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Unity 5.3 released, hello modern OpenGL system for Linux gaming

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Unity 5.3 has been on my radar for one single reason, they finally have a modern OpenGL system! I really hope developers upgrade to it.

QuoteWith Unity 5.3, we’re shipping a number of new features which raise the bar for rendering quality and deliver improvements to rendering efficiency.

For starters, there’s a brand new OpenGL 4.x core, which will replace our legacy OpenGL 2.1 core. This allows you to take advantage of the very latest OpenGL features on Windows, OS X and Linux, whilst also being able to scale to older versions of OpenGL, depending on the user’s OpenGL driver support. Note that in 5.3, Unity will default to the new OpenGL core, but you can switch to legacy OpenGL 2.1 manually to maintain previous behavior. Our current aim is to remove the legacy OpenGL core in Unity 5.4.


See the full announcement here.

I would urge developers to update, as the Linux version should perform better with the new OpenGL system in. I am also pleased to see them aiming to remove the legacy system for the next major update, no point keeping it around. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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flesk Dec 8, 2015
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  • Contributing Editor
Quoting: Creak
Quoting: Mountain ManI hope the Cities: Skylines developers are paying attention. We might finally get good performance in Linux.

I'm not sure Cities: Skyline uses Unity.

They got the Golden Cube at the Unity Awards 2015, so I think it does.
[email protected] Dec 9, 2015
I hope the dev will update rust 'cause is nosense I need to run the game on fast with i5 and gtx 660ti
edo Dec 9, 2015
What about the people than doesn't have a pc able to run gl 4.x? And is the linux renderer limited to 4.1 because mac os?

but overall looks like a great update with a lot of new features, but still buggy for what I have read.
Yaakuro Dec 9, 2015
What? ROFL, didn't know that Unity was still using OpenGL 2.1 which came out 2006. OpenGL 3.2 came out 2009 and they used it in their engine? OpenGL 4 version started 2010 and they didn't change their engine all the time? Wow, that is quite embarrassing. I am sure they used glBegin, glEnd in their code :D.
Gutterdrums Dec 9, 2015
Hip hop hooray!
omer666 Dec 9, 2015
Quoting: mr-egg
Quoting: GuestThere is also the fact that WebGL is an officially supported build target.

Thats actually really good. Would that open up possibilities for games like Quake Live ?

Quake Live uses the complete original Quake 3 engine, just with a Web interface replacing the server browser - which in itself is a great move considering how bad was q3's server browser. It is not a WebGL port and it is totally unrelated to Unity.

Also in fact the game actually has had a Linux port at release, they just decided to discontinue it. As a long-time id fan - I bought the first Quake on launch and I own almost everything they ever released - I felt betrayed.


Last edited by omer666 on 9 December 2015 at 5:39 am UTC
ElectricPrism Dec 9, 2015
I totally loved the Cities game, but still haven't pulled the trigger on Cities: Skylines, OGL4 would be a nice performance boost im sure - I'm sure I'll get it for my better half who also is a Arch Gamer, very exciting to see OGL4 as we own many Unity games.
Eike Dec 9, 2015
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Quoting: Orkultus
Quoting: keikiThere is also a Linux version available for the unity editor in beta status:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-on-linux-release-notes-and-known-issues.350256/

Download keeps failing for me.

I had the same problem. Fetching by wget worked though, it tries to download the rest on timeouts.
soulsource Dec 9, 2015
Quoting: Mountain ManI hope the Cities: Skylines developers are paying attention. We might finally get good performance in Linux.
What's wrong with its performance? For me (Radeon R9 270X with open source drivers) it's running very well. I'm not at maximum settings, as I had to decrease shadow quality to medium, but I'd say that's more than close enough.

Quoting: Segata SanshiroHow easy is it for developers to upgrade? That's my concern here.
That's a very good question. I think it depends on the version of Unity a project would be upgrading from.
I've been following the Devnotes of Squad (Kerbal Space Program), and they've been quite busy for the last 6 months or so with changing the Unity version they are using - yet in their case it's from 4.something to 5.2. They had to do some major rewrites in order to get their game to work the way it was before again. On the other hand they updated their engine several times between various 4.x versions, and that usually was a matter of a few days/weeks. If the Unity developers keep the same scheme, only to break the API with major release version changes, we might have some games switching to Unity 5.3.

Still, I wouldn't expect any bigger game company to change engine version during development. Typically developers choose an engine version, and if it doesn't have any really critical bugs, they stick to it.


Last edited by soulsource on 9 December 2015 at 7:07 am UTC
Beamboom Dec 9, 2015
Seems version 5.3 of the editor is not made public for Linux yet.
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