5.1.13

• Fix: Release scene resources, asset caches, event listeners, and loading UI when disposing a context or removing a needle-engine element.
• Fix: Prevent pending progressive LOD loads from restoring disposed resources.
• Fix: Release geometry retained by BVH worker callbacks.

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Links

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4.16.12

Needle Engine

• Fix: Release scene resources, asset caches, event listeners, and loading UI when disposing a context or removing a needle-engine element.
• Fix: Prevent pending progressive LOD loads from restoring disposed resources.
• Fix: Release geometry retained by BVH worker callbacks after completed or failed jobs.

Unity Integration

• Fix: Backport Unity 6 EntityId API compatibility and update UnityGLTF to 2.19.5 for newer Unity render pipeline APIs.

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Links

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6.0.0-alpha.3

Needle Engine

• Add: exportAsGLTF onlyVisible option to export only the visible objects
• Add: PostProcessing.enabled to toggle the whole postprocessing stack at runtime
• Add: object layers can be set by name, not only by Unity layer index
• Fix: mirrored and negatively-scaled instances render correctly (NE-7069)
• Fix: XR hand and controller models render in both eyes again
• Fix: custom XR hand models are visible again, and showHandModels reliably shows/hides them
• Fix: instantiated lights keep their targets and no longer leak into exports
• Fix: lower memory use over time — destroyed and detached objects (cloned textures, physics colliders, objects removed via the raw three.js API) are no longer pinned alive by engine registries
• Fix: AR passthrough hides the scene background across all camera clear-flag modes
• Change: SyncedRoom warns (in dev) when a URL parameter overrides the component's roomName

Unity Integration

• Drag splat files into the scene or hierarchy to create a GaussianSplat
• GaussianSplat inspector shows splat count and content size
• More robust splat preview (progress dialog, outlier-proof bounds, shared cache)
• Person-scale reference in the AR placement gizmo

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Links

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5.1.12

• Fix: mirrored and negatively-scaled instanced meshes now render correctly (NE-7069)

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Links

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5.1.10

• Add: turn the whole postprocessing stack on or off at runtime with PostProcessing.enabled
• Fix: scene brightness no longer shifts when XR hand models are shown or hidden
• Fix: the showHandModels toggle now reliably shows or hides XR hand models
• Change: SyncedRoom warns (in development) when a room-name URL parameter overrides the roomName set on the component, making it easier to diagnose ending up in an unexpected room

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Links

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6.0.0-alpha.2

Try the Gaussiansplatting demo here

Needle Engine

Added

• Gaussian splats: .rad file support — compressed splats in seekable chunks, enabling streaming and progressive loading of large splat scenes
• Gaussian splats: automatic quality adaptation — quality is reduced under low fps in verified steps (a step that doesn't measurably help is reverted), including dynamic render-resolution scaling inside running AR sessions
• Context.xrFrameRateLimit — cap the frame rate of XR sessions (applied through WebXR updateTargetFrameRate where the device supports it); the mobile splat quality preset caps AR at 30 fps to keep phones cool
• iOS AR (Needle Go): WebXR image tracking — markers are detected and tracked reliably, even in sessions that start before the scene has finished loading
• iOS AR (Needle Go): native AR diagnostics (tracking quality, marker validation, device thermal state) are forwarded to the browser console during development — debug on-device sessions without a cable

Changed

• Splat quality presets tuned for mobile AR: per-device splat budgets, thermal-friendly defaults and reduced sorting overhead

Fixed

• iOS AR: correct render resolution on 3x displays — a significant performance boost on Pro-class iPhones
• Dev server: fast, reliable first page load on devices after a restart — the module graph is pre-warmed and interrupted boots recover automatically

Unity Integration

• GaussianSplat: point cloud preview in the scene view — referenced splat files (.ply / .spz / .sog / .splat) show as a sampled point cloud with real bounds, sized points and depth cues instead of an empty box
• Compression pipeline: splats are now compressed to the RAD format — seekable chunks enable streaming and progressive loading of large splat scenes

Links

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5.1.9

Needle Engine

Added

• WebXRImageTracking: friendlier addImage API for registering marker images
• Clearer diagnostics for iOS App Clip AR sessions (Needle Go), surfaced to developers (See also /.node_modules/.needle/logs)
• Dev warning when a tracked image has an invalid marker size

Fixed

• iOS App Clip AR (Needle Go): WebXRImageTracking tracked images are no longer dropped on the first AR entry, and markers now register correctly even when AR starts before the scene has finished loading
• iOS App Clip AR (Needle Go) now respects the session's framebuffer scale for correct rendering resolution

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Links

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5.1.8

Needle Engine

• Docs: clarified VR teleport targeting — the teleport ray hits rendered meshes, not physics colliders, so a teleport target needs a visible mesh but no collider

Unity Integration

• CLI / CI: headless batch exports can now verify the license non-interactively with a NEEDLE_CLOUD_TOKEN environment variable or -token argument, without an interactive browser login (required on build machines where no browser is available)
• CLI / CI: fixed headless builds wrongly stopping with "required software not installed" — the Node.js / npm detection now completes before the build proceeds (it previously raced the build and reported a false negative)
• CLI / CI: project-validation problems and build failures are now logged with actionable messages in batch mode instead of trying to open editor windows (which failed or threw in headless), so CI failures are debuggable
• XR: added inspector warnings on controller components — flags when no WebXR component exists in the scene, and when WebXR will add a second, competing controller-movement handler at runtime (with a one-click fix)

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Links

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6.0.0-alpha.1

Needle Engine

Added

• GaussianSplat component (experimental) — load .ply / .spz / .sog splats via Spark, with LOD and correct raycasting/bounds
• WebXR: anchors (useAnchors) are now enabled by default

Changed

• Updated bundled three.js to r185
• Updated MaterialX runtime
• Improved XR error messaging when a session can't start

Fixed

• WebXR: setSession now works with WebXR emulators/polyfills that supply a non-native session (falls back to the XRWebGLLayer path)
• Bounds are reported as incomplete for still-loading async objects, and GroundProjection re-fits once they're ready
• Raycasting and bounds now work for non-Mesh objects (e.g. splats)
• Custom model loaders are no longer tree-shaken out in code-only projects
• SSR: various import/emit fixes
• Postprocessing: pipeline build failures are now surfaced instead of failing silently

Unity Integration

• Updated build pipeline to @needle-tools/gltf-build-pipeline 4.0 — adds compressed splat (SOG) support and replaced-source events

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Links

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5.1.7

Needle Engine

• AR: scenes now stay anchored to the real world (WebXR anchors, on by default) — placement survives tracking loss and keeps user adjustments; falls back to plain placement where unsupported
• XR: clearer error when the device or browser blocks AR/VR (instead of a misleading "configuration not supported")
• SSR: fixed builds in SvelteKit, Next.js and Nuxt ("Entry module cannot be external") and a navigator crash during server-side rendering
• Vite: hint for PRO licenses on multi-team Needle Cloud accounts, and guidance for a known Rolldown crash in Vite 8.1
• Updated MaterialX to 1.7.4 (instancing transforms in nodegraph functions, stable glossy reflections with prefiltered KTX2 environments)

Unity Integration

• WebXR component: Use XR Anchor is now enabled by default for new components and scene templates. Existing scenes keep their saved value — enable the checkbox to opt in.

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Links

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