Godot Pre-Release: 4.1 beta 1

Godot 4.1 beta 1 

Godot 4.1 enters the beta phase with it's first pre-release. With over 3 months of work from hundreds of contributors and over 1000 changes, the team are working hard to make Godot 4 more compatible. The 4.1 beta 1 comes from over 60 changes from 38 total contributors, take a look at the full list of changes  to see in depth details about what's changed,

The focus of the beta phase is to cover fixing bugs and prepare Godot 4.1 to be released next month. Make sure you're testing the latest release and report any bugs you may find to help improve the process of preparing for the 4.1 final release.

What's new? 

If you've been following the dev snapshot releases, you'll know there has been a ton of cleanup and improvements that the team have focused on for the 4.1 release.

If you read through [the announcement post][annoucement], they cover in great detail the highlights for the big changes being released in 4.1 beta 1. Head over there if you want more insight, but here is a quick preview of what to expect:

• Large focus around CSG, GDScript, Voxel GI, and platform support.
• Core improvements for node management and tree manipulation with improved performance.
• Core changes to the 3D engine's coordinate system and it's -Z forward direction, allowing you use model space for the look_at method. This included changes to camera views and the PathFollow to be supported.
• C# gets improvements for the global use of the class_name keyword which improves editor support and integration.
• Editor get's multi window support and detachable windows for better multi display support.
• Editor configuration support is also improved and changes made to the editor will persist when reopening the editor.
• Exporting class properties also were improved and typed arrays and node types now play nicely together.
• Project Manager get's tagging support to better organize and filter the projects you're working on.
• GDExtension get's more stabalized support with API and ABI compatibility.
• GDExtension gains new visual shader support with extensions along with custom editor plugins. Custom nodes registered can also be assigned custom icons!
• GDScript has received some polish and clean-up along with improvements to enumeration within the documentation.
• GDScript now supports static class variables, no longer requiring tricks done via Dictionaries.
• Multi-Threading continues to be improved upon and support for Scene level multi-threading is introduced, though shouldn't be used in production quite yet.
• Navigation see's huge rework and the Navigation layering allows for improved collision avoidance, masking of objects and agents, static obstacles, and improved debug tools.
• Rendering has some improvements though not all targed changes made the cut, but we'll still see pipeline compilation improvements.
• Particles have a rework for the turbulence system.
• Shaders have been improved for built-ins, and a new 3D noise texture has been introduced!

Check it out and provide feedback 

This is a big step for better stability for Godot 4, and continued support is needed from the overall community to test and verify any breaking changes. Be sure to do your part and check out the latest beta 1 by heading to the Downloads page  and testing things out!

Happy Coding!