IN THIS ARTICLE

O3DE 24.09.0 Release Notes

Get ready for a game-changing update with the O3DE 24.09 release. This latest version is packed with fantastic enhancements driven by your feedback, focusing on turbocharging performance and elevating your experience. Now, with the installer version, you can build projects using only Script Canvas and Lua—no compiler needed! But that’s just the beginning. We’ve supercharged editor startup times with up to a jaw-dropping 90% boost for large projects brimming with assets. Mobile developers, rejoice! Enjoy a staggering 400% increase in performance on both iOS and Android, along with dramatically reduced runtime memory usage. For simulation use cases, we have added the Georeference component, ability to parse Gazebo data, and a ROS2FrameComponent, along with many simulation performance improvements. This release is bursting with hundreds of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Dive in to explore just a few of the exciting highlights that 24.09 has in store.

See Simulation, Rendering, and AR/VR sections for specific changes in these areas.

General Changes and Improvements in 24.09.0

Major Improvements:

Quick-Start “Script Only” Projects - Can build projects using Script Canvas and Lua, without needing a C++ compiler, using the O3DE installer version.
Many optimizations for memory usage on mobile and AR/VR devices
Mobile performance - up to 400% improvement across iOS, Android and AR/VR/XR devices
Split PhysX 4 and 5 into separate gems, enabling users to switch between the PhysX versions easily, even when using installer builds.
Added a Project Export UI along wth full export support for iOS, Android, Linux, and Windows. Users are no longer required to use a command line.
Added options to reduce size of headless server up to 90%, dependent on assets used.
Added a mobile specific rendering pipeline, allowing users to easily enable/disable features as needed.
Added ability to control quality settings per device. There is a default of 3 performance levels (low, medium, high) based on device specifications for CPU, GPU, and memory.
Added shader variants. When setup, this allows the renderer to automatically utilize the most performant shader for a given rendering need.
Added Entity Silhouette Feature
Added framework allowing users to interface with the LLM (AI model) of their choice.
Network heartbeat packets are sent during high CPU usage; avoids network disconnection due to timeout.

Improvements:

Added support for PGM Image Format
Added support for templates level creation
Resolved several issues where networked games could ‘timeout’ due to threads being blocked due to loading of a large level.
Allowing non anti aliased fonts in Lua Editor
Improved Lua Editor syntax highlighting and style updates
Many prefab quality of life improvements
Prefab Container entities can now be set as Editor Only. Doing so causes them to be skipped at runtime, with only the contents of the prefab spawned into the level.
Migrate OffsetKeyPosition for AZ::Vector3 for CTrackViewTrack
Improved Asset Processor asset analysis performance
Linux Console logging
Ability to set different max path lengths per platform (resolves a commonly encountered issue when installing O3DE with a deep path).
Improved ability to import models and objects from external sources
Project manager add project dialog to target project.json instead of any directory
Add r_fogLayerSupport and r_fogTurbulenceSupport CVARS for quality
Add exponential and exponential squared fog modes
ScriptCanvas support Quaternion CreateFromValues
Improved HDRiSkybox scripting API
Resolved many Script Canvas quality of life issues
Improved editor performance with large number of entities
Added support for ray-traced reflections in SpecularReflectionsFeatureProcessor
Many Asset Browser quality of life improvements
Terrain | Add Help Url to components that have docs pages
MiniAudio: Added more volume controls and a pause method for Playback component
Add quality settings to default project template
Many Atom performance improvements for all supported platforms
Added support for renaming gems
Added Support For Raytracing Against Skinned Meshes
Added functionality for material pipeline files to specify custom object SRG members
Added support for lighting channels to all light types
Added support for configuring anti-aliasing and multi-sample count via CVars
Added support of node-searching in script canvas
Added support to turn on/off directional lights shadow
Added support to run clients headlessly for simulation client
MultiplayerSample gamepad player input support
Added vertex color support to BasePBR, StandardPBR, EnhancedPBR material types as well as material canvas.
Added three new tone-mapping modes: AcesFitted, AcesFilmic and Filmic
Added shadow support for SimpleSpotLights
Added Gobo (i.e texture projection) support for simple spot light.
Added per mesh shader option support when mesh instancing is enabled.
Improved RenderDoc and Pix integration

Fixes:

Many fixes for tone mapping and eye shaders
Fixes for Linux Installation errors, particularly around Python installation.
Many Trackview bugfixes
Fixed several Linux startup crashes
Resolved gem dependency issues with versioning
Resolved several python issues on Linux
Resolved several issues with Physics materials
Resolved some Script Canvas Debugging issues
Resolved several Lua Editor issues
Resolved several Script Canvas crash issues
Updated O3DE to support latest versions of Visual Studio
Many Vulkan crash fixes
Many fixes across various Android chipsets and devices
Many fixes across iOS versions and devices
Prefabs - reduced memory consumption on big, deeply nested levels
Resolved many editor crash issues
Resolved many prefab overrides issues
Resolved many issues with headless server
Resolved several Mac compilation issues. Note: Mac is not an officially supported platform and is primarily a builder for iOS. However, some work has been accomplished against the editor for Mac. Feel free to use (at your own risk) and report issues that you encounter.
Resolved several issues when using the installer version for Windows, Debian packages for Linux, and Snap packages for Linux.
Resolved several material canvas issues
Resolved several issues with terrain generation and runtime.
Updated WWise support for Visual Studio 2022 compatibility
Fix multiplayer disconnection due to stream error due to corrupted packets
Fix O3DE-Extras Multiplayer Template project
Fix audio thread taking 90% frame time

Removed legacy code:

Removed unused legacy slice code
Removed legacy perlin noise
Remove usage of SendEvent for ObjectManager
Removed tools/styleui
Removed iRenderAuxGeom
Remove unused Viewport cvar from ObjectManager
Remove unused interfaces from CryCommon
Remove unused CTemplateObjectClassDesc
Remove object manager python reflection and tests
Remove ITransformDelegate from CTrackViewAnimNode
EMFX | remove baseObject and renamed MemoryObject to RefCounted
Remove legacy GameExporter (never used or called)
Slice Level UI Removal | Remove Legacy Slice Editor Ownership Service and Preemptive Undo Cache classes
Slice Level UI Removal | Inspector and Asset Browser cleanup
Slice Level UI Removal | Remove slice-related settings from Editor Preferences.
Editor Preferences | Remove unused deep selection settings

Simulation O3DE Gem Changes for 24.09.0 Release:

Major improvements

ROS 2 Gem: added Georeference Component
ROS 2 Gem: added possibility to spawn assets using WGS-84 data format in ROS2SpawnerComponent
ROS 2 Gem: extended ROS2FrameComponent in Editor (split into Game and Editor components)
ROS 2 RobotImporter: added Gazebo data parsing for camera, GNSS, IMU, and Lidar sensors
ROS 2 RobotImporter: added Gazebo data parsing for skid steering and Ackermann drive models
ROS 2 RobotImporter: added Gazebo data parsing for joint pose trajectory and joint state publisher configuration

Improvements

ROS 2 Gem: added position control for joints (possible to set initial configuration; ROS 2 subscription and handler added)
ROS 2 Gem: added camera stabilization (preventing tilting)
ROS 2 Gem: added the option to transmit ROS 2 camera image using various image encodings
ROS 2 Gem: modified clock designed
ROS 2 RobotImporter: added Gazebo data parsing for topics, frames and namespaces
ROS 2 RobotImporter: redesigned wizard

Fixes

ROS 2 Gem: fixed ROS2SpawnerComponent
ROS 2 Gem: fixed Lidar data publishing
ROS 2 related Gems and project templates: cleaned-up versioning, updated to work with ROS 2 Jazzy
ROS 2 related Gems and project templates: updated prefabs to match O3DE >= 2310.0

Removed code

ROS 2 Gem: removed outdated and duplicated documentation files from the Gem

Other Gems worth noticing:

Pointcloud https://github.com/RobotecAI/robotec-o3de-tools/tree/main/Gems/Pointcloud
ROS2ScriptIntegration https://github.com/RobotecAI/robotec-o3de-tools/tree/main/Gems/ROS2ScriptIntegration
VehicleDynamics https://github.com/RobotecAI/o3de-vehicle-dynamics-gem

Rendering Specific Changes for 24.09.0 Release

Mobile Render Pipeline - Add support for an extremely performant mobile render pipeline built for tiled GPUs.

Optimised BRDF for mobile - Added a new optimised BRDF for mobile as well as support for analytical Env IBL approximation.
Added Gobo (i.e texture projection) support for simple spot light.
Added CPU culling for decals
Added shadow support for SimpleSpotLights
Added support for decal color and decal color factor to help modulate final calculated decal color.
Added shader options for simple point/spot lights and decals
Added support for cpu culling for simple-point and simple-punctual lights
Added support for deferred fog within the mobile pipeline.
Added exponential and exponential squared fog modes.
Added support for shader options within PCF filtering for directional light shadows
Added Silhouette support to the mobile render pipeline. For more details about the Silhouette feature see the section about Rendering additions.
Added particles support to the mobile render pipeline.
Added support for postFX effects within the pipeline
Various half float optimizations for the mobile render pipeline.
Render scale related support and fixes across various mobile devices.

Rendering additions/improvements - Various rendering improvements for all the render pipelines and general Atom improvements.

Initial scaffolding for Multi-GPU support within RHI and RPI layers of the engine. A lot of this work includes initial plumbing for Multi-GPU objects and initial support for basic GPU-GPU synchronisation when transferring resources between devices.
Silhouette Feature - Add support for Silhouette material type that, when applied to a mesh, draws an outline and filled-in silhouette in various modes: Always, XRay, Visible and Never.
Added vertex colour support to BasePBR, StandardPBR, EnhancedPBR material types as well as material canvas.
Added three new tone-mapping modes: AcesFitted, AcesFilmic and Filmic. Mobile render pipeline defaults to Filmic mode.
Added android and ios registry settings for four tiers (low, medium, high, very high) of graphics quality.
Added support for geometry shader within DX12 and Vulkan RHI backends.
Added support for intersection shaders within DX12 and Vulkan RHI backends.
Shadow culling outside view frustum - Improve performance by skipping unnecessary work for all shadows that won’t be visible. This is achieved by cpu culling of lights to limit the amount of lights that require processing.
r_antiAliasing - Add support to switch anti-aliasing modes via CVar r_antiAliasing
Add support for lighting channels - This feature introduces 3 channels for each kind of light and light-able objects. The objects and lights in the same channel are grouped and as a result the lights in the group affect the objects in the same group. The default behaviour is all lights and objects in channel 0, so it should not change the current way to work with lighting, but it will provide a further option to grant the artists the flexibility to control which light shines on which objects.
Enable and disable ContrastAdaptiveSharpening pass as well along with temporal anti aliasing (i.e TAA).
Added support to allow passing customised derivatives to texture sampling functions.
Added device attribute for the GPU model. This allows us to provide better device filtering for graphics quality tiers.
Added per mesh shader option support when mesh instancing is enabled. This allows us to build optimised shader variants for a scene with mesh instancing.
Added support for timeline semaphores within Vulkan RHI to help with low level synchronisation.
Added ability to disable creating a native window for game launchers for null renderers.

Atom (O3DE renderer) Memory optimizations

Added support to dump information about loaded assets.
Various Metal RHI related memory optimizations.
Added support to release BufferAssets owned by ModelAssets. This allows us to release mesh related memory on the cpu once it is transferred to the gpu.
Ring buffer support for RayTracing buffers.

VR/OpenXR Improvements for 24.09.0 Release.

Improvements

[OpenXR] New data driven APIs (Lua and C++) to manage Actions (I/O) and Spaces (world transform anchors) across all OpenXR Compatible Hardware.
[Android + OpenXR] New Android Project Generator UI, integrated into the ProjectManager. Facilitates the generation of all the files required to compile and deploy a project on Android. Optionally, the Android project can be generated for Meta Quest family of devices. Developer iteration times, on device, improved from ~1m:30s to less than 10s.

Fixes

Many crash fixes for Quest devices
[OpenXR] MSAA resolve can be done directly into the Swapchain attachment.

Known Issues

Audio WWise Not Working Until Removing and Re-Adding Gem
Enabling PhysX 4 and PhysX 5 will result in an editor crash. Please note that the ROS2 gem automatically enables PhysX 5, please make sure PhysX 4 is disabled before enabling the ROS2 gem.
On first load of a project, the asset processor, by default, will use all available CPU cores resulting in large memory usage. This can lead to an initial performance drop in the editor for large projects, until the assets are processed. This is particularly noticeable on Linux. If this is an issue it is advised to wait until the assets are processed.

Thanks to all of our contributors for making the 24.09.0 release possible!

Steve Pham
alexpete
Guthrie Adams
moudgils
Michał Pełka
Michael McGarrah
Nicholas Lawson
Gene Walters
jhmueller-huawei
Jan Hanca
Akio Gaule
Adam Dąbrowski
ANT\daimini
Luis Sempé
Mike Chang
galibzon
T.J. Kotha
mbalfour
Michael Pollind
Alex Montgomery
Martin Winter
lemonade-dm
guillaume-haerinck
Akio Gaule
Junhao Wang
Danilo Aimini
Shauna Gordon
Joe Bryant
Markus Prettner
Martin Winter
colinb[APMG]
antonmic
Joerg H. Mueller
antonmic
Hongshan Li
Artur Kamieniecki
siliconvoodoo
Martin Sattlecker
Chris Galvan
Qing Tao
Pawel Liberadzki
Nicholas Lawson
pwalterscarb
Sarah Anderson
André L. Alvares
Reece Hagan
Adi Bar-Lev
omacx
Olex Lozitskiy
phuchau1989
Patryk
Xichen Zhou
kursad-k
Paulina Kubera
carbonated-niko
stevo26
Djfos
TheTopHat26
Mateusz Żak
Naomi Washington
Vincent
Antoni-Robotec
0x14307
Kacper Lewandowski
o3de-issues-bot
Patryk Antosz
ShalokShalom
jjs-home
ExMatics HydrogenC
realJavabot
Nathan Brooks
idclosed
rhuthCarb
AaronRuizMoraUK
Umesh Rajesh Ramchandani
Guy MacGeorges
Alexander
Lloyd Tullues
Huawei-CarlosCarbone
Shao Biyao
Antoni Puch
Andre Mitchell
solo1967
LB-MichalRodzos
Luis Gutierrez
Wiktor Bajor
Maciej Aleksandrowicz
CarbAndrewD
Roderick Kieley
konkuk kim
Caleb Leak
TheShed412
Fergal
utk-hua
Tobias Alexander Franke
Yaakuro
Adam Krawczyk
alexeykostin
Joshua Rainbolt
Erik Jacobs
kberg-amzn
yosagi
TechnoPorg
arvrschool
floroeske
JaviNunsys
zchengw
jeremy-kubota
Mateusz Szweda
Derikson
iByte-ua
Boy-Ma
Nicholas Van Sickle
Mahdi Safarmohammadloo
Ganidhu Abey
timstullich
Khaled
Filip Vavera
Mike Sanders
Oreloth
skleembof
colinb-accesspointmg
Umesh Rajesh Ramchandani
osmaneTKT
shazhenyu123
Lloyd T
NanaYellen
chanmosq
Jeremy Pritts
Aleks Starykh
Krzysztof Rymski
Xichen Zhou
lemonade-dm
Frede H
michabr
IVasilets
Jyothish Kumar M S
oym1994
Piotr Jaroszek
Mark [Hilliness Studios]
maj-tom
Kacper Dąbrowski
yumigenack
Egor Zelenkov
Getue
Archer Allstars
gituser1024
gerroon
Kacper Bieniek
yunni
marszhao
Bartek Boczek
RicardasSim
UsmanTariq2
Greg O
Marc Bestmann
Yves Silva
Samuel Porras
Vivien Oddou
alukyanov-tr
Mirage-c
Ulkesh Solanki
bingbingmasdhg
illiteratesquid
Tortenschachtel
Cody St Pierre
antonkai
carbfeng
Gamers-Cafe
Bartlomiej Styczen
itachi-73m
alexeykostin
Reece Hagan
Alexander Efimov
Tailgunnnmer
Cameron Angus
Mohammad Nakshbandi
jonbitzen
Yufei Jiao
Matthias Fauconneau
vmednonogov
chinepun
scorp
Riccardo m. Bonato
apmontgo
Gaël Écorchard
Khalid Hanif
Eric
KokkakNiphon
IndieDev99
nicholas-rh
MajesticGames
Amy Finch
Michał Borowiecki
angel eyes
Mayumi1988
Jarvis
Patryk
VinnyVicious
feng
Krzysztof Rymski
ZielIhu
Łukasz Mróz
CBBosman
Pedro Henrique Andrade da Silva
Tony Balandiuk
jjs-home
BlastBlaster17
Vladimir Ziablitskii
pjhusky
Anshul
Clayton Walker
dKumin
Anna Fąferek
VladimirLagutin
Przemyslaw Poljanski
conradax451
Nahuel Espinosa
Gene Walters
tarboss
Benjamin Yde
Blackmaster1988
Cefatus
albertdai-rf
Valentin Bas
michael-chen2010
Nathan Brooks
Robin Johnson
w1t1
Przemysław Poljański
jckand-amzn
Trung Nguyen
Eric
Branden J Brown
anon-oss
boberfly
Xichen(Sichem) Zhou
Sai Kumar
Amy Finch
IllustrisJack
Tyler Jaacks
ash7977
Wiktor Bajor
Mohamed Ali
fasfasafaffasfa
loopaq