News: Release 0.11 (wrong branch ... see #657)

[cart]

How this works

(This contains sections as of bevyengine/bevy@10f5c92)

For the Bevy 0.11 release blog post, I'm opening the doors to other people writing blog post sections. Specifically, if you worked on a feature in a substantial way and are interested in presenting it, you can now ask to claim a section by leaving a comment in this PR. If you claim a section, submit a pull request to the release-0.11.0 branch in this repo. For the next week, we will be filling in sections (the release target is Friday July 7th or Saturday July 8th). Please don't claim a section if you don't plan on completing it within that timeline. Also don't claim a section if you weren't an active participant in the design and implementation of the change (unless you are a Maintainer or SME).

I will claim any unclaimed sections.

Try to match the style of previous release blog posts as much as possible.

1. Show, don't tell. Don't bombard people with information. Avoid large walls of text and large walls of code. Prefer the pattern "byte sized description of one thing" -> "example code/picture/video contextualizing that one thing" -> repeat. Take readers on a journey step by simple step.
2. Don't use up reader's "mental bandwidth" without good reason. We can't afford page-long descriptions of minor bug fixes. If it isn't a "headliner change", keep the description short and sweet. If a change is self describing, let it do that (ex: We now support this new mesh shape primitive ... this is what it looks like). If it is a "headliner change", still try to keep it reasonable. We always have a lot to cover.
3. In slight competition with point (2), don't omit interesting technical information when it is truly fun and engaging. A good chunk of our users are highly technical and enjoy learning how the sausage is made. Try to strike a balance between "terse and simple" and "nerdy details".
4. When relevant, briefly describe the problem being solved first, then describe the solution we chose. This contextualizes the change and gives the feature value and purpose.
5. When possible, provide visuals. They create interest / keep people hooked / break up the monotony.
6. Record images and videos at the default bevy resolution (1280x720)
7. Provide an accurate listing of authors that meaningfully contributed to the feature. Try to sort in order of "contribution scale". This is hard to define, but try to be fair. When in doubt, ask other contributors, SMEs, and/or maintainers.
8. Provide numbers and graphs where possible. If something is faster, use numbers to back it up. We don't (yet) have automated graph generation in blog post style, so send data / info to me (@cart) if you want a graph made.

Headliners

Headliners are our "big ticket high importance / high profile" changes. They are listed briefly at the beginning of the blog post, their entries are roughly sorted "to the top", and they are given priority when it comes to "space in the blog post". If you think we missed something (or didn't prioritize something appropriately), let us know.

• WebGPU Support
• Improved Shader Imports
• Morph Targets
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
• Temporal Antialiasing (TAA)
• Parallax Mapping
• Immediate Mode Gizmo Rendering
• Schedule-First ECS APIs
• UI Borders
• CSS Grid Support
• UI Performance Improvements
• Stable TypePath

Sections

These are the sections we will cover in the blog post. If a section has been claimed, it will have (claimed by X) in the title. If it is unclaimed it will have (unclaimed) in the title. Let us know if we missed a section. We don't cover every feature, but we should cover pretty much everything that would be interesting to users. Note that what is interesting or challenging to implement is not necessarily something that is relevant to our blog post readers. And sometimes the reverse is true!

If you believe a section should be split up or reorganized, just bring it up here and we can discuss it.

WebGPU Support (unclaimed)

• Webgpu support

Improved Shader Imports (unclaimed)

• improve shader import model

Morph Targets (claimed by @nicopap)

• Add morph targets

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) (claimed by @JMS55)

• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) MVP

Temporal Antialiasing (TAA) (claimed by @JMS55)

• Temporal Antialiasing (TAA)

Parallax Mapping (claimed by @nicopap)

• Add parallax mapping to bevy PBR

Immediate Mode Line/Gizmo Drawing (unclaimed)

• Immediate Mode Line/Gizmo Drawing
• Instanced line rendering for gizmos based on bevy_polyline
• Add a bounding box gizmo
• Added arc_2d function for gizmos

Skybox (claimed by @JMS55)

• Built-in skybox

Robust Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (unclaimed)

• Add port of AMD's Robust Contrast Adaptive Sharpening

Screenshot API (unclaimed)

• Add screenshot api
• Screenshots in wasm

Mipmap Texture Biases (unclaimed)

• Bias texture mipmaps

RenderTarget::TextureView (unclaimed)

• Add RenderTarget::TextureView

Simpler RenderGraph Construction (claimed by @IceSentry)

• Add RenderGraphApp to simplify adding render nodes
• Add ViewNode to simplify render node management

Schedule-First (claimed by @cart)

• Schedule-First: the new and improved add_systems

run_if for Tuples of Systems (unclaimed)

• run_if for SystemConfigs via anonymous system sets

EntityRef Queries (unclaimed)

• Implement WorldQuery for EntityRef

• Add OnTransition schedule that is ran between OnExit and OnEnter

• Remove OnUpdate system set

Has Queries (unclaimed)

• Added Has WorldQuery type

Renamed Command Application (unclaimed)

• Rename apply_system_buffers to apply_deferred
• Rename Command's "write" method to "apply"

Derive Event (unclaimed)

• Require #[derive(Event)] on all Events

UI Node Borders (unclaimed)

• Ui Node Borders

CSS Grid Support (unclaimed)

• Add CSS Grid support to bevy_ui

Default Font (unclaimed)

• add a default font

Improved Text Wrapping (unclaimed)

• text_system split
• NoWrap Text feature

UI Texture Atlas Support (unclaimed)

• UI texture atlas support

Faster UI Render Batching (unclaimed)

• Improved UI render batching

Delayed Asset Hot Reloading (unclaimed)

• Delay asset hot reloading

Custom glTF Vertex Attributes (unclaimed)

• Add support for custom glTF vertex attributes.

Stable TypePath (unclaimed)

• reflect: stable type path v2

Better Proxies (unclaimed)

• bevy_reflect: Better proxies

Reflect Implies FromReflect (unclaimed)

• Add FromReflect where Reflect is used

No More Bors (unclaimed)

• Enable CI and validation jobs for merge queues
• Specify merge queue branches
• Reorder merge group and remove branch filter
• Move merge_group to top
• Only run validation jobs in Merge Queues
• remove bors and small CI improvements

New CI Jobs (unclaimed)

• Take example screenshots in CI
• daily job running mobile example on real devices
• CI: comment on PR when missing feature/example update

New Examples (unclaimed)

• new example showcase tool
• Adding a bezier curve example
• Add low level post process example using a custom render pass
• Add example to demonstrate manual generation and UV mapping of 3D mesh (generate_custom_mesh) solve #4922
• Add overflow_debug example
• UI text wrapping and LineBreakOn example
• Size Constraints Example
• UI Display and Visibility Example

Deref Derive Attribute (unclaimed)

• bevy_derive: Add #[deref] attribute

Global Audio Volume (unclaimed)

• Ability to set a Global Volume

Resource Support in Scenes (unclaimed)

• (De) serialize resources in scenes

Gamepad Rumble Support (claimed by @nicopap)

• Add gamepad rumble support to bevy_input

Potential Sections

These are worth considering if we have time and space, but probably shouldn't take priority over the sections above. Very negotiable though this isn't an exact science!

A-Diagnostics

• Allow systems using Diagnostics to run in parallel
• add a feature for memory tracing with tracy

A-App

• Allow tuples and single plugins in add_plugins, deprecate add_plugin

A-Reflect

• bevy_reflect: Allow #[reflect(default)] on enum variant fields

A-Rendering

• Make render graph slots optional for most cases
• Split opaque and transparent phases
• Compute vertex_count for indexed meshes on GpuMesh
• Added WebP image format support
• Add support for pnm textures
• Change default tonemapping method
• Allow custom depth texture usage
• Use the prepass normal texture in main pass when possible
• Left-handed y-up cubemap coordinates
• Allow SPIR-V shaders to process when shader defs are present
• Remove unnecesssary values Vec from DynamicUniformBuffer and DynamicStorageBuffer
• Add MAY_DISCARD shader def, enabling early depth tests for most cases
• Add Aabb calculation for Sprite, TextureAtlasSprite and Mesh2d

A-Windowing

• Touchpad magnify and rotate events

A-UI

• Replace the local text queues in the text systems with flags stored in a component
• Perform text scaling calculations per text, not per glyph
• Consistent screen-space coordinates
• UiImage helper functions
• Flatten UI Style properties that use Size + remove Size
• Split UI Overflow by axis
• Add methods for calculating the size and postion of UI nodes
• Skip the UV calculations for untextured UI nodes
• Fix text measurement algorithm
• MeasureFunc improvements
• Expose sorting methods in Children

A-ECS

• Improve or-with disjoint checks
• Add a method to run read-only systems using &World
• Reduce branching when inserting components
• Make #[system_param(ignore)] and #[world_query(ignore)] unnecessary
• Remove #[system_param(ignore)] and #[world_query(ignore)]
• Extend the WorldQuery macro to tuple structs
• Make state private and only accessible through getter for State resource
• implement Deref for State<S>
• Inline more ECS functions
• Add a scope API for world schedules
• Simplify system piping and make it more flexible
• Add any_component_removed condition
• Use UnsafeWorldCell to increase code quality for SystemParam
• Improve safety for the multi-threaded executor using UnsafeWorldCell
• Migrate the rest of the engine to UnsafeWorldCell
• Make the Condition trait generic
• Add or_else combinator to run_conditions.rs
• Add iter_many_manual QueryState method
• Add/fix track_caller attribute on panicking entity accessor methods
• bevy_ecs: add untyped methods for inserting components and bundles

Scenes

• Make scene handling of entity references robust
• Rename map_entities and map_specific_entities

[IceSentry]

I'll claim the improved render graph api

[JMS55]

I can take SSAO, TAA, and Skybox support.

For things like morph targets and parallax mapping, we should make sure to call out what parts of the prepass (depth, normal, motion vectors) they currently support. Iirc morph targets lack MVs and cannot be used with TAA, and parallax mapping lacks both MV and depth and cannot be used with TAA or SSAO. The authors of those PRs will need to double check that, though, I could easily be wrong.

I don't think mip bias is particularly interesting or deserves a blog section.

[nicopap]

I will take Parallax mapping and Morph targets.

If @johanhelsing doesn't take the controller rumble segment, I'll glad to write a bit.

[nicopap]

Should I make the PR against cart/release-0.11.0 or against bevy-website/release-0.11.0? The latter doesn't exist yet.

[alice-i-cecile]

I would add the Has filter to the headliners since it's a very approachable refactor for users.

UI performance improvements should include an emphasis on the huge number of layout bug fixes as well.

[johanhelsing]

If @johanhelsing doesn't take the controller rumble segment, I'll glad to write a bit.

I'll be somewhat removed from computers for a while, so feel free to take it, @nicopap

[cart]

@JMS55

For things like morph targets and parallax mapping, we should make sure to call out what parts of the prepass (depth, normal, motion vectors) they currently support. Iirc morph targets lack MVs and cannot be used with TAA, and parallax mapping lacks both MV and depth and cannot be used with TAA or SSAO. The authors of those PRs will need to double check that, though, I could easily be wrong.

Yup agreed. Its worth calling out "feature asterisks" and next steps generally, but definitely for these cases where that information isn't necessary clear at runtime / its hidden away in our documentation.

I don't think mip bias is particularly interesting or deserves a blog section.

Yeah thats fair. Maybe just an offhand one liner mention in how it relates to TAA quality in the TAA section? But I'm also down to just skip it full stop.

@nicopap

Should I make the PR against cart/release-0.11.0 or against bevy-website/release-0.11.0? The latter doesn't exist yet.

Oops nice catch. Definitely worth moving this effort to bevy-website/release-0.11.0. I'll create the branch, close this PR and create a new one from the bevy-website branch.

@alice-i-cecile

I would add the Has filter to the headliners since it's a very approachable refactor for users.

Imo headliners aren't about "approachability". They're for the "most exciting" / attractive features of the release that will immediately get people excited. They are presented immediately at the top of the blog post (and in social media like twitter). "Slightly better niche-use-case query filter" is not a headliner from my perspective.

However the Has filter doesn't have a section at all right now, and I do agree it deserves coverage in the blog post. Thanks for pointing this out!

UI performance improvements should include an emphasis on the huge number of layout bug fixes as well.

"Improved layout system quality" feels separate from "UI performance improvements". Covering both in the UI perf section seems like it would muddle the messaging. I do agree that it deserves coverage. I tried to do that with the "Improved Text Wrapping" section, as most of the layout quality/bugfix work (to my knowledge) was focused in that area.

[cart]

Just added a Has Query section.

[cart]

Closing in favor of #657 which uses the bevy-website/release-0.11.0 branch instead of the cart/release-0.11.0 branch. We definitely want PRs to happen in this repo, not mine!