Unity 2017 Support Available Now

Xeverian’s comparison of his old world before and after the recent 2017 update.

For the very first time in over 14 months, VRChat Inc. announced switching from one outdated Unity version to another. Despite the fact this time there will be no content wipe, users may want to re-upload their content anyway.

“We've got something pretty exciting for you this Friday night,” Tupper said last Saturday at 3:04 AM UTC. “Check it out: [link].” In the Medium post he shared in the message, VRChat provided us with multiple explanations in regards to the upcoming update, “A common question we’re expecting is ‘Why not Unity 2018?’ We’re primarily focused on moving to Unity LTS (Long-Term Support) versions rather than every incremental Unity version. This allows us to ensure that we’ll receive support from Unity in the long-term and that future upgrades go more smoothly. Once 2018 has an LTS version released, we can start looking into moving forward with that upgrade.”

You can test the “2017” open beta client by changing your VRChat properties on Steam, but keep in mind that there are currently two different open beta clients available to the public. One of them is being used primarily for testing of new features, such as the new user reporting system, which works similarly to the one made for world reports, but it’s using Unity 5.6, so it’s way more stable than the newer beta.

Apparently, from now on, further Unity updates will go much smoother thanks to the long-term support achieved in cooperation with the official Unity developers. Also, 2017.4.15f1 LTS “allows us to use the shaders included with the AssetBundles you’re uploading to VRChat,” according to their post on Medium. You can download the new SDK for the upcoming version right now, but make sure to re-upload your avatars without using the old Blueprint IDs if they were uploaded in 5.6.

As users should be interested in re-uploading worlds with mirrors, baked lighting, and rotating animations, one can only assume how hard it is going to be for the moderators to re-approve more content than ever.