What’s New in Unity 6.4 Beta: DirectStorage, XR, and More

Following the release of Unity 6.3 LTS — the first Long-Term Support build since Unity 6.0 — Unity Technologies has kicked off the public beta for Unity 6.4 (version 6000.4). As of February 2025, the beta is at build 6000.4.0b10, with weekly releases being distributed to testers. While Unity 6.3 was a substantial LTS milestone packed with features including the new Box2D v3 physics API, xAtlas lightmap packing, the Unified Raytracing API, and a major step toward a shared URP/HDRP renderer, the 6.4 beta is already drawing attention for its own significant additions, most notably first-class support for Microsoft DirectStorage.

This article covers what developers can expect from the Unity 6.4 Beta and how its improvements may affect your workflow.

DirectStorage: A Major Performance Leap for Asset Loading

The headline feature of Unity 6.4 Beta is support for Microsoft’s DirectStorage API on Windows Standalone builds. DirectStorage is a high-performance I/O technology that allows assets such as textures, meshes, and ECS/DOTS data to be loaded directly from NVMe storage to the GPU, largely bypassing the CPU. Unity’s internal testing has shown load time reductions of up to 40% for supported asset types. Developers can enable the feature through Player Settings using the new “Enable Direct Storage” option.

It is worth noting that this initial implementation does not yet use DirectStorage for compression and decompression, but Unity is actively working on exposing a C# API that will let developers load their own custom files with the full benefits of the technology. This is one of the most impactful performance improvements Unity has shipped in years for developers targeting PC platforms with modern NVMe hardware.

Graph Toolkit Now Built Into the Editor

Previously requiring a separate package installation, the Graph Toolkit — the framework underpinning Shader Graph, VFX Graph, and custom editor graph tools — is now a built-in module of the Unity Editor in 6.4. This change reduces setup friction and ensures that all graph-based tools share a consistent, editor-integrated foundation. Workflow refinements accompany this change, including a renamed “Delete and Reconnect” node operation (formerly “Bypass Node”), undoable blackboard variable expansions, and improved shortcut support across graph panels.

URP Compatibility Mode Removed

Unity 6.4 completes the removal of URP Compatibility Mode, which was previously available as a fallback for older rendering approaches. All methods dependent on Compatibility Mode have been transitioned to hard-obsolete status (previously soft-deprecated). Developers still relying on these APIs will need to migrate to the fully Render Graph-based URP workflow before upgrading. Unity’s documentation includes upgrade guides to help with this transition.

XR and AR Foundation Improvements

The 6.4 release continues to strengthen Unity’s XR offering. AR Foundation 6.4 introduces new marker tracking and decoding APIs, enabling provider plug-ins to add support for features such as QR code recognition in mixed reality applications. Additional improvements include new APIs for mesh submesh classification and updated raycast interfaces that support maximum distance constraints.

iOS support also benefits, with the addition of iPhone 17 device generation enums and screen cutout data, ensuring developers can target the latest Apple hardware immediately on release.

Physics, Accessibility, and Multiplayer

On the physics side, Unity has un-deprecated the Physics::RebuildBroadphaseRegions method, restoring multi-box pruning broadphase support that developers had come to rely on. New 2D physics query overloads for Collider2D now return NativeArray<> and the new ColliderArray2D collection type, improving compatibility with Burst-compiled and ECS-based workflows.

Accessibility continues to be an area of active investment. Building on 6.3’s desktop screen reader support for Narrator and VoiceOver, further refinements are being iterated in the 6.4 beta cycle, including improved container and UI element accessibility roles.

On the multiplayer side, several standalone SDKs — including Lobby, Matchmaker, Multiplay, and Relay — have been deprecated in favour of Unity’s consolidated Building Blocks approach, which is intended to simplify multiplayer project setup and reduce dependency overhead.

What to Expect from the Beta Process

As with all Unity beta releases, 6000.4 builds are released on a roughly weekly cadence. The beta phase follows the completion of major feature work and a minimum quality baseline, with each subsequent build improving stability and addressing bugs reported by the community. Unity is running a 6.4 Beta Sweepstakes alongside the programme, offering GPU prizes to developers who submit bug reports during the beta.

It is strongly recommended to back up any projects before opening them in a beta build, and to avoid shipping production titles from beta versions. However, for developers who want to evaluate performance improvements — particularly the DirectStorage gains — or who are building tooling ahead of the eventual 6.4 stable release, the beta is well worth exploring.

Getting Started

The latest Unity 6.4 beta build can be installed via Unity Hub from the Beta Program page at unity.com/releases/editor/beta. Release notes for each build are available on the same page and are worth reviewing before upgrading, given the deprecations and API changes that accompany this release.

Despite the power of these new capabilities, Unity remains a complex engine that can be challenging to navigate — particularly when migrating projects across major versions.

If you would prefer to have an experienced team handle your Unity development or migration, contact us to find out how we can help.