New in Unity 2022.2

Release Notes

To find out more about the new features, changes, and improvements to this Unity version, see the 2022.2 Release Notes.

Upgrade Guide

If you are upgrading existing projects from 2022.2, read the Upgrade Guide to 2022.2 for information about how your project might be affected.

What’s new

See what’s changed in Unity 2022.2 since 2022.1 and view the documentation for the affected areas.

Editor and Workflow

• The Device Simulator device list now includes a new button to install the com.unity.device-simulator.devices package, which contains the latest device definitions from Unity.
• You now have the option to block shortcuts from triggering during Play mode while the Game view window is focused.
• Added an Edit mode preview Overlay for the Trail Renderer
• Added Context column to ShortcutManager.
• Added functionality to import and export profiles in the Shortcuts manager.
• Added MinMaxCurveProperty Drawer to UIToolkit InspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, asset or project settings, allowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info
  See in Glossary.
• You can now run tests in a specified order from a test list.

Memory Profiler

Memory Profiler 1.0.0 includes the following features:

• A new All Of Memory snapshots comparison tab.
• A Close button to close snapshots, which means, single-clicking a selected snapshot no longer closes it.
• Unity Objects breakdown comparison between two captures.

For a summary of changes, see What’s new in Memory Profiler 1.0.0.

UI Toolkit for Editor UI

• Added support for background-position, background-size and background-repeat for background rendering.
• Added new UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info
  See in Glossary Toolkit versions for ColorBlockDrawer and NavigationDrawer.
• Improved UI/UX of the Inspector displaying appropriate visual cues according to the statuses of properties and provided more details about how properties’ values are bound and resolved.
• Improved the UI Builder Inspector.
• Added library icons to UI Builder.
• Added the align-self field to the UI Builder style Inspector.
• Added call to implement DecoratorDrawers.
• Synchronized TextCore’s text generation with the latest code from TextMeshPro.

Graphics

• Added access to the bounds of the current renderer in the per object constant buffer for SRPs.
• Implemented custom error/loading shaderA program that runs on the GPU. More info
  See in Glossary support for the BatchRendererGroup.
• Added visual debug tool for buffer load/store actions.
• OpenGL ES 3.1 support for BatchRendererGroup.
• TerrainThe landscape in your scene. A Terrain GameObject adds a large flat plane to your scene and you can use the Terrain’s Inspector window to create a detailed landscape. More info
  See in Glossary heightmapA greyscale Texture that stores height data for an object. Each pixel stores the height difference perpendicular to the face that pixel represents.
  See in Glossary support in RayTracingAccelerationStructure when using RayTracingAccelerationStructure.CullInstances function.
• Added gaze foveated rendering (GFR) on Vulkan using fragment density map offset.
• The Texture2D importer and constructor now allow excluding the texture from mipmap limits, ensuring that all mips can get uploaded regardless of the quality settings.
• Added the runtime-modifiable Texture2D property to toggle excluding the texture from mipmap limits (only for readable Texture2Ds).
• The Texture2D importer and constructor can now be used to add the texture to a project-defined mipmap limit group for more fine-grained control of how texture quality gets affected per quality level.
• Added mipmap limit groups for more fine-grained configurability over the single value that applies to all mipmapped Texture2Ds.
• Added shader variant loading settings in Player SettingsSettings that let you set various player-specific options for the final game built by Unity. More info
  See in Glossary to control how much memory shaders use at runtime.
• Shader Warmup can now compile pipeline state objects asynchronously.
• Foveated Rendering support for D3D12/Vulkan.

URP

For a complete description of new features and improvements in URP, refer to the What’s new in URP 14 (Unity 2022.2) page.

New features

• Added Full Screen Pass Renderer feature.
• Added Custom post-processing effects with Full Screen Pass Renderer feature.
• Added Rendering Layers.
• Added Forward+ Rendering Path.
• Added LOD Cross-fade.
• Shader stripping improvement: added light cookies stripping.
• Changed light and decal layers to rendering layers.

Improvements

• Performance and usability improvements to Screen space ambient occlusionA method to approximate how much ambient light (light not coming from a specific direction) can hit a point on a surface.
  See in Glossary (SSAO).
• New 64-bit high precision HDRhigh dynamic range
  See in Glossary render target format.
• New bloom quality settings.
• Improvements to the Render Pipeline Converter.
• Full screen draws in URP now use the SRP Core Bliter API.
• More consistent lighting behavior on different platforms.
• New XRSystem API.
• Shader stripping improvements
• CPU performance improvements for light-heavy scenesA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
  See in Glossary.

HDRP

New features

• Added Fullscreen material type and sample set.
• Added Ray tracingThe process of generating an image by tracing out rays from the Camera through each pixel and recording the color contribution at the hit point. This is an alternative to rasterization. raytracing
  See in Glossary support for Terrain.
• Added the Water System.
• Volumetric material support for local volumetric fog volumes.
• Added transparency sample scene.
• Added color monitors to the Rendering Debugger.
• Added a new Eye Shader type called Eye Cinematic with Caustic.
• The Ray Tracing Settings volume includes Culling Mode properties to define the algorithm that performs Ray Tracing culling.

Improvements

• Replaced the Diffusion Profile Scattering Color HDR color picker with an LDR color picker.
• Added properties to the Screen Space Reflection component to control how the PBR Accumulation SSR algorithm behaves.
• Added a property called Target in the Custom pass drawer to access the current custom pass instance.
• Added Asymmetric projection and Screen Coordinates Override Frame settings.
• Adapted post-processingA process that improves product visuals by applying filters and effects before the image appears on screen. You can use post-processing effects to simulate physical camera and film properties, for example Bloom and Depth of Field. More info post processing, postprocessing, postprocess
  See in Glossary effects to support Screen Coordinates Override.
• Added settings to overwrite diffusion profile IOR on StackLit.
• Added the Occlusion remap Curve property to the Lens FlareA component that simulates the effect of lights refracting inside a camera lens. Use a Lens Flare to represent very bright lights or add atmosphere to your scene. More info
  See in Glossary component.
• Added Probe Touchup Volumes for tuning Probe Volumes, and you can now bake separate lighting scenarios using Probe Volumes and blend between them.

Package Manager

• Moved the package action toolbarA row of buttons and basic controls at the top of the Unity Editor that allows you to interact with the Editor in various ways (e.g. scaling, translation). More info
  See in Glossary in the package details header and implemented new design changes on the details header.
• Reorganized Package Details into tab-based display. Packages now have individual tabs for Description, Version History, Samples, and Dependencies, while Asset StoreA growing library of free and commercial assets created by Unity and members of the community. Offers a wide variety of assets, from textures, models and animations to whole project examples, tutorials and Editor extensions. More info
  See in Glossary Packages have tabs for Overview, Releases, and Images.
• Added a runtime module from the com.unity.properties package that enables the use of a generalized visitor pattern.
• Updated the scripting API by adding the isDeprecated and deprecationMessage properties to the UnityEditor.PackageManager.PackageInfo class, which are set when a given package version is labeled as deprecated on the registry by its author.
• Updated the scripting API by adding the deprecated property to the UnityEditor.PackageManager.VersionsInfo class (usually accessed through the versions property of a UnityEditor.PackageManager.PackageInfo instance), which lists all versions of that package that are labeled as deprecated on the registry.

Authoring Tools

Animation

• Modified fields on SerializeReference instances of MonoBehaviour so they can be animated like fields directly on MonoBehaviour classes.
• Added support to edit multiple Animation ClipsAnimation data that can be used for animated characters or simple animations. It is a simple “unit” piece of motion, such as (one specific instance of) “Idle”, “Walk” or “Run”. More info
  See in Glossary at once.

Navigation and Pathfinding

• Released a new AI Navigation package which will eventually replace the core Navigation and Pathfinding feature.
• Removed the Bake and Object tabs from the Navigation window as they’re no longer necessary. However, you can still find them in the Navigation (Obsolete) window.
• The Navigation Static and Off Mesh Link Generation options are no longer available in the Static Editor Flags dropdown menu. However, you can still find them in the Navigation (Obsolete) window > Object tab.

Terrain

Added Quality Settings to control various Terrain settings at different quality levels.

Audio

Added clock management options with the Video Player component.

2D

2D now supports the following features:

• New 2D Physics ProfilerA window that helps you to optimize your game. It shows how much time is spent in the various areas of your game. For example, it can report the percentage of time spent rendering, animating, or in your game logic. More info
  See in Glossary Area with Custom Profile Counters.
• New Editor Preference editor for 2D Physics that allows the configuration of GizmoA graphic overlay associated with a GameObject in a Scene, and displayed in the Scene View. Built-in scene tools such as the move tool are Gizmos, and you can create custom Gizmos using textures or scripting. Some Gizmos are only drawn when the GameObject is selected, while other Gizmos are drawn by the Editor regardless of which GameObjects are selected. More info
  See in Glossary colors and settings.
• The ability for 2D Physics ColliderAn invisible shape that is used to handle physical collisions for an object. A collider doesn’t need to be exactly the same shape as the object’s mesh - a rough approximation is often more efficient and indistinguishable in gameplay. More info
  See in Glossary Gizmos to optionally draw Outlines and Filled Colliders. These are new options in the Physics 2D Project SettingsA broad collection of settings which allow you to configure how Physics, Audio, Networking, Graphics, Input and many other areas of your project behave. More info
  See in Glossary Editor.
• The ability to select per-Collider2D, which layers that contacts:
  • Are captured for querying and producing physics callbacks.
  • Will produce a physics callbacks for.
• An option to override Layer collisionsA collision occurs when the physics engine detects that the colliders of two GameObjects make contact or overlap, when at least one has a Rigidbody component and is in motion. More info
  See in Glossary for Colliders, RigidbodyA component that allows a GameObject to be affected by simulated gravity and other forces. More info
  See in Glossary components, ArticulationBodies and Character ControllersA simple, capsule-shaped collider component with specialized features for behaving as a character in a game. Unlike true collider components, a Rigidbody is not needed and the momentum effects are not realistic. More info
  See in Glossary, which allows to fine tune which bodies should collide with what layers.

2D Physics improvements

You can now allow the following in 2D Physics:

• A Rigidbody2D/Collider2D to explicitly override (include or exclude) contact layers, so it can override the Layer Collision Matrix per-object.
• A Collider2D to control Send and Receive forces per-layer upon contact with another Collider2D.
• A Rigidbody2D to read or write the total force or torque that has been applied to it directly via add force or add torque calls.
• A Joint2D to select one of four modes that control an action to be taken when the jointA physics component allowing a dynamic connection between Rigidbody components, usually allowing some degree of movement such as a hinge. More info
  See in Glossary breaks. These are Ignore, CallbackOnly, Disable, or Destroy. Previously, Destroy was the fixed action and is still the default.

Burst

Added support for detecting managed breakpoints in code compiled with Burst, and automatically switching the affected code to the mono execution path to allow managed debugging. Requires Burst 1.8.

VFX Graph

• VFX Instancing now optimizes both CPU and GPU VFX runtime.
• Activation Boolean port on blocks.
• Added passthrough space (None).
• Skinned MeshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
  See in Glossary Sampling out of experimental.
• Added a new lighting model for smoke: Six-way lighting.

Platforms

• Added preliminary support for Magic Leap 2 in Android.
• Introduced a new WebGLA JavaScript API that renders 2D and 3D graphics in a web browser. The Unity WebGL build option allows Unity to publish content as JavaScript programs which use HTML5 technologies and the WebGL rendering API to run Unity content in a web browser. More info
  See in Glossary player setting to display diagnostics information (currently limited to memory usage) in WebGL applications.
• WebGL VideoPlayer now has a configurable time update mode, to support game time, unscaled game time, and audio display time.

Artist and Cinematic tools

ShaderGraph

Added access to the renderer bounds in Shader Graph through the object node.

Programmer tools

AI

Added an option to create a height mesh when you build the NavMeshA mesh that Unity generates to approximate the walkable areas and obstacles in your environment for path finding and AI-controlled navigation. More info
See in Glossary at runtime.

Kernel

Added a new Memory Manager Plugin interface to allow Unity’s native Memory Manager to do native memory allocations.

Serialization improvements

• Changed so fields on SerializeReference instances of MonoBehaviours can now be animated like fields directly on MonoBehaviours.
• Made EditorSerializationUtility services to access and manipulate SerializeReference instances with IDs available at runtime in Serialization.ManagedReferenceUtility.

Version Control

Added branch name column in changeset view.

Asset Store

Added Verified Solutions program, a library of third-party assets and solutions that Unity curates.

XR

• Added profiler markersPlaced in code to describe a CPU or GPU event that is then displayed in the Unity Profiler window. Added to Unity code by default, or you can use ProfilerMarker API to add your own custom markers. More info
  See in Glossary for some XR Display subsystem entry points. Markers are named XR.Display.*
• Added support for late latch debug mode to help verify late latch functionality to the Oculus XR plug-in
• Unity Mars is now included with Unity Pro, Unity Enterprise, and Unity Industrial Collection.

XR package changes

Version updates:

• com.unity.xr.arcore: 4.2.1 → 5.0.2
• com.unity.xr.arfoundation: 4.2.1 → 5.0.2
• com.unity.xr.arkit: 4.2.1 → 5.0.2
• com.unity.xr.core-utils: 2.0.0-pre.5 → 2.1.0
• com.unity.xr.interaction.toolkit: 2.0.0-pre.5 → 2.1.1
• com.unity.xr.legacyinputhelpers: 2.1.8 → 2.1.10
• com.unity.xr.oculus: 1.11.0 → 3.2.1
• com.unity.xr.openxr: 1.3.0 → 1.5.3

Removed the deprecated unity.xr.arkit-face-tracking package from the AR Feature setA feature set is a collection of related packages that you can use to achieve specific results in the Unity Editor. You can manage feature sets directly in Unity’s Package Manager. More info
See in Glossary. (APIs are now in the main ARKit package.)

AR Foundation 5.0.2

• Added AR Debug Menu to provide visualization for AR debug information.
• Added XR Simulation to allow testing of AR apps in a simulated environment within the editor (previously a Mars only feature).
• Merged the com.unity.xr.arsubsystems package into AR Foundation.
• Renamed XRDepthSubsystem to XRPointCloudSubsystem and XRDepthSubsystemDescriptor to XRPointCloudSubsystemDescriptor.

ARCore 5.0.2

• Added project validation rules, which can identify configuration and settings issues in your app.
• Added an option to OcclusionPreferenceMode to disable occlusion rendering.
• Added support for changing the cameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
  See in Glossary background rendering order.
• Updated the package to use Google’s ARCore 1.31.
• Updated depth data to 16 bit, which increases range from 8 meters to 65 meters.
• Added the CancelPermissionRequest method to allow developers to handle permission requests. Resolves issue: ARFOUNDATION: CAMERA REQUEST PERMISSION WINDOW IS NOT SHOWN WHEN APP IS MINIMIZED AND OPENED AGAIN ON ANDROID DEVICE.

ARKit 5.0.2

• Expanded face tracking capabilities to include tracking multiple faces with both the front and rear cameras at the same time. The device must support Apple ARKit 3.
• Merged the com.unity.arkit-face-tracking package into the ARKit package. The separate ARKit Face Tracking package is no longer needed.

Oculus 3.2.1

• Added optional support for Symmetric Projection on Quest 2 when using Vulkan and Multiview. This mode can improve GPU performance when using Multiview due to more common workloads between the left and right eye. Enable Symmetric Projection in the Oculus settings under XR Plug-inA set of code created outside of Unity that creates functionality in Unity. There are two kinds of plug-ins you can use in Unity: Managed plug-ins (managed .NET assemblies created with tools like Visual Studio) and Native plug-ins (platform-specific native code libraries). More info
  See in Glossary Management.
• Added Quest Pro to the list of target devices in the Oculus settings under XR Plug-in Management. Enable this option to add the Quest Pro to the app’s Android manifest.

OpenXR 1.5.3

• Added Project Validation support (requires XR Core Utilities 2.1.0+). Project validation evaluates the project settings to identify possible problems.
• Added support for setting the Environment Blend Mode.
• Added support for XR_MSFT_holographic_windown_attachment extension on UWP so that installing Microsoft Mixed Reality OpenXR Plug-in is no longer required if targeting HoloLens V2 devices.
• Added support for XR_FB_foveation, XR_FB_foveation_configuration, XR_FB_swapchain_update_state, XR_FB_foveation_vulkan and XR_FB_space_warp extensions.
• Applications now attempt to recover after the Oculus Link is lost and reconnected.

XR Interaction Toolkit 2.1.1

• Added an option to make the attachment point used when grabbing objects dynamic. See XR Grab Interactable for more information.
• Added “intention” filtering that uses a weighted score to choose which object to select when more than one otherwise qualifies. See Target filters for more information.
• Added an option to activate a comfort mode vignette during locomotion. See Tunneling Vignette Controller for more info.