spiral hornet
There was absolutely no mention of 2D support for ECS anywhere in Unite or the ECS roadmap. This puts 2D devs and studios in a bad spot, as we simply don't know what the future of 2D is. Unified render pipeline sounds great, but will it be able to draw sprites and 2D lights? We don't know. The new animation system looks great, will it support animating sprites? We don't know. Will we ever be able to leverage Unity Physics without resorting to 0-ing an axis? No idea.
I've hunted here and on the forums for answers and it feels as if Unity is choosing not to answer these questions. I can understand that the large focus is on 3D, but come on, why can't we have a entity based sprite renderer for gods sake? It's the most basic building block of any 2D game.
I am fully aware that the entities graphics package supports SpriteRenderer baking, but this is all an illusion, it simply creates a companion GameObject that will sync its transform with the entity transform. Sure, unified transform is a huge step in the right direction, but we'll still need the companion GameObject anyway if ECS can't draw sprites natively. It also doesn't support things like Tilemaps or lights, so it fails to even help you if you need anything more than a static sprite.
All of this creates many issues, performance is left on the table, we have to be mindful of the gameobjects in the scene, animation has to be done on the gameobject so more syncing and data passing between managed and unmanaged land, less burst compatibility, less chance for multi-threading, etc.
Mind you, I'm talking about just a sprite renderer. I'd hapilly write an in-house ECS animation system and tilemap system if only I could. I don't mind syncing with GameObjects for some situations, like effects and lighting, but for every visual element in the scene is a bit too much.
Unity is acutely aware of these issues, but seems to be choosing to keep silent about it, and I just can't understand why. I'm not demanding a full-blown solution for 2D, but a simple roadmap entry for a sprite renderer would already make me happy. Some context around whether the new systems would support 2D aswell would also be very appreciated.
So to end this with a question, will we be getting any improvements for 2D on ECS at all in the next 2-5 years? Is there any info I missed or anyone knowledgeable that can share a glimmer of hope?