Unity have just released Unity 2021.2 Tech Stream, their second and final release of the Unity game engine for 2021. Following on the earlier 2021.1 and Unity 2020 LTS release, tech stream releases are about adding new features to the game engine, while LTS, or Long Term Support versions are more stable and considered “safer” to use for long duration projects.
The 2021.2 Unity release focuses heavily on the URP or Universal Rendering Pipeline, bringing it closer to feature parity of the existing Standard Rendering Pipeline, that URP will ultimately replace. Other major features of the 2021.2 release include Features, an easier way to add packages to your project, by selecting a common task such as VR or AR development, 2D, etc.
This release also includes the new UI Toolkit, a collection of tools and technologies for creating and testing GUIs. This release also sees an update to the underlying Mono runtime, bringing C# 8 support to programmers. There were several underlying improvements to the various rendering pipelines, animation and lighting systems and more.
Key Links
- Unity 2021.2 Announcement Blog Post
- What’s New for Designers and Artists
- What’s New for Coders
- Full Release Notes
- UI Toolkit Homepage
- Download Link
You can learn more about Unity 2021.2 as well as seeing the new Features (um, feature) and UI Toolkit in action in the video below.