Godot 4.8 Beta 1 adds embedded game view, Trail3D and mip-level texture streaming

Godot 4.8 Beta 1 has been released. GameFromScratch, which is not an official Godot source, describes it as the version that should be feature complete, with the feature set frozen. The outlet also says plainly that a beta should not be used in production.

The biggest change is in the editor. The game view is now embedded in the main editor window by default, and main screen editors have become regular windows that can be undocked and closed. GameFromScratch also lists zoomable resource thumbnails, better drag and drop indication and new hover visibility toggles in the scene tree. In the game view you can move, resize, rotate and scale CanvasItems in the running game using a dedicated toolbar, with undo/redo support. Scenes can be opened by double-clicking.

On the rendering and VFX side, the beta adds a native Trail3D node, which the source says works out of the box without deep math knowledge. Mip-level texture streaming loads and unloads images based on camera position. The source says this is not quite full texture streaming but should help texture-heavy games such as open worlds. Screen space contact shadows create an R8 shadow texture for each directional light and blend it with shadow maps. VisualShader gains node groups, so you can package commonly used sections of a graph for reuse.

Scripting and UI get several updates. The editor shows focused underlines for GDScript warnings and errors, has faster syntax highlighting and adds new GDScript refactoring capabilities. Label and RichTextLabel gain properties for auto, minimum and maximum font size. TextEdit and CodeEdit now support touch input, including tap to place the cursor, drag to scroll and double-tap to select text. Code completion popups can also be scrolled by touch.

Other changes include a built-in Android SDK manager that can download, set up and manage the Android and Java SDKs from the editor. Simplifying GDType cuts runtime RAM use by about 12 MB, according to the source, and object property access is 1.6x faster. Removing many child nodes at once is also faster. These figures come from the GameFromScratch summary, so check the official Godot 4.8 Beta release notes for the full list and details before testing your projects.