Babylon.js 9.16.2 Released

Babylon.js 9.16.2 is a patch-level release focused on compatibility, workflow fixes, and a few targeted feature additions rather than sweeping engine changes. The most forward-looking item is groundwork for TypeScript 7, which should help keep projects on the engine’s supported toolchain path as the language ecosystem moves forward.

Several fixes address day-to-day integration pain points. glTF/2.0 imports now auto-register the SceneLoader plugin correctly, the inspector captures more .babylonproj overrides, the sandbox picks the right animation when lists are filtered, and AudioV2 now handles seek-after-resume offsets and live loop updates more reliably. On the rendering side, the WGSL water shader bug tied to an undefined toLinearSpace call on vec3 is fixed, and MSDF TextRenderer gains a writeToDepthBuffer option for better control over text layering.

There are also a couple of export and serialization changes that pipeline-heavy teams will notice. OBJExport.MTL now accepts a materialName parameter, serialization behavior was adjusted, and the material plugin regex replacement logic was updated. Babylon.js Viewer also gets a new @babylonjs/lite-based variant at @babylonjs/viewer/lite, which should be useful for teams looking to trim runtime weight in embedded viewer scenarios.

For most teams, this is the kind of release worth taking quickly: low-risk fixes, a few quality-of-life improvements, and some early compatibility prep that may save trouble later. The only likely migration touchpoint is for projects that rely on the affected serialization, export, or viewer...