Unity has announced Unity 6.1 – a new version of the game engine with a focus on performance and stability. Key updates for artists include the new Deferred+ rendering, support for variable shading rate, and improved performance for DirectX 12. More details are available in the Game Developers Conference presentation on YouTube.
For artists, Unity 6.1 offers rendering performance improvements, including a new Deferred+ rendering path in the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) for mobile and web games. It enhances performance compared to the current Deferred rendering in complex scenes by using "advanced cluster culling" to support more real-time light sources.
Both URP and High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) have received support for Variable Rate Shading (VRS), which allows the shading rate to be adjusted for custom passes, improving performance without significant loss of visual quality. Variable Rate Shading is supported through Vulkan on Android and PC, through DirectX 12 on Xbox and PC, as well as on PlayStation 5 Pro.
Game developers for Windows and Xbox will benefit from DirectX 12 performance improvements due to a new graphics task thread splitting mode, which speeds up command submission to the GPU. According to Unity, this reduces CPU processing time by "up to 40%". Ray tracing performance in DirectX 12 has also been improved with Solid Angle Culling, which excludes rendering of very small or distant objects, boosting CPU performance by "up to 60%". Additionally, general optimizations have been made, reducing memory usage during ray tracing by "up to 75%".
The remaining updates are primarily geared towards developers rather than artists. These include the new Project Auditor for static analysis, which checks scripts, assets, and project settings to help identify performance bottlenecks. Additionally, Unity Editor now includes build automation.
There have also been changes in platform support, especially for Android games, including support for the increased 16 KB page size introduced in Android 15. Vulkan configurations can now be customized for different Android devices, filtering by manufacturer, brand, product name, OS version, API, and drivers. Augmented reality developers on Android benefit from a series of updates, including integration with key Unity tools such as AR Foundation and the XR Interaction Toolkit. Unity 6.1 also adds support for Instant Games on Facebook and Messenger, as well as WebGPU for mobile web games.
Currently, Unity 6.1 is available in a public beta. A stable release is expected in April 2025. Unity Editor is compatible with Windows 10, macOS 11.0, and Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 Linux and newer versions of the software. The free Personal subscription is now available for artists and small studios with annual revenue under $200,000, and includes all core features. The Pro subscription for mid-sized studios is now priced at $2,200 per year. The Enterprise subscription for studios with annual revenue over $25 million is available upon request.