How is 2021 shaping up so far? January has been eerily quiet so far. That said, we did get Unity 2021.1 beta, which offers a glimpse at the immediate future of mobile game development, along with a smattering of other developments. Read on for the full scoop.

• How to create Oculus Quest experiences in Unity – Did you know that the extremely popular Oculus Quest 2 runs on Android? The headset is widely considered the first “mainstream” VR hardware, so maybe it’s time to learn how to create apps for it!
• A guide to Android app development for complete beginners in 5 easy steps — We’ve revamped our guide to Android development for complete beginners. If you’re starting out, we’ve got you covered.
• 15 best Android emulators for PC and Mac of 2021 — Emulating Android on PC can be extremely useful whether you’re playing games or testing your own app creations. Here are 15 of the best options.
• Upwork vs Fiverr: Which is the best place to sell your services? — Freelance app developers should always be on the lookout for new markets to sell their creations. This post compares Upwork vs Fiverr for developers, digital artists, copywriters, and the rest. The conclusions might surprise you!

 

• Unity 2021.1 beta is available for feedback — The biggest news this month is the beta release of Unity 2021.1. Developers will be able to play around with useful quality-of-life improvements, Point light Shadows via the Universal Render Pipeline, and a faster, more powerful editor. The most transformative update, however, comes in the form of Visual Scripting. This will enable creators from all backgrounds to implement basic logic without writing a line of code, similar to the tool seen in Unreal Engine. Let us know in the comments below if you’d like more of a deep dive into this in the future.
• Unreal Engine 4.25 released! — While this is actually news from December, it seems only fair to mention that Unity 2021.1 comes on the heals of Unreal Engine 4.26. While most mobile developers gravitate toward Unity for its ease-of-use, Unreal is still widely used. The new release brought more realistic animated characters with better strand-based hair and fur rendering, a Volumetric Cloud component for a believable atmosphere, and more.
• A Performance Heads-Up Display (HUD) for Chrome — Google announced that it will be bringing a “Performance Heads-Up Display” for Chrome. This will let developers see data from the Core Web Vitals extension and will work on Android too. That includes First Input Delay and Largest Contentful Paint to optimize website performance. If it leads to a faster and more efficient internet experience, it can only be a good thing!