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I hope so! Though the Blender situation is a little different. Blenders main competition are paid software. While Unity and Unreal are technically paid too, ma

I hope so! Though the Blender situation is a little different. Blenders main competition are paid software. While Unity and Unreal are technically paid too, many users can use them "for free" for the most part. Unity and Unreal are both foraying into non-gaming applications like Cinema, and whatever the word is for working with architectural programs/formats. Might be an opportunity for Godot to stay focused and gain mind share that way? I know Unity is under a bit of an upheaval right now with their engine architecture and it's putting a lot of strain on it's userbase.

1_player 7y ago
> I know Unity is under a bit of an upheaval right now with their engine architecture and it's putting a lot of strain on it's userbase. Care to elaborate?
- pjmlp 7y ago
  They are migrating several modules from C++ to C#, by making use of their Burst compiler stack, and have introduced a new ECS based framework named DOTS, on the quest to appease to AAA studios.
  - jayd16 7y ago
    I don't think its a AAA request, per se. Unity seems to constantly need features to slap on the box. At this point it feels like DOTS is significantly influenced by the marketing team. I mean, engineers would spell out the features and not wrap it up into this vague concepts of "DOTS."
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      To be fair everyone wants to tick features on their box. DOTS doesn't seem that vague to me.
    - learc83 7y ago
      It's wrapped up in a new concept because it's a complete re-architecture. You do almost everything differently with DOTS. And its driven by the CTO and Mike Acton from what I can tell. I've been making a game with DOTS for the last year, so I've been following this pretty closely. DOTS is what convinced me to use Unity because I hated the old Unity way of doing things.
      - vanderZwan 7y ago
        I don't know what DOTS is an acronym for, but if Mike Acton is involved I guess the first two letters stand for "Data Oriented"?
        pjmlp 7y ago
        It is. There are several tutorials and Unite talks on Unity's YouTube channel.
        learc83 7y ago
        Yeah Data Oriented Technology Stack.
      - jayd16 7y ago
        Unity is making some good tech decisions but "DOTS" is just a marketing device so Unity can make vague tech promises without getting into details. Its a blanket rebrand of several technologies Unity is currently pursuing. ECS, the job system, the Burst compiler, large rewrites of several systems into C# from C++ (and more if you want to break out things like animation and physics rewrites) all fall under DOTS. These are all fine changes but they could all happen on their own. DOTS is not a technical term. Unity has just decided to wrap this all up into the more marketable DOTS name.
        learc83 7y ago
        >These are all fine changes but they could all happen on their own. They really couldn't all happen on their own. They wanted to write more code in C#, so of course it makes sense that they'd start with the new systems they were making for the ECS. To support being able to write more in C# they developed the burst compiler. And the jobs system is a huge part of the way they developed their ECS system. DOTS really just means Unity ECS plus a lot of other stuff that exists mostly to support ECS, and some stuff they've wanted to do for a while but it makes sense to add now since they are changing so much of the public API anyway. They brought Mike Acton in and "Data Oriented Technology Stack" is just all the stuff they needed/wanted to realize his goal of making things more performant/data oriented. They were just calling all of their re-architecture ECS until a little while back, but it was kind of weird and ECS is already a severely overloaded term. Would you be less upset if they called it "The re-architecture" instead of coming up with a convenient name for the new way of doing things?
    - Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
      An almost constant criticism of Unity that I hear is that it's "too slow", that games made with it run slower than what their visuals would suggest. This has been such a common criticism of Unity for so long. So I don't think it's solely a response to requests from AAA studios either. My impression is that the current Unity model just doesn't scale by default (as in, yes it can be made to work but it's not the default and you'd be fighting with the architecture to do it). Or perhaps a much better way of saying it is that the default Unity architecture encourages less-experienced developers to write slower code. I've heard them say that "performance by default" is a goal for DOTS in a number of talks.
- jayd16 7y ago
  They're moving from their existing Actor/Component model to a Entity/Component/System model. It might help them get some perf but its not as user friendly, nor trivial, so in Unity fashion they're just going to have several systems available is less than perfect interopt. They're also rewriting more things in C# but I think that's a pretty good change, personally.
  - pharke 7y ago
    Yikes, I didn't know that. I wish them luck but that is not a trivial change.
gdxhyrd 7y ago
Unity is not free. Instead of paying once or a fixed subscription, you have to pay a % of all your profits. Which, in many cases, is way worse than the alternative pricing model.
- MattRix 7y ago
  You mean Unreal Engine, not Unity. Unity has a regular subscription ($150/month per seat). With Unreal Engine, there is also an exception for hobbyists, specifically you only have to pay 5% to Epic if you make more than $3000 in a quarter.

1_player 7y ago

> I know Unity is under a bit of an upheaval right now with their engine architecture and it's putting a lot of strain on it's userbase. Care to elaborate?

pjmlp 7y ago
They are migrating several modules from C++ to C#, by making use of their Burst compiler stack, and have introduced a new ECS based framework named DOTS, on the quest to appease to AAA studios.
- jayd16 7y ago
  I don't think its a AAA request, per se. Unity seems to constantly need features to slap on the box. At this point it feels like DOTS is significantly influenced by the marketing team. I mean, engineers would spell out the features and not wrap it up into this vague concepts of "DOTS."
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    To be fair everyone wants to tick features on their box. DOTS doesn't seem that vague to me.
  - learc83 7y ago
    It's wrapped up in a new concept because it's a complete re-architecture. You do almost everything differently with DOTS. And its driven by the CTO and Mike Acton from what I can tell. I've been making a game with DOTS for the last year, so I've been following this pretty closely. DOTS is what convinced me to use Unity because I hated the old Unity way of doing things.
    - vanderZwan 7y ago
      I don't know what DOTS is an acronym for, but if Mike Acton is involved I guess the first two letters stand for "Data Oriented"?
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        It is. There are several tutorials and Unite talks on Unity's YouTube channel.
      - learc83 7y ago
        Yeah Data Oriented Technology Stack.
    - jayd16 7y ago
      Unity is making some good tech decisions but "DOTS" is just a marketing device so Unity can make vague tech promises without getting into details. Its a blanket rebrand of several technologies Unity is currently pursuing. ECS, the job system, the Burst compiler, large rewrites of several systems into C# from C++ (and more if you want to break out things like animation and physics rewrites) all fall under DOTS. These are all fine changes but they could all happen on their own. DOTS is not a technical term. Unity has just decided to wrap this all up into the more marketable DOTS name.
      - learc83 7y ago
        >These are all fine changes but they could all happen on their own. They really couldn't all happen on their own. They wanted to write more code in C#, so of course it makes sense that they'd start with the new systems they were making for the ECS. To support being able to write more in C# they developed the burst compiler. And the jobs system is a huge part of the way they developed their ECS system. DOTS really just means Unity ECS plus a lot of other stuff that exists mostly to support ECS, and some stuff they've wanted to do for a while but it makes sense to add now since they are changing so much of the public API anyway. They brought Mike Acton in and "Data Oriented Technology Stack" is just all the stuff they needed/wanted to realize his goal of making things more performant/data oriented. They were just calling all of their re-architecture ECS until a little while back, but it was kind of weird and ECS is already a severely overloaded term. Would you be less upset if they called it "The re-architecture" instead of coming up with a convenient name for the new way of doing things?
  - Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
    An almost constant criticism of Unity that I hear is that it's "too slow", that games made with it run slower than what their visuals would suggest. This has been such a common criticism of Unity for so long. So I don't think it's solely a response to requests from AAA studios either. My impression is that the current Unity model just doesn't scale by default (as in, yes it can be made to work but it's not the default and you'd be fighting with the architecture to do it). Or perhaps a much better way of saying it is that the default Unity architecture encourages less-experienced developers to write slower code. I've heard them say that "performance by default" is a goal for DOTS in a number of talks.
jayd16 7y ago
They're moving from their existing Actor/Component model to a Entity/Component/System model. It might help them get some perf but its not as user friendly, nor trivial, so in Unity fashion they're just going to have several systems available is less than perfect interopt. They're also rewriting more things in C# but I think that's a pretty good change, personally.
- pharke 7y ago
  Yikes, I didn't know that. I wish them luck but that is not a trivial change.

gdxhyrd 7y ago

Unity is not free. Instead of paying once or a fixed subscription, you have to pay a % of all your profits. Which, in many cases, is way worse than the alternative pricing model.

MattRix 7y ago
You mean Unreal Engine, not Unity. Unity has a regular subscription ($150/month per seat). With Unreal Engine, there is also an exception for hobbyists, specifically you only have to pay 5% to Epic if you make more than $3000 in a quarter.