Unity 6 Preview Now Available

We’ve been expecting it for some time now but the wait is finally over; Unity 6 Preview is finally available for download. But what can you expect to get out of the new version?

Formerly known as 2023.3 Tech Stream, Unity 6 Preview is the latest powerful iteration of the Unity software and the first in line with the new naming convention that was outlined in the Unite 2023 Keynote. While the name might not be that catchy, you can be assured that this latest release has some impressive upgrades and new features.

Unity 6 Preview has been developed to make it integrate with the most advanced XR systems currently available. The release now supports many of the most popular XR platforms, such as ARKit, ARCore, Meta Quest, visionOS, Windows Mixed Reality, and Playstation VR. 

Unity and So Much More

Unity have been quick to announce the major features launched in the new release, claiming that the powerful, upgraded engine will “bring the physical world into your game”. Unity went on to clarify that by stating; “Whether you want to expand your existing game with mixed reality or you’re making something entirely new, AR Foundation helps you incorporate the physical world into players’ experience in a cross-platform way.”

So, what is the AR Foundation and how does it help you do these things? With the AR Foundation, you can use Unity to build AR apps that work on many platforms. You may activate or disable augmented reality elements in an AR Foundation project by including the management components that match to your scene. You can write your app once and distribute it across the world’s major AR platforms because AR Foundation enables these functionalities utilising the platform’s native AR SDK when your app runs on an AR device.

AR Across Multiple Platforms

This feature makes it much easier to port AR apps across different platforms, making them easier to monetarise. That is just the start. In addition, Unity 6 Preview helps:

• The ‘Near-Far Interactor’ is a new interactor in Unity 6’s XR Toolkit 3.0 (XRI), which allows for additional modularity and flexibility when implementing the interactor’s suite of actions.
• The method in which inputs are handled in XRI will also be improved by the introduction of new input readers, which will streamline the process and simplify the coding across a wide range of input formats.
• An updated virtual keyboard is now available, which will enable users to design their own in-game keyboards using a method that is compatible with several platforms.
• The XR Hands module enables the integration of custom hand gestures, such as pointing and palms up and down, in addition to standard OpenXR hand gestures. As more platforms now support the use of hands to interact with content, this will simplify the incorporation of this ability into new applications, according to Unity. Furthermore, there are tools available to assist in the creation, refinement, and debugging of hand gestures and shapes in order to make content more accessible to the greatest number of individuals.

Let’s not make any mistakes about this; Unity 6 Preview is a big deal, and here’s why. The Unity 6 Preview resembles a Tech Stream release in its structure. It is a supported release that provides an advantage when implementing newly updated features in projects undergoing the discovery or prototyping phases.  

Upping the Performance

Significant performance enhancements are implemented in Unity 6 Preview for both the High-Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), which accelerate cross-platform production. The potential impact of the enhancements outlined here is a reduction in CPU burden of 30–50% and enhanced rendering speed across multiple platforms, contingent upon the nature of the content.

Greater worlds can be rendered more efficiently and with greater detail with the new GPU Resident Drawer, eliminating the necessity for laborious manual optimisations. GameObjects can reduce CPU frame-time for games by as much as 50% when rendering large, complex scenes across multiple platforms, including high-end mobile, personal computers, and consoles.

In addition, Unity 6 Preview has a new Spatial-Temporal Post-Processing and Render Graph for URP capabilities, as well as a highly improved Foveated Rendering API and Volume framework enhancements in both HDRP and URP. But it doesn’t end there and there are new and improved features in almost every area of the package, making it truly impressive. The whole package is very remarkable, and we at Unity Developers are excited with what we can do with the new and improved features. 

Unity Developers are ready to use Unity Preview 6 to help you make your apps and games. Contact us and let’s get talking.