Unity 3d iPhone 1.5 Released, Great Feature Update
Unity 3d iPhone 1.5 is released and has many things that were requested.
A few features really stand out as stuff we need:
- Automatic batching of meshes to reduce draw calls.
- Full support for native Objective C and C++ code opens full access to the iPhone 3.x APIs and custom plugins.
- Introduced thread based main loop – now you can choose between NSTimer, Thread and OS event pump (CFRunLoop) methods. Thread method is set by default now.
- Added native plugin support (advanced license feature). Just add custom attribute [DllImport("__Internal")] to your native implemented methods in C# and corresponding implementation to the XCode project.
- Exposed full-screen movie playback support to scripts (iPhoneUtils.PlayMovie/PlayMovieURL).
- Added support for GPS/location service (iPhoneSettings.StartLocationService / iPhoneInput.lastLocation).
- Exposed native iPhone keyboard to scripts (iPhoneKeyboard class).
- Implemented native iPhone keyboard input for TextField/PasswordField/TextArea GUI elements.
- Exposed all 4 screen orientations as iPhoneSettings.screenOrientation. iPhoneSettings.verticalOrientation is now deprecated.
- Added support for vibration (iPhoneUtils.Vibrate).
- Exposed number of properties via Editor Player Settings UI (including bundle version and UI interface orientation).
- Implemented support for up to 8 texture units in shaders for iPhone 3GS. Added iPhone 3GS emulation in the Editor.
- Introduced automatic batching for small (less than 300 vertices) dynamic objects if they share same material. Reduces OpenGLES draw-call overhead.
- Unity respects your XCode project now. It is not overwritten anymore by default. You can safely add new files, modify project itself or AppController.mm file, Unity will append its things as necessary. Note however that some folders like Libraries, Data, root project folder are always overwritten.
Wow! See the full feature update and the blog announcement.
