Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Instanced Indirect very slow on Mac

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by gecko, Apr 8, 2019.

  1. gecko

    gecko

    Joined:
    Aug 10, 2006
    Posts:
    2,240
    Instanced Indirect support on Mac OSX seems to lag behind Windows. In tools like Advanced Terrain Grass and Vegetation Studio Pro, I can enable Indirect to render lots and lots of grass more rapidly, and these work great on Windows, but are actually worse on Mac compared to regular Instancing.

    Using Vegetation Studio Pro as an example: On Windows, I get a significant speed increase when I switch to this method. On Mac, I get an enormous slowdown. Using 2018.3.9:

    * WIndows 10 with GTX 1060: Grass rendering takes 2-4ms with indirect.
    * Mac OS 10.13 with Radeon 580 eGPU: Well, since GPU profiling doesn't work on Macs, I have no detailed breakdown, but when I enable Indirect, FPS drops from 30+ to 2, and the Rendering thread (shown in the Stats panel) rises to at least 100ms, often 300 or more.

    Is this due to limitations inherent in OSX (and thus Apple's fault), or if it's something that Unity can improve, and if so, does anyone know whether that's likely to happen soon?

    thanks
    Dave
     
  2. mons00n

    mons00n

    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2013
    Posts:
    304
    I know this is an older thread @gecko but did you ever come to a conclusion on this? I encounter the same thing in the editor - and not just with VS Pro. Any time I try to use compute buffers and do an DrawInstanceIndirect call it seems to be much slower on my mac as opposed to just DrawInstanced. Do you experience the same slowdown out of editor?
     
  3. gecko

    gecko

    Joined:
    Aug 10, 2006
    Posts:
    2,240
  4. mons00n

    mons00n

    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2013
    Posts:
    304
    Ugh why does that not surprise me. Did they ever turn it into an issue on their issue tracker that can be voted on? Quick search didn't turn up anything.
     
  5. gecko

    gecko

    Joined:
    Aug 10, 2006
    Posts:
    2,240
    Not that I know of, alas.
     
  6. richardkettlewell

    richardkettlewell

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2015
    Posts:
    2,281
    mons00n and gecko like this.
  7. mons00n

    mons00n

    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2013
    Posts:
    304
    richardkettlewell likes this.
  8. gecko

    gecko

    Joined:
    Aug 10, 2006
    Posts:
    2,240
  9. richardkettlewell

    richardkettlewell

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2015
    Posts:
    2,281
    I’ve asked the team for an update
     
    gecko likes this.
  10. PeterB

    PeterB

    Joined:
    Nov 3, 2010
    Posts:
    366
    And what was their reply?

    / Peter B, Mac OS X user and therefore a second class Unity citizen
     
  11. Soner-Sen

    Soner-Sen

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2016
    Posts:
    19
    Hi,
    we are aware of the issue, and prioritizing the incoming issues accordingly. we will start investigating it and will update this thread about our investigations and possible timeline for the fix.
     
    dmenefee, mons00n, PeterB and 3 others like this.
  12. GoldFireStudios

    GoldFireStudios

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2018
    Posts:
    160
    I don't suppose there has been any movement on this over the last year?
     
    NikosPetr and mons00n like this.