Unity 5 [Is now available]

[Diewoe]

There is another game i own that used unity 4 and they upgraded to unity 5 with out any of us knowing. I mean they did a patch and if you didn't read the patch notes you wouldn't have known other than the game ran better and looked better. They did this also like the day after unity 5 was released/announced, so it can not be as hard as some make it out to be. "wink wink" Squad "wink wink"

[Red Iron Crown]

There is another game i own that used unity 4 and they upgraded to unity 5 with out any of us knowing. I mean they did a patch and if you didn't read the patch notes you wouldn't have known other than the game ran better and looked better. They did this also like the day after unity 5 was released/announced, so it can not be as hard as some make it out to be. "wink wink" Squad "wink wink"

Complexity of the port varies on a case-by-case basis, as I understand it KSP falls on the "more difficult" end of the scale.

[Murph]

Complexity of the port varies on a case-by-case basis, as I understand it KSP falls on the "more difficult" end of the scale.

I second that. It is totally irrelevant how quickly or easily other games managed to port from U4 to U5.

KSP is a unique and highly complex game that will require a vast amount of custom code on top of Unity, and code to forcefully shape Unity into what is required for KSP.

[Goee]

How much Unity 5 will improve ksp?Does the graphics will be different?

[Murph]

How much Unity 5 will improve ksp?Does the graphics will be different?

Only Squad really know the answers. For now, these are the most accurate answers you will get:

1) A bit.

2) Yes, but not very different.

[soontm]

Has Squad released anything in regards Unity 5 upgrade? I'm happy just for the 64bit, so we're not stuck with the stupid memory limit. KSP is fine as it is. It's only the memory limit that drives me nuts.

[Murph]

Has Squad released anything in regards Unity 5 upgrade? I'm happy just for the 64bit, so we're not stuck with the stupid memory limit. KSP is fine as it is. It's only the memory limit that drives me nuts.

As far as I know it's all quite vague, only a few bits of detail:

• Completely rewritten UI, as the current UI isn't suitable for U5 (U5 has an all new UI framework). They have learnt a lot about how to do UIs since some of the current UI was implemented, so it should be good (but not all the improvement is necessarily visible).
  
• Wheel colliders have completely changed, all wheel code must be redone (comment from me: but don't expect huge improvements, necessarily, I've seen developers complaining that the wheels are still crap, just crap in different ways).
  
• Major physics change due to the PhysX upgrade (comment from me: but don't expect much user-visible change, likely just improved performance (hopefully)). Physics should have at least limited multi-thread support, but don't expect miracles or huge new features from that; multi-threaded physics is not, and has never been, a silver bullet; and multi-threaded doesn't mean that everything can be in parallel up the the available cores, only that some things will be able to be done in parallel (others will have to be stuck behind a mutex for complex practical reasons). Much better to have lower expectations here, and possibly be pleasantly surprised, than to subscribe to unrealistic hype and be disappointed.
  
• The door is definitely opening for 64-bit, but they sensibly have not promised it for 1.1. I imagine it will be a case of whether it works well when they flip the magic switch, or if it needs more work and is better to at least get 1.1 out the door with U5 in some form, rather than delay it. I.e. if it "just works", I expect 1.1 will probably have 64-bit builds, but if they hit a major snag it could be 1.2.
  

That's just quickly from memory, I've not deliberately omitted anything, but could easily have forgotten something.

[NoMrBond]

The door is definitely opening for 64-bit, but they sensibly have not promised it for 1.1. I imagine it will be a case of whether it works well when they flip the magic switch, or if it needs more work and is better to at least get 1.1 out the door with U5 in some form, rather than delay it. I.e. if it "just works", I expect 1.1 will probably have 64-bit builds, but if they hit a major snag it could be 1.2.

One significant bonus under U5 is that the editor now features the same 64 bit environment as the 64 bit player, it was mentioned that this already allowed them to spot (and fix) several 64 bit specific bugs they had no way of catching before

[soontm]

As far as I know it's all quite vague, only a few bits of detail:

• Completely rewritten UI, as the current UI isn't suitable for U5 (U5 has an all new UI framework). They have learnt a lot about how to do UIs since some of the current UI was implemented, so it should be good (but not all the improvement is necessarily visible).
  
• Wheel colliders have completely changed, all wheel code must be redone (comment from me: but don't expect huge improvements, necessarily, I've seen developers complaining that the wheels are still crap, just crap in different ways).
  
• Major physics change due to the PhysX upgrade (comment from me: but don't expect much user-visible change, likely just improved performance (hopefully)). Physics should have at least limited multi-thread support, but don't expect miracles or huge new features from that; multi-threaded physics is not, and has never been, a silver bullet; and multi-threaded doesn't mean that everything can be in parallel up the the available cores, only that some things will be able to be done in parallel (others will have to be stuck behind a mutex for complex practical reasons). Much better to have lower expectations here, and possibly be pleasantly surprised, than to subscribe to unrealistic hype and be disappointed.
  
• The door is definitely opening for 64-bit, but they sensibly have not promised it for 1.1. I imagine it will be a case of whether it works well when they flip the magic switch, or if it needs more work and is better to at least get 1.1 out the door with U5 in some form, rather than delay it. I.e. if it "just works", I expect 1.1 will probably have 64-bit builds, but if they hit a major snag it could be 1.2.
  

That's just quickly from memory, I've not deliberately omitted anything, but could easily have forgotten something.

Thanks for the quick sum up. As long as I get the 64bit version, I'm not complaining. I even tried to use the 64bit on Linux. It works somewhat and KSP runs up to 8GB w/o crashing, but the performance is really ....ty to the point I just give up and went back to windows and running KSP with openGL. As long as they're working on the 64bit, I can wait.