yet
The thing that bums me out as a unity developer is how much effort they put into a technology, only for it to languish all the way through it's development to a (hopefully) completely released state. So many packages designed to take away some of the rough edges of Unity had a strong footing in its introduction like they just couldn't wait to announce it to the world and then...just sat there with minimal direction. I've been waiting for their new UI system for years now, and their revamped input system was another problem point. I've never been a big fan of their package system. I understand their initial rationale, making the main unity engine leaner by excluding extra functionality into modular packages, but I feel like it fragments their focus too much, and at the same time doesn't really solve the problem they were trying to solve. A lot of packages are basically mandatory, and it baffles me why they wouldn't just be included by default. Having quicker update cycles on these packages and thus not tying them to the main unity release schedule is often a moot point because projects will typically grab a version and stick with it unless there's problems. And even then, they update unity so frequently now, that they could safely bake these packages into unity and still get a moderately quick turnaround on updates to the packages.
Definitely hurts to see something that seems promising get far into development then just die off. Fact of the matter is that most companies do R&D on all sorts of things, some that get very far into development, then never get released. Though this is usually done behind closed doors, while Unity (at least used to) is more open with their development. I appreciate this because as a user, I feel that I have influence over how the different things work and can impact change on them while they are still under heavy development and subject to more change. Once something is released, it's typically less likely for bigger changes to occur. And we do end up seeing full releases of many of these things. Sure the new input system and timeline were in a rough spot for a while, but they've grown and now work really well. I understand why a lot of people have issues with the package manager, but I also see why Unity does it and I personally think that at least for now it is an adequate solution, far from perfect, but it works well for most of my use cases.
Yeah. Stuff like the new rendering pipelines and the ui and the new input system take very long to go out of beta. And sometimes stuff gets harder, they removed 2d tilemap tools from the package manager.
Are you concerned for the future of Unity ECS? Do you see any major issues with this news, or do you think this is just some unexpected roadblock that will be worked out by the end of the year?
Honestly I see this as a pretty large issue. The way that post is worded, it sounds pretty mission critical that anyone using ECS should not update however a lot of people already have. My biggest concern is in the horrible job of communicating that. I am so thankful for your video but I am appalled by the fact that Unity didn't email this out or have a warning in editor and instead I find out through an unaffiliated channel. I would expect more from software we spend a considerable subscription for.. Honestly once again your channel is a godsend and you seem to do a far better job with delivering the important Unity news then them
Unity has been sweeping ECS under the rug for a while now, simply stating "it's not ready, please wait" but being consistently late with all their plans around it, like a new networking replacement and such, so it seems like they are super unhappy with the progress with entities, you can't even install it with 2020 without knowing the exact package name and github link adding method, since it's not visible in the manager anymore.
@@kalvinpearce Appreciate that you found this video informative. Again to me this seems like something they discovered kindof last minute and all they could do was put up a forum post. If this is as critical as they are making it sound, I would guess they will patch something into the editor either warning the user or outright forbidding them to use entities packages in 2021.
Great video! Do you think Unity is becoming too fragmented? It already has the render pipelines, package manager, now dots vs non-dots.. too many moving parts
That's a good question. I do think that it is generally a good idea to have dedicated departments for certain features within the engine, so each individual part is strong as it has a dedicated team to work on it. However, as Unity continues to grow and become more compartmentalized and focused on building these separate teams, they must learn to effectively work together or things could begin to fall apart. Again, too early to say that something like that is happening as this issue only applies to bleeding edge, experimental features of the engine.
It is becoming a little fragmented but looking from the other angle it also becomes very customizable according to project type, for example you can't do that with Unreal. Second also it can't become fragmented... because it's... Unity (pun intended).
So I would say fragmentation isn't inherently bad. However their systems weren't designed from a UI/UX standpoint to handle it. All they need to do is create a consolidated location with drop downs for organizing "In-development" "Standard" "Depreciated" for each of these fragmented things. Because tracking all these dozens of Unity projects going on simultaneously which may or may not be the same function results in a nasty blob of things that become spaghetti in one's head.
In my testing with a basic scene, it did work. But other people in the comments on here and forums have posted issues with things they've been running into. I'm sure you could use it for awhile without running into any issues, but to save yourself some headaches down the road, I'd say it's best to develop ECS projects on 2020.3 LTS for the time being.
This is literally not a real problem. It's simply a case of them keeping this package available on a previous version of Unity without making people wait for it to be available on the Pre-release package stream.
Well I had some issues with ECS since the upgrade to 2021 GPU instancing stopped working and Hybrid Renderer V2 also through some errors with HDRP/LIT Shader and some custom HDR Shader, which all SRP compatible and worked before I downgraded back to 2020 and everything worked again. And Yes I'm a little worried as I see the huge benefit and performance boost I can gain. And the major problem is not the fact that we will be prevented by the new features with 2021 or even bug fixes but, the fact that Hybrid Renderer is dependent on both the Entities package and SRP (URP/HDRP) which continues to be developed on the 2021. This would mean that anyone wanting to use the Hybrid Renderer package is stuck on the version of HDRP/URP that is compatible with 2020
I'm working on my experimental pet project on DOTS so not losing any money. But this uncertainty is concerning a lot. No news even in Aug 2021. It's like no dots - no my year long work since the API and performance limits are completely different from the classic game object system.
I totally understand your concern - not sure why they have been so quiet lately, maybe because they want to make a big splash when they do have something to say next? But I do know that DOTS is still very much in the works.
Generally speaking, if you have a released or near release project you should always be on a 'year behind' basis anyway - unless there is Functionality you strictly need. I wouldn't switch to 2021 until it goes into LTS, because by then most of what you are currently doing should transfer over smoothly. I've had a lot of headaches upgrading to new unity versions right away. I have now followed this principal for a few years now, and it's been much better.
I'm in the same boat. Since they've been making LTS versions it really just seems to be the safest option. The tech steam releases sometimes seem like an extended beta period
The fact that people are using ECS with such fervor while it's still in active, exploratory development is more of a problem than whatever method Unity chooses to releases their updates. Wait until it's a proper release version to actually be worried about its availability, and absolutely do not use it in any projects that are meant to be seen by anyone but yourself.
I would think the reason for doing this would be that they're focusing on making some big changes to the Entities system, and so instead of spending all the time on trying to get it ready for people to use in small increments, focus on getting that chunk of work done before making it ready for preview. Feedback is very helpful, but not when everyone so just saying that the thing you already know is broken, is broken.
I mean, try using the latest Project Tiny. It doesn't work with the editor. You can theoretically make stuff in it, but it's broken AF. I doubt they're are going to axe it, we just have to wait for a massive editor refactoring to make it work.
Still haven't dabbled much with Project Tiny, but I think that is an important thing for them to get right. Performance at the high end is great and awesome, but high low end performance is going to make the biggest difference for the most amount of people
I always thought, that DOTS had the ambition to become the default way to build games with Unity. In the earlier times it always sounded like the introduction of DOTS was not just another feature but a fundamental transition, one that all future development would revolve around. Later it sounded like this was still the goal, but it would just take more time. Now it seems like they abandoned the idea, pulled most resources from the project and are not developing in lock step with the mainline version. I think there are multiple ways forward from this. 1st, they have been developing a dots focused version of the engine behind closed doors, the public releases are just the non DOTS parts and they are holding back for a big marketing stunt. 2nd, there isn't going much on behind closed doors but they decide to pull it around and refocus on DOTS to realize the original vision. 3rd, and probably most likely. This the not the end but the beginning of the end of DOTS. The parts missing DOTS compatibility won't get it, more and more features will come out without DOTS compatibility, compatibility will permanently get limited to LTS releases, parts will be salvaged, but the monolithic stack will be abandoned.
They definitely talked it up quite a bit in the beginning. As far as I can tell, that is still the vision they hold, though the timeline on that seems to be a bit open ended. Although they've been quiet they've been expanding the DOTS teams, not shrinking them. I don't have any indication that they intend to create a separate DOTS editor, but it would be interesting to see how they did it if they do. DOTS still has a long way to go, but development is still moving forward for them. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
looks like they don't adandon the idea of DOTS. But they abandon the ideaa of ECS. For me using ECS approach totally ruins a global idea of unity editor. So looks like they plan to get rid of ECS, but they replace physics and other modules using vectorization approach under the hood. Probably at the edn of the day we will use same game objects and old unity appoach in the editor but internally it will be DOTS inside.
ECS is awesome, I get 10-1000x as many meshes rendered. It isn't ending. I just was unfortunate to pick bleeding edge unity to use their bleeding edge tech. I spent 40 hours trying to Downgrade 2021 to 2020LTS and could not...
@@TurboMakesGames Well I got it working. MMO coming out very very very soon. I think what I needed to do was change a package of 2021 down to a lower version for 2020
You should add note about this into your making ECS project video, since this can be a little counter intuitive. Just saying cuz I just followed it and had to downgrade afterwards.
Grrrrr... I downloaded 2021 and deleted 2020 and now I have to flip back, but I use my cell phone's data for internet so it's long process. It sure would have been nice to know this information beforehand.
it's probably not that there is asome particular issue, it's most likely the fact that they don't want to waste time making updates to support each new version, they will just stay on 2020 and focus on actual feature development
That's an interesting take. The only thing they've said publicly is that there is an issue with the way preview packages are handled in 2021, so that's all we have to go off of for now
Well that would be because 2021.3.6 hasn't been released yet 🙃 The C# Job System is built right in to the game engine, so no need to add in any additional packages - however the com.unity.jobs package is a preview package that extends the base job system and that one would have to be added manually (though it is a package dependency of Unity.Entities)
My ECS roll-a-ball tutorial is due for an updated version. However, check out this video, it might help you implement cinemachine into your game ua-cam.com/video/JFv49-0vy_8/v-deo.html
DLSS support was annouced to come at 2021.2. That's pretty huge feature to miss out. Do you think you'll do some sort of conversion workflow video once ECS become available again for newer versions at next year?
DLSS support would be cool to take advantage of - Unity did say that experimental DOTS packages could be compatible with 2021 by the end of the year at the earliest - so best case scenario ECS would only be missing out on DLSS for a few months. I definitely plan on making a comprehensive video on the conversion workflow soon!
@@TurboMakesGames Im sorry i was just really mad yesterday i cant open my projekt when i click on it loads and then it comes up on my starting tab but i cant open it
![[UA] Team Vitality проти NAVI | IEM Cologne 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wttO1zVRTC0/mqdefault.jpg)
Update December 2021: Unity has officially reopened their public communications regarding Unity ECS, with some news on the next release of Entities and when it will be compatible with Unity version 2021 - watch this for more information: ua-cam.com/video/iLpvWp1y23A/v-deo.html
I just watched their keynote from 3 years ago where they announced they wanted to move to ecs, alongside a dozen other huge changes.
Of course they’ve not finished a single one because they’re seem to have no focus at all
Entities 0.51 will be coming in Q2 2022, which will support 2021 (but only with Vulkan support for now)
People are overreacting, lts is still there, and using spearhead version of such packages for a production version is a big risk anyway. They are obviously working on something big and changing parts of the engine and editor, all we have to do is wait and see.
Sums it up pretty well 👍
Unfortunately Unity has a pattern of hyping a new system heavily for a few months, and then just going silent about it for months or years until ultimately a replacement is announced.
Are you referring to their multiplayer suite(s)? 😁😆
@@TurboMakesGames I'm sure that fits, too! But I was thinking of all their UI systems over the years. I've hardly heard a peep about UI Toolkit after their initial hype. It's still very much unfinished despite existing in some form for like 3 years now.
@@vargonian UI toolkit is actively developed.. they have changed their releasing pattern .... here is the news about it:-
forum.unity.com/threads/ui-update-q1-2021.1043680/
Wondering why the forum thread exists then :) It seems like they are on an extemum of fitting this pattern
i guess would be better for them to make new engine with new title, unity name is like not promising anymore with all these messed features incooperate one another.
I might be wrong about that, but unity has started to finally put loads of effort into the long task of upgrading to newer runtimes. These changes are starting with 2021.1 and are probably also effecting entities at a very low level. So it would very much make a lot of sense to make them compatible only after the upgrade is finished. This could also explain why there were no errors yet.
Not a bad theory 🤔🤔
I would just say, there is a huge difference between whether it works, and if it is supported. I have been playing with it on 2021.2 and everything works fine so far.
That's a fair point. Glad to hear it's been working for you though! I know there were a few people in our Discord community that were experiencing some issues in 2021 - at least as of a few months ago
Thank you for mentioning DOTS :)
Depending on used packages, porting between 2020 and 2021 and Entities 0.17.0 may, or may not cause issues. One of the project caused range of required changes after upgrading to entities 0.17.0, including requirement of HRP and even Unity Entity Editor upgrade. And few other more packages were forced to be upgraded. Eventually made it working fine.
I have also two Independent projects, one on 2021.1.0b5 and 2021.2.0.a8. Installing DOTS related packages from scratch, went completely smooth.
Also, with latest entities and burst packages, there are multiple additional checks, which may surprisingly throw errors in the console, when didn't before.
Technically these are probably own code bugs, which went under the radar, before upgrade.
Good vid. keep it up.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, this is good info for people to know! Glad you liked the video 😊
Thank you. That was really necessary to know. I guess for production code we have to wait at least a year or two to gain benefits of ECS. Thank you agin.
Glad you found the video useful. But remember, you can still use the burst compiler and C# job system with production code to get some performance benefits!
I can't help but feel that Unity has too much experimental technology with no tangible idea of when it will be production ready. I'd rather have one system ready than 10 systems that I can't depend on.
That's fair, I totally understand not wanting to rely on experimental technology for your project. Luckily Unity has tons of great features that are stable and work reliably. Unity has a pretty good track record of bringing things to a full certified release. Sure not everything pans out, but they have many teams dedicated to making new features, and I'm glad they make them available to the public in some capacity so we can battle test it and make a better product in the end.
thank you for the summary of the current state. A lot of 'nice to know'
Glad to hear you found it helpful 😊
Thanks for the heads up. I didn't see that announcement.
Yep, it was just in a forum post so it was easily missed
Reminds me of that time I wasted on UNET
UNET lives on in Mirror so that's not a complete waste of time. Plus in the process I'm sure you still learned a lot about networking
I think they should split it into Unity DOTS, it is so different that it could make things easier for game devs and unity devs that way
Also, could you please make a video about what would be the best way to use burst and other production ready dots components in normal unity programs. Which ones you’d use yourself and how.
Thanks for all the amazing content
One of the theories in the Unity forums was that they are planning on creating a separate version of the game engine for dots/ecs - I don't think that will actually happen though.
Thanks for the video suggestion, noted!
@@TurboMakesGames On one hand it may seem difficult to create a separate version of Unity with DOTS profile, because a lot of things might need designing and building from the start but... on the other hand developing DOTS while still keeping it fully compatible with the "old ways" might seem at least as difficult if not more. Then if they make a new product they don't risk alienating developers who are too used and comfortable with the "old ways".
I don't understand why its so hard for Unity to do this. MonoGame (I know its lower level and systems are not done for you) has had ECS in its extended packages for years. At least make a stable core version without all the Unity systems because its still useful as is.
The concept of ECS has been around for decades now, but Unity is doing something quite ambitious by bringing it to a wider audience in a more approachable fashion. But I have no idea as to the true nature of the problems they are facing in development. Hoping for some more news soon!
Thank you for making this video. Was having issues with LocalWorld not populating a prefab from a RenderMesh in Unity 2021. Downgraded to Unity 2020 and it worked.
Interesting.. Glad to hear going back to 2020 worked for you!
Frustrating for someone who plans to start a new DOTS-based project. It's all well and good to say if you are currently using Entities to stay on 2020 but for new projects, I don't really want to start a project in 2021 with 2020 and not be able to upgrade later.
I understand where you're coming from. They claim that they should have this figured out by the end of the year or at least prior to the release of 2021 LTS, but we haven't heard anything definitive yet
The thing that bums me out as a unity developer is how much effort they put into a technology, only for it to languish all the way through it's development to a (hopefully) completely released state. So many packages designed to take away some of the rough edges of Unity had a strong footing in its introduction like they just couldn't wait to announce it to the world and then...just sat there with minimal direction. I've been waiting for their new UI system for years now, and their revamped input system was another problem point.
I've never been a big fan of their package system. I understand their initial rationale, making the main unity engine leaner by excluding extra functionality into modular packages, but I feel like it fragments their focus too much, and at the same time doesn't really solve the problem they were trying to solve. A lot of packages are basically mandatory, and it baffles me why they wouldn't just be included by default. Having quicker update cycles on these packages and thus not tying them to the main unity release schedule is often a moot point because projects will typically grab a version and stick with it unless there's problems. And even then, they update unity so frequently now, that they could safely bake these packages into unity and still get a moderately quick turnaround on updates to the packages.
Definitely hurts to see something that seems promising get far into development then just die off. Fact of the matter is that most companies do R&D on all sorts of things, some that get very far into development, then never get released. Though this is usually done behind closed doors, while Unity (at least used to) is more open with their development. I appreciate this because as a user, I feel that I have influence over how the different things work and can impact change on them while they are still under heavy development and subject to more change. Once something is released, it's typically less likely for bigger changes to occur. And we do end up seeing full releases of many of these things. Sure the new input system and timeline were in a rough spot for a while, but they've grown and now work really well.
I understand why a lot of people have issues with the package manager, but I also see why Unity does it and I personally think that at least for now it is an adequate solution, far from perfect, but it works well for most of my use cases.
Yeah. Stuff like the new rendering pipelines and the ui and the new input system take very long to go out of beta. And sometimes stuff gets harder, they removed 2d tilemap tools from the package manager.
Are you concerned for the future of Unity ECS? Do you see any major issues with this news, or do you think this is just some unexpected roadblock that will be worked out by the end of the year?
Honestly I see this as a pretty large issue. The way that post is worded, it sounds pretty mission critical that anyone using ECS should not update however a lot of people already have. My biggest concern is in the horrible job of communicating that. I am so thankful for your video but I am appalled by the fact that Unity didn't email this out or have a warning in editor and instead I find out through an unaffiliated channel. I would expect more from software we spend a considerable subscription for.. Honestly once again your channel is a godsend and you seem to do a far better job with delivering the important Unity news then them
Unity has been sweeping ECS under the rug for a while now, simply stating "it's not ready, please wait" but being consistently late with all their plans around it, like a new networking replacement and such, so it seems like they are super unhappy with the progress with entities, you can't even install it with 2020 without knowing the exact package name and github link adding method, since it's not visible in the manager anymore.
@@kalvinpearce Appreciate that you found this video informative. Again to me this seems like something they discovered kindof last minute and all they could do was put up a forum post. If this is as critical as they are making it sound, I would guess they will patch something into the editor either warning the user or outright forbidding them to use entities packages in 2021.
Great video! Do you think Unity is becoming too fragmented? It already has the render pipelines, package manager, now dots vs non-dots.. too many moving parts
That's a good question. I do think that it is generally a good idea to have dedicated departments for certain features within the engine, so each individual part is strong as it has a dedicated team to work on it. However, as Unity continues to grow and become more compartmentalized and focused on building these separate teams, they must learn to effectively work together or things could begin to fall apart. Again, too early to say that something like that is happening as this issue only applies to bleeding edge, experimental features of the engine.
It is becoming a little fragmented but looking from the other angle it also becomes very customizable according to project type, for example you can't do that with Unreal. Second also it can't become fragmented... because it's... Unity (pun intended).
So I would say fragmentation isn't inherently bad. However their systems weren't designed from a UI/UX standpoint to handle it. All they need to do is create a consolidated location with drop downs for organizing "In-development" "Standard" "Depreciated" for each of these fragmented things. Because tracking all these dozens of Unity projects going on simultaneously which may or may not be the same function results in a nasty blob of things that become spaghetti in one's head.
I dont get it. Its working fine for me?
In my testing with a basic scene, it did work. But other people in the comments on here and forums have posted issues with things they've been running into. I'm sure you could use it for awhile without running into any issues, but to save yourself some headaches down the road, I'd say it's best to develop ECS projects on 2020.3 LTS for the time being.
This is literally not a real problem. It's simply a case of them keeping this package available on a previous version of Unity without making people wait for it to be available on the Pre-release package stream.
Exactly lol
Well I had some issues with ECS since the upgrade to 2021
GPU instancing stopped working and Hybrid Renderer V2 also through some errors with HDRP/LIT Shader and some custom HDR Shader, which all SRP compatible and worked before
I downgraded back to 2020 and everything worked again.
And Yes I'm a little worried as I see the huge benefit and performance boost I can gain.
And the major problem is not the fact that we will be prevented by the new features with 2021 or even bug fixes but, the fact that Hybrid Renderer is dependent on both the Entities package and SRP (URP/HDRP) which continues to be developed on the 2021. This would mean that anyone wanting to use the Hybrid Renderer package is stuck on the version of HDRP/URP that is compatible with 2020
Interesting, good to know what things were breaking for you and glad to hear you're back up and running on 2020!
If a package is far from being complete why waste your work-time to make it compatible before making it complete?
Yeah that's a fair point
Especially since these versions come out regularly. Having to maintain compatibility for every version is just wasteful.
I'm working on my experimental pet project on DOTS so not losing any money. But this uncertainty is concerning a lot. No news even in Aug 2021. It's like no dots - no my year long work since the API and performance limits are completely different from the classic game object system.
I totally understand your concern - not sure why they have been so quiet lately, maybe because they want to make a big splash when they do have something to say next? But I do know that DOTS is still very much in the works.
Generally speaking, if you have a released or near release project you should always be on a 'year behind' basis anyway - unless there is Functionality you strictly need. I wouldn't switch to 2021 until it goes into LTS, because by then most of what you are currently doing should transfer over smoothly.
I've had a lot of headaches upgrading to new unity versions right away. I have now followed this principal for a few years now, and it's been much better.
I'm in the same boat. Since they've been making LTS versions it really just seems to be the safest option. The tech steam releases sometimes seem like an extended beta period
Thanks for the info. I'm going to stick with Jobs for now
Nice, the C# job system is really great!
@@TurboMakesGames it is! I was honestly preparing myself for the torture of making a compute shader pipeline. But this really saved a lot of time.
The fact that people are using ECS with such fervor while it's still in active, exploratory development is more of a problem than whatever method Unity chooses to releases their updates. Wait until it's a proper release version to actually be worried about its availability, and absolutely do not use it in any projects that are meant to be seen by anyone but yourself.
Yeah, there may be some inconveniences during development, but I'm convinced this will lead to a better product in the end.
I would think the reason for doing this would be that they're focusing on making some big changes to the Entities system, and so instead of spending all the time on trying to get it ready for people to use in small increments, focus on getting that chunk of work done before making it ready for preview. Feedback is very helpful, but not when everyone so just saying that the thing you already know is broken, is broken.
That is a likely possibility as well
I mean, try using the latest Project Tiny. It doesn't work with the editor. You can theoretically make stuff in it, but it's broken AF. I doubt they're are going to axe it, we just have to wait for a massive editor refactoring to make it work.
Still haven't dabbled much with Project Tiny, but I think that is an important thing for them to get right. Performance at the high end is great and awesome, but high low end performance is going to make the biggest difference for the most amount of people
They are called tech release for a reason, always use LTS versions if you want to release your game.
Indeed!
I always thought, that DOTS had the ambition to become the default way to build games with Unity.
In the earlier times it always sounded like the introduction of DOTS was not just another feature but a fundamental transition, one that all future development would revolve around.
Later it sounded like this was still the goal, but it would just take more time.
Now it seems like they abandoned the idea, pulled most resources from the project and are not developing in lock step with the mainline version.
I think there are multiple ways forward from this.
1st, they have been developing a dots focused version of the engine behind closed doors, the public releases are just the non DOTS parts and they are holding back for a big marketing stunt.
2nd, there isn't going much on behind closed doors but they decide to pull it around and refocus on DOTS to realize the original vision.
3rd, and probably most likely. This the not the end but the beginning of the end of DOTS. The parts missing DOTS compatibility won't get it, more and more features will come out without DOTS compatibility, compatibility will permanently get limited to LTS releases, parts will be salvaged, but the monolithic stack will be abandoned.
They definitely talked it up quite a bit in the beginning. As far as I can tell, that is still the vision they hold, though the timeline on that seems to be a bit open ended. Although they've been quiet they've been expanding the DOTS teams, not shrinking them. I don't have any indication that they intend to create a separate DOTS editor, but it would be interesting to see how they did it if they do. DOTS still has a long way to go, but development is still moving forward for them. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts!
@@TurboMakesGames
Thanks for sharing that the team is actually expanding. I certainly relied a bit too much on speculation when forming my opinion.
looks like they don't adandon the idea of DOTS. But they abandon the ideaa of ECS. For me using ECS approach totally ruins a global idea of unity editor. So looks like they plan to get rid of ECS, but they replace physics and other modules using vectorization approach under the hood. Probably at the edn of the day we will use same game objects and old unity appoach in the editor but internally it will be DOTS inside.
ECS is awesome, I get 10-1000x as many meshes rendered. It isn't ending. I just was unfortunate to pick bleeding edge unity to use their bleeding edge tech. I spent 40 hours trying to Downgrade 2021 to 2020LTS and could not...
That's awesome. Yeah definitely not ending anytime soon! Too bad to hear you were having so many problems downgrading, hope you get that figured out!!
@@TurboMakesGames Well I got it working. MMO coming out very very very soon. I think what I needed to do was change a package of 2021 down to a lower version for 2020
You should add note about this into your making ECS project video, since this can be a little counter intuitive. Just saying cuz I just followed it and had to downgrade afterwards.
Thanks for the tip, I definitely will do that!
Grrrrr... I downloaded 2021 and deleted 2020 and now I have to flip back, but I use my cell phone's data for internet so it's long process. It sure would have been nice to know this information beforehand.
Oh no! Doesn't help that each version of the editor is like 8GB now...
Im sticking to the LTS 2020.3 version ;p
You got it!
it's probably not that there is asome particular issue, it's most likely the fact that they don't want to waste time making updates to support each new version, they will just stay on 2020 and focus on actual feature development
That's an interesting take. The only thing they've said publicly is that there is an issue with the way preview packages are handled in 2021, so that's all we have to go off of for now
ohhh okay, thats why I never found a human using ECS in Unity 2021
Not sure if it's a bug or what, but Jobs is not available on 2021.3.6f Package Manager.
Well that would be because 2021.3.6 hasn't been released yet 🙃
The C# Job System is built right in to the game engine, so no need to add in any additional packages - however the com.unity.jobs package is a preview package that extends the base job system and that one would have to be added manually (though it is a package dependency of Unity.Entities)
are you from future kamicazer_o? because right now my latest unity pre-release is 2021.2.0b9
did you mean 2020.3.6f?
@@Kitulous oh yeah my bad, I can't recall the exact verison now as I was working with several, but I probably made a typo! Thanks for checking!
I added cinemachine to your ecs tutorial ball game. It doesnt work it need some tweaks maybe.
My ECS roll-a-ball tutorial is due for an updated version. However, check out this video, it might help you implement cinemachine into your game ua-cam.com/video/JFv49-0vy_8/v-deo.html
DLSS support was annouced to come at 2021.2. That's pretty huge feature to miss out.
Do you think you'll do some sort of conversion workflow video once ECS become available again for newer versions at next year?
DLSS support would be cool to take advantage of - Unity did say that experimental DOTS packages could be compatible with 2021 by the end of the year at the earliest - so best case scenario ECS would only be missing out on DLSS for a few months.
I definitely plan on making a comprehensive video on the conversion workflow soon!
Did you even ... just bridge the mono fucking classes to ECS entities and change your programming paradigm
I have a question I downloaded an asset online and I want to add it to my project(it is a zip btw)
that's not a question, it's a statement of desire
The clickbait image is annoyingly unnecessary.
I agree. Although my click-through rate analytics tell me otherwise. Hope you found the video useful and informative regardless!
Algorithm Fuel
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this is bs
Certainly not ideal. Check out this video for the latest update on Unity's DOTS plans going forward: ua-cam.com/video/iLpvWp1y23A/v-deo.html
Downvoted. Just because of that stupid flag on the wall. Cheers.
What you don't like the Chevrolet one?? 😁😁
Unity sucks
What makes you say that?
@@TurboMakesGames Im sorry i was just really mad yesterday i cant open my projekt when i click on it loads and then it comes up on my starting tab but i cant open it