# Godot 4.7 Beta: HDR, AreaLight3D, and 1,265 Fixes

## TL;DR / Key Takeaways

- **Godot 4.7 entered beta on April 24, 2026** with [1,265 fixes from 309 contributors](https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-7-beta-1/) since 4.6-stable. Feature freeze is in. Stable release is roughly two months out.

- **HDR output landed on every desktop platform.** Windows, macOS, Linux, and BSD now drive HDR monitors directly, [contributed across separate PRs by Josh Jones, Stuart Carnie, and ArchercatNEO](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/94496). Android already had it in 4.6. iOS and Web do not.

- **AreaLight3D, VirtualJoystick, and Vulkan ray-tracing groundwork** close three long-running gaps. The first two are production-ready in 4.7; ray-tracing is plumbing only.

---

## 01 / Context

### What 4.7 is and isn’t

4.7 is the polish-and-coverage release. [4.6 made Jolt Physics the default and brought back inverse kinematics](/content/blogs/godot-4-6/index.html); 4.7 fills in the platform support and editor friction that 4.6 left untouched. The first beta represents [feature freeze, with 85 fixes from 47 contributors landing in just the two weeks between dev 5 and beta 1](https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-7-beta-1/).

### GODOT 4.X RELEASE TIMELINE

| Date | Version & Updates |
| --- | --- |
| Sep 2025 | Godot 4.5 ships with shader baker and accessibility |
| Jan 26 2026 | Godot 4.6 ships Jolt as default and IKModifier3D |
| Apr 24 2026 | Godot 4.7 beta 1: feature freeze, HDR everywhere |
| ~Jun 2026 | Godot 4.7 stable (estimated, based on prior cycles) |

Godot's 4.x release cadence has tightened to roughly six months between feature releases.

---

## 02 / HDR everywhere

### HDR output finally crosses the desktop

The Godot HDR story has been embarrassing. Android shipped HDR output in 4.6. Every desktop platform was stuck on SDR until 4.7. For a 2026 engine pitching itself as ready for commercial 3D, that gap was not defensible.

4.7 closes it. Three contributors landed it across the desktop platforms in parallel:

### HDR OUTPUT SUPPORT BY PLATFORM

| PLATFORM | 4.6 | 4.7 | CONTRIBUTOR / PR |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Windows | — | ✓ | Josh Jones, Alvin Wong, Allen Pestaluky GH-94496 |
| macOS | — | ✓ | Stuart Carnie GH-106814 |
| Linux / BSD | — | ✓ | ArchercatNEO GH-102987 |
| Android | ✓ | ✓ | DarkKilauea (4.6) GH-101977 |
| iOS | — | — | Not yet |
| Web | — | — | Not yet |

HDR output platform coverage. 4.7 closes the desktop gap; iOS and Web remain unsupported.

The Windows implementation [waited two years for review and merge](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/94496); it is the largest of the three. The macOS and Linux ports built on the Windows groundwork. The implementation supports the full HDR10 metadata path on platforms where the OS provides it, and falls back cleanly to SDR on monitors that do not advertise HDR capability.

---

## 03 / Lighting

### AreaLight3D: rectangular real-time lights

The new `AreaLight3D` node renders real-time light from a rectangular surface in 3D space. Up until now, the only way to fake a soft ceiling panel or a window light source in Godot was to scatter several point lights and tune attenuation until it looked OK. That trick costs draw calls and never quite gets the falloff right at grazing angles.

[Emil Dobetsberger contributed the implementation in GH-108219](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/108219), [closing a four-year-old proposal](https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/11450). The first cut renders uniformly colored area lights; future work targets textured lights via a new `PrefilteredTexture` resource. For 4.7, expect:

| Feature | Status in 4.7 |
| --- | --- |
| Rectangular area light shape | Shipping |
| Real-time falloff and shadows | Shipping |
| Uniform color per light | Shipping |
| Textured area lights | [Proposed for later](https://github.com/godotengine/godot-proposals/issues/13214) |
| Disc and sphere area lights | Not in scope yet |

The practical reading: anyone doing interior 3D scenes, architectural visualization, or stylized 3D with soft lighting can now do it with one node where 4.6 needed three or four. The engine is still behind Unreal’s lit area light suite, but it is no longer behind Unity’s URP.

---

## 04 / Mobile

### VirtualJoystick is finally built in

Mobile input on Godot has been a [long-running source of friction](/content/blogs/godot-mobile/index.html). New devs often picked the wrong one and rewrote their input code three times before shipping.

4.7 ships the official VirtualJoystick node, [contributed by Kazox61 in GH-110933](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/110933). It supports three modes:

| Mode | Behavior | Best for |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `JOYSTICK_FIXED` | Stays put regardless of touch position | Classic dead-zone setups, twin-stick games |
| `JOYSTICK_DYNAMIC` | Appears under the initial touch and snaps back when released | Smaller screens where screen real estate matters |
| `JOYSTICK_FOLLOWING` | Follows the touch if it leaves the bounds | Long-swipe action games |

This single addition removes one of the rougher edges from Godot’s mobile pipeline. Combined with the [SDL3 joystick driver for iOS in GH-114316](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/114316) and [Wayland touch support in GH-113886](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/113886), the input story on mobile finally has a default answer instead of three competing community plugins.

---

## 05 / Rendering

### Vulkan ray tracing, sort of

Antonio Caggiano’s [GH-99119](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/99119) lands the low-level Vulkan ray-tracing plumbing: acceleration structures, ray dispatch, the basic API surface. It does not land production ray-traced shadows, ray-traced reflections, or a path tracer. What it does land is the ability to fire rays at all from inside the renderer.

[Suitable projects can now begin to explore ray tracing as a feature without committing to a fully realized solution.](https://www.phoronix.com/news/Godot-4.7-Dev-1-Vulkan-RT)

Lower-priority but worth flagging:

- **Nearest-neighbor 3D scaling** ([Hugo Locurcio, GH-79731](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/79731)). Pixel-art 3D games stop being blurred by automatic bilinear filtering. Crisp at any resolution.
- **DrawableTexture** ([Colin O’Rourke, GH-105701](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/105701)). Direct CPU-to-texture writes for paint tools, fog of war, decals.
- **Shader inline previews** in the editor (Yuri Rubinsky, GH-117726). Live preview of text shaders without leaving the editor.

---

## 06 / Editor

### The little things that compound

The editor changes in 4.7 are unflashy and you will not notice any one of them. You will notice all of them by week two. The most-cited improvements:

- **Vertex snapping in the 3D editor** ([Robert Yevdokimov, GH-117235](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/117235)).
- **Path3D collider snapping** ([Gustavo Jaruga Cruz, GH-102085](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/102085)).
- **Inspector copy/paste sections** ([Raphaël Daubelcour, GH-111469](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/111469)).
- **Animation track collapsing** ([Malcolm Anderson, GH-113479](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/113479)).
- **AwaitTweener** ([Tomasz Chabora, GH-79712](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/79712)).
- **Selective export template downloads** ([Tomasz Chabora, GH-117072](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/117072)).

### GODOT 4.7 FEATURES RANKED BY INDIE IMPACT (1-5)

| Feature | Impact Score |
| --- | --- |
| VirtualJoystick (mobile input) | 5.0 |
| HDR output (desktop) | 5.0 |
| AreaLight3D (rectangular lights) | 4.0 |
| Path3D + vertex snapping | 4.0 |
| Inspector copy/paste sections | 4.0 |
| AwaitTweener | 4.0 |
| Picture-in-picture (Android) | 3.0 |
| wasm64 web builds | 3.0 |
| Vulkan ray tracing (groundwork) | 2.0 |

---

## 07 / Web

### wasm64 and the web

Web exports got a quiet but meaningful upgrade: [wasm64 support landed in GH-102378](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/102378). On browsers that support 64-bit WebAssembly, this raises the addressable heap limit beyond the 4GB ceiling that 32-bit wasm enforced.

---

## 08 / Breaking changes

### What you have to watch for

The release notes call out [several compatibility breaks](https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-4-7-beta-1/). The ones most likely to hit a real project:

- **BlendSpace points handling.** AnimationTree projects that wrote against specific BlendSpace internals will need to retest blend behavior.
- **Audio spectrum analyzer.** API change. Audio visualizer code may need adjustment.
- **Keyboard and mouse device IDs.** Numbering scheme changed. Code that hardcoded device IDs breaks.
- **Particle angular velocity corrections.** Particles using rotation will look subtly different.
- **Shader preprocessor restrictions.** Some macro patterns that worked in 4.6 no longer compile.
- **OBB Android support removed** ([GH-118283](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/118283)).

---

## 09 / The honest critique

### The shape of the criticism

Not every reaction has been positive. The Hacker News thread on the 4.7 announcement attracted [the long-standing critique of Godot’s project priorities](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47907350).

The other side of the thread was less ambivalent: many developers appreciate Godot's efficiency.

---

## 10 / Bottom line

### Should you upgrade?

**Upgrade now if:** You are starting a new mobile project, you ship 3D on desktop and care about HDR, or you have an editor workflow that hits the inspector copy/paste pain daily.

**Wait if:** You have a shipped 3D project on 4.6 with custom shader preprocessor macros, or your Android pipeline still uses the legacy OBB format. The breaking changes will bite you.

**Evaluate:** If you are deciding between Godot and another engine for a 2026 project, [the gap to Unity is materially smaller in 4.7](/content/blogs/godot-vs-unity/index.html) than it was in 4.5.