Every release is a big moment, and Unity has spent months on this one, polishing new features to help users deliver great games and experiences.
The key areas of focus for this Unity 5.5 release include:
New platforms, new opportunities
:First, Unity keeps on extending opportunities for creators to reach new users and new markets. In Unity 5.5, support for Microsoft Holographic (HoloLens) is no longer in preview mode, and that means you can now jump into exploring the future of augmented and mixed reality. We have also improved our In-App-Purchase feature with a codeless experience to take advantage of storefronts and added CloudMoolah.
Better tools for artists
:In Unity 5.5, the company has brought major improvements to the Particle System and Line Renderer components. Our Animation Window has workflow improvements and massively improved performance for faster, more reliable iteration. Then there’s the new Splash screen tool, which lets you introduce your brand at the start of your game with just a few clicks. We’re also introducing an experimental tool called Look Dev to ease the process of ensuring parity in materials throughout physically-based projects. Looking to the future, we’re excited to introduce Unity Collaborate to everyone (Open Beta!), a simple way for entire teams to save and sync their Unity projects.
Performance improvement:
A lot of the new features aim to improve performance, so you can deliver the best experience to your users on all platforms. For example, Unity has added GPU instancing for Android and iOS, a new CPU Usage Profiler timeline view, and updated its physics engine to PhysX 3.3.3.