[untoldengine]

Summary

Release v0.24.0. Headlined by a headset rendering overhaul (foveation, TAA, a forward path, and RealityKit-matched colour in mixed-immersion spaces), plus a root-level project layout, asset-resolution and scene-restore fixes, and starter-asset re-hosting.

🚀 Features

• Headset rendering: foveation, temporal anti-aliasing, a forward path, and RealityKit's look in a mixed space (Headset rendering: foveation, temporal anti-aliasing, a forward path, and RealityKit's look in a mixed space #1359) — the biggest change in this release:
  • Foveated rendering: the stereo path now draws through visionOS's compositor rasterization rate maps, so SSAO and occlusion culling (mesh, Gaussian chunk, per-splat) stay correct when foveation is on.
  • TAA is back in the engine (.taa / .msaaTaa), with variance clipping, Catmull-Rom history sampling, motion-vector-driven reprojection, and rate-map-aware history weighting. (This reverses the 2026-06-03 TAA removal — SMAA remains available alongside it.)
  • A new forward render path (selectable via a render-path setting: deferred / hybrid / forward), with per-fragment opaque lighting and a new motion-vector write from the opaque pass.
  • RealityKit-matched look: P3 primaries option in the look pass, a "none" tone map for mixed-immersion scenes, and a room-light probe that fades between estimates instead of switching, matching how the passthrough room is lit.
  • GPU-measured per-pass timing added to engine stats.
• Root-level GameData/Resources/Docs project layout ([Project Layout] Root-level GameData/Resources/Docs project layout #1345) — new projects get GameData, Resources, and Docs at the project root instead of nested under Sources/<Project>/. Adds a ProjectLayout type consolidating 5 duplicated path-shape implementations, an untoldengine convert command to migrate existing projects (with rollback on partial failure), and a fix for findGameDataDirectory silently resolving to the wrong layout when both legacy and root-level GameData exist mid-conversion.

🐞 Fixes

• Fix HDR/IBL validation falling back to a stale directory on scene restore ([Bugfix] Fix HDR/IBL validation falling back to stale directory on scene restore #1367) — serializeScene/deserializeScene now validate the active HDR through LoadingSystem's full resource search instead of only assetBasePath/HDR, and clear hdrDirectoryURL alongside hdrURL.
• Resolve assets the Editor exports flat into Models/StreamModels/Animations (Fix: resolve assets the Editor exports flat into Models/StreamModels/Animations #1369) — getResourceURL only probed the nested Models/<name>/<name>.<ext> form; the Editor has always exported flat (Models/<name>.<ext>), which broke setEntityMeshAsync for external projects.
• Skip mass lookup for entities without a kinetic component in serializeScene ([Bugfix] Skip mass lookup for entities without a kinetic component in serializeScene #1366) — stops spurious "Does not have a Physics component" (1028) log spam on every entity at Play.
• Default Material.heightEnabled to false; auto-enable on height-map-bearing loads ([Bugfix] Default Material.heightEnabled to false; auto-enable on height-map-bearing loads #1361) — POM was silently activating on any material with a height texture, even when it was meant only for bump/normal detail.

📚 Docs

• Document ComponentKit common failures and component_kit merge status (Document ComponentKit common failures and component_kit merge status #1356).
• Re-host starter asset packs on GitHub Releases after the AWS/CloudFront distribution was decommissioned, which had broken untoldengine assets install; also fixes CLI install bundling missing the asset-manifest resource bundle (Re-host starter assets on GitHub Releases; promote Untold Editor in README #1349).
• Promote the Untold Editor ahead of the code-first quick start in README/docs index; refresh intro video and direction section (Re-host starter assets on GitHub Releases; promote Untold Editor in README #1349).
• Update README logo with the new Untold Engine banner (Update README logo #1362).

🧹 Chores

• Warn at build time when Metal kernel sources are stale (Warn at build time when Metal kernel sources are stale #1357) — a new build-tool plugin hashes UntoldEngineKernels.metal and its includes against a stamp buildkernels.sh writes, surfacing a build warning instead of silently running tests/apps against a stale .metallib.

Test plan

• swift test / renderer suite green on macOS and visionOS targets
• Manual check of TAA and foveated rendering on a Vision Pro device/sim across deferred, hybrid, and forward paths
• Verify scene restore with a custom HDR after the [Bugfix] Fix HDR/IBL validation falling back to stale directory on scene restore #1367 fix
• Verify untoldengine convert on a legacy-layout project, including the rollback path on a forced failure
• Confirm untoldengine assets install pulls from the new GitHub Release manifest