The Highlights

In the list of new features, the team highlights improvements to the script canvas authoring experience, centered on more compact nodes. This should keep things more manageable when using the visual scripting tools.

There's an experimental new Document Property Editor framework which seems to provide an abstraction over the Qt framework for streamlining the process of creating tools that integrate into the O3DE Editor. This framework uses an XML style syntax for defining the user interfaces. Due to the experimental status of this feature, it is disabled by default. The DPE framework is also part of a new Prefab Overrides feature that provides visual feedback in the editor for prefab instances that contain modifications.

The improvements in 23.10 extend to the installation and package management features of the engine, as well. This version provides Snap packages for installing on Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 (the two most recent LTS versions), along with the existing Debian package. There's additional automation features to assist in accessing third party content (e.g. Gems, templates, and projects).

Exporting O3DE projects should be a lot easier thanks to a new command line export tool. This supports Windows, Linux, Linux Server, and iOS at present, with a note that Android support is coming soon (likely to require Android Studio). As is to be expected, support for iOS export requires a macOS device.

The team also highlights rendering improvements. This includes a new Hybrid SSR-Raytraced Reflections feature, and work on support for mobile devices (e.g. Android & iOS). While previous versions could target mobile platforms with a Low graphics mode, 23.10 seems to include various performance improvements such as half float support, and handling suspend & resume on Android.

Finally, the new Features List calls out several improvements for Robotics simulations.

Some Minor Changes

In addition to the high impact features, there were a handful of additional callouts in the Features List that I wanted to highlight.

'Developer Preview' No More

With practically zero fanfare, the 'Developer Preview' text has been removed from the Installer, and the Add/Remove Programs list on Windows. Looking through the relevant GitHub discussions, the change seems extremely anticlimactic. The linked pull request only states where the text was removed, and references an issue simply asking if O3DE is still considered a developer preview. I couldn't find any discussion beyond the fact that the change was approved to ship.

Build Fixes for macOS

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple posts about the challenges I faced trying to build O3DE from source on macOS, since there's no prebuilt version for the platform. While the process thoroughly stumped me, my intent was not to disparage the project, but rather to document the process as best I could. That way, if anyone else wanted to try it, they could see how far I was able to get, realize I'm actually kind of dumb, and hopefully do better.

The 23.10 release highlights three pull requests related to building on macOS, with developers reporting success with building and running parts of the engine on the Monterrey and Ventura releases. I hope to test this at some point in the future, and follow up if I have better luck with this release. At the time of writing, there's still no sign of an official macOS release.

New Version Requirement for Windows

O3DE 23.10 drops support for older releases of Windows 10. The engine now requires Windows 10 version 20H2 or higher, and Windows 10 SDK 10.0.19041.0. The previous requirement was Windows 10 version 1809.

I'm not sure why the O3DE team settled on this particular version of Windows 10 as the new minimum. The Microsoft Learn page for version 20H2 indicates that 20H2 reached end of service in May, 2023. I would imagine that anyone who can download, install, and run a multi gigabyte AAA 3D game engine would have long since installed one of the free updates to keep their Windows 10 system current, even if it can't run Windows 11. But at least developers no longer have to support an OS that hasn't seen an update since 2021.