In preparation for release, one of the biggest issues has been performance.
Many of you have pointed out excessive RAM usage, as well as pc's running at 100% with screaming fans. (And not the rock concert type.)
I believe this comes down to a Unity issue with how it stores objects in memory, even when they are not visible.
To combat this, this patch introduces a major change to how game assets are handled. Rather than a pool of assets that are loaded in based on player proximity, each major POI has been separated into its own loaded scene. (These are layered, so there's no loading screen or anything.)
The cons to this are you may see brief hangs during loading if you have an HDD, and there may be more noticeable pop-in -- as well as any number of bugs I haven't caught yet, so feel free to let me know if you encounter anything weird.
The pros however should be considerable. On 0.5.7 my RAM usage ranged from 7.5GB, spiking to 20+ during asset loading on islands. On 0.6 I maintain a very consistent 2.3-2.5GB, and my pc sounds less like it's trying to take off from a runway.
Please note that this probably won't have any impact on FPS if your system struggled before, it just reduces the RAM overhead by a significant amount.