Is it just me or Unity 5 is bloated and slow?

Hello there.

I've stopped using Unity seriously in v4, I thought it was in good hands because I never saw a noticeable downgrade, however, I was running some of my stress tests in Unity 5 and for my surprise they run much slower, specially on mobile. I know people are having this kind of issue but I only found old stuff and I wanted to know if this was solved or if the new version really is bloated and slow.

I was really looking forward to v5 because of new Physx and I thought it would have some real speed improvements overall, that's why now you don't have the implicit stuff in coding, what makes coding a little bit less productive, but that was supposed to be the price for an increase performance.

What I've seen so far:
Slower coding.
Slower performance.
Bloated with features that I (and I'm sure A LOT of indies) will never use.
Old problems not solved. (e.g.: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/co...pt-changes-has-no-effect.222802/#post-2102986)
Bad built-in tools and integration.

It's just my opinion, but imho Unity is going the opposite way I wanted it to go. I wanted better performance, the bugs fixed and better quality tools like sprite sheet editor and code editor integration, instead I got features I'll never use and the old tools and bugs are still there.

It seems to me that what I feared is happening, Unity is turning its back at indies and 'low-cost' developers, because obviously the bad tools don't affect big studios because they pay for MSVS+UnityVS and pricey spritesheet editors, and of course Unity Pro. Most big studios also don't care about minimum requirements, and their games have realistic graphics (it's what sells 90% after all) so the new features are welcome.

I could be wrong, but I'd say that Unity 5 neglected all the problems indies have and implemented everything was missing for the AAA industry and big studios.

I know that my opinion worth nothing and I'm just a single user, but you can't deny the facts. I'm not a fanboy anymore, couldn't care less since there's some real competition out there nowadays, just wanted to share my frustration and want to know if there's any chance the mentioned issues will be solved in the future.

 

You completely lost my interest in your concerns with this statement. The only meaningful change to coding was the removal of quick property accessors. Based on my experiences assisting people since the launch of Unity 5.0, those who are struggling with this change are those still learning the basics.

I have only encountered one individual who had been using Unity for a good while that actually struggled with the change. My impression based on assisting him was that he wasn't much further along in learning than any other newcomer.

 

Sorry, that was supposed to be slower (although only a little bit).

 

1. The only change I have noticed is that you have to use GetComponent<Component>() and store the reference? (Using C#)

2. Could you share your stress test results and more information on this as I have personally noticed a modest improvement in performance (including hardware info)?

3. It is becoming more feature rich but the engine developers are putting a lot of work into making the features modular, so if you don't use a subsystem it is not included in the build (hence this issue in 1).

4. I must admit I have seen this myself but often the bugs are minor and 'erratic'.

5. My understanding is that Unity have previously (over the last year or so) asked on the forum what people wanted improved in the subsystems. And are working on this as we speak/type.

 

You can create a class that inherits from MonoBehaviour and implements those accessors. Then you simply need to include it with every project and modify the script templates to use it.

 

Not sure why coding should be harder in Unity 5. They are improving the API (finally) and make it slimmer. That's not harder, it is better.

Did you see slower performance? If so, you may submit bug reports to get those issues resolved.

As long as it doesn't feel bloated, I don't mind. New features are needed and there is certainly a lot to be learned. For me personally, it is not bloated.

Not every bug can be fixed. As far as I know, Unity will have a newer version of MonoDevelop in one of the coming releases.

What exactly are you referring to?

You are now getting all Pro features for free in Unity 5. That means everyone can e.g. use the profiler, you have all image effects, soft shadows, ... I don't know where you are seeing signs that Unity is turning their back against anyone, especially not indies.
Of course, you may have some very specific needs. If Unity doesn't actively work on them, it doesn't mean they are working against indies...

 

1- You have to store that for better performance also. It's not a big deal by any means, but that was supposed to be the 'price' for an increased performance.

2-I've deleted the ports to 5, but I can share, no problem, they are old tests I did for rendering performance on mobile (stress on quads vs sprites) and a pi calculator. Rendering is much slower and processing is marginally, and that reminds me of another feature I really wanted that is il2cpp.

3-Feature-rich? Features I personally will never use. Is the code editor decent enough for you? It surely isn't for me.

4-Yet they revamped the whole thing, they put lots of efforts in rendering and audio mixing, and the most annoying bugs still pops up now and then. No dealbreaker for me though, I just don't understand their priorities.

5-That's the proper way to do it! I'm happy to hear that and I'm still waiting since scite days for a decent code editor.

Thank you for your civil reply .

 

Unity is a general purpose engine that not only tries to target many different platforms and developers, but also tries to maintain a unified platform. I am not a fan of MonoDevelop either, but right now there aren't any real alternatives for them to include that support both Windows and OS X.

Returning to the initial statement about being general purpose and targeting many different developers, Unity is not developed solely for indie developers. It also targets bigger studios and many of them are slowly moving away from in-house solutions and using Unity instead. They will expect some of those features to be present that we may not use.

Not that those of us who are indies or hobbyists won't find those features to be useful. I was very much looking forward to Unity 5.x and the new toys it brought with it.

 

1. Not really we used to do the storing to improve code performance as each access to .rigidbody had an overhead. But the main benefit is the modular unused sub systems can be removed or stripped from the size of your games build files.

2. il2cpp is in and they are rolling it out across platforms, but it will take time.

3. Use a different code editor you like and use it instead, it's just text.

4. Without new and improved features Unity drops behind other game engines and dies. It's a fast moving real profit driven business world and they have to make money to stay afloat. So they prioritize tasks and some annoying but small bugs and features will be sidelined.

 

PS: Sorry guys couldn't keep up with your replies @Dantus: Sorry, I edited the OP, and I'm referring to the built-in tools.

Yeah, I see that pretty much everyone is using UnityVS... perhaps that's why MD never got attention at all. That's a very bad point imho. MonoDevelop doesn't even have a working outliner for US, which is among the most basic features you could ever want. Even Notepad++ has an outliner for all languages it supports. I don't use US any longer nor plan to use it, but I don't understand what is the difficulty in doing such a basic thing.

Re what you said that I have all the features for free, is the LOD engine free now? (sorry I uninstalled unity5). That's surely a big plus, but it's not 'incredible' any longer. I the past I was extremely grateful for the opportunity of developing my game for free using such an amazing engine, but nowadays there are lots of alternatives so it's now 'part of the business'. Everyones allows you to dev for free, even valve nowadays, so it's nothing special any longer.

Obviously you're right that Unity targets big studios, I just think that v5 targetted them too much . I don't really care much about that though as long as I can keep doing my little things, and all the mentioned things aren't real deal-breakers for me, except the performance downgrade. By the way, I don't know why you guys are so surprised by that statement, a quick google search returns a cornucopia of other people experiencing the same problem.

 

Yes, every engine feature is now free with Unity 5.

 

1- I admit that's an improvement, but only if it comes with REAL and PRACTICAL improvements, until then it's just another way to code.

2- Glad to hear that .

3- MSVS+UnityVS? That's not the solution I was hoping.

That's a huge one .

I'm targeting PCs (after failing miserably on mobile) so the performance is not a big deal, I just wanted to make sure Unity isn't heading the other side .

 

Keep in mind that issue with using GetComponent<Component>() and storing a reference was always the case if you wanted the best performance. For example, you would use GetComponent<Component>() and store a reference in the Awake() or Start() function. The old quick property accessors actually used GetComponent<Component>() under the hood, so there was a performance penalty there that some people did not realize. For example, some people used quick property accessors in the Update() function without realizing that meant they were actually running GetComponent<Component>() every frame. Dropping the quick property accessors in Unity 5 was smart. This did not make coding harder.

The only other thing I can think of that some people might say is harder is how mesh colliders are handled in Unity 5. A complex concave mesh collider was allowed in Unity 4. In Unity 5, there are restrictions to how mesh colliders are used. In most cases, there are simple workarounds, like using a simplified convex mesh collider instead of the concave mesh collider. Another option is to enable isKinematic for the RigidBody. There are performance advantages to this change in the physics system in Unity 5, so it is also a worthwhile change. For one project of mine that I ported from Unity 4 to 5, I decided to switch to convex colliders and that worked well. Again, I don't think this made anything harder.

 

Unity's current business model appears to be selling services rather than selling the engine itself. It isn't too dissimilar to how Linux distro companies operate. I believe this is the eventual route that most big companies are going to have to go to stay relevant.

 

If you're limited to a Mac and don't have access to Windows then the MonoDevelop point is valid, however the above is not. You're probably not aware, but Microsoft now have Visual Studio Community Edition which is free (it's equivalent to Visual Studio Pro) and they purchased Unity VS which is now Visual Studio Tools for Unity and it's also free. If your development machine is a Windows machine then MSVS + UnityVS is freely accessible.

As for performance, here's something else to think about. Unity more than likely heard more complaints about capabilities and graphical fidelity than they did performance. Unity 5 (with exception of IL2CPP which is still in a state of improvement) performs as well or better than Unity 4, but this also depends on the featureset you use. If you're using the new Standard Shaders (and also depending on the combination of settings), it won't perform as well graphically but the end result is much better. And you still have the option of using the legacy shaders.

 

It's just you.

I'll give you one though, since we are early in the 5.x cycle, some features and implementations are not quite there yet. The feeling of things being somewhat incomplete is there. But that was also true for the early 4.x (compared to how mature 3.5.7 felt). But progress is being made, 5.1 betas already feel much better.

 

Can't abide VS at all. I use an old MD 2.8 It does everything I need, cleanly and without bloat, after all it's just text.

 

You're missing out on better debugging amongst other things. For instance, being able to inspect elements within collections.

 

Not found a need for any of that. I'd be happy with notepad. Been coding in C languages since '86 and assembly for 6 years prior to that.

 

Maybe so, and I was that way when I first started with .NET as well, but I found that once I started using the tools they drastically increased productivity.

 

Or in my case they increase the length of my coding sessions by offsetting how long it takes for my wrist's carpal tunnel to start acting up. At this point I literally cannot go without AutoComplete and IntelliSense.

 

Thanks guys, perhaps I'm doing something wrong... I'm going to re-do my tests someday paying more attention if it's as fast as it gets.

-I don't think the free version supports plugins, anyone confirms?- (strikethrough this)
EDIT: Nevermind. It seems Community != Express.

In this case and if it's true it's not slower, then forget this. I'm not on a Mac .

 

I'm not sure what considered features for "big studios". Obviously the licence change was huge for indies and hobbyists, no impact on pro studios. And the features were all across the board improvements, but a lot of things like asset bundle improvements, cloud and other things primarily benefit smaller teams/indies, and again don't impact larger studios. In fact, the entire Unity flow is still geared very, very heavily for small teams. The improvements and features in 5 are great for sure, but none of them really directly had impact on improving the workflow for large teams.

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We only use Macs for development, and Monodevelop on the Mac is... less than stellar. Most of use TextMate2, BBEdit or Sublime, and a few even use Emacs. (I prefer Textmate2).

 

Ha ha! So true. Although I mainly use VS sometimes I still do some of my Unity coding in Notepad++. Sure you don't get the auto completes and such but all of these things people expect these days are just luxury items truth be told. All you need is a text editor, keyboard and the compiler messages in Unity. I think this is why I found the whole Scene Editor, Prefabs and such to be such a weird thing. There is so much Unity has it seems way overkill to someone used to just straight coding. Asset creation was a completely separate thing and you just loaded that stuff in or packed it on at the end of the executable.

Anyway, I agree with ya!

 

Thank you guys.

Indie studios generally don't have the resources to produce a high-quality audiovisual experience, so pushing the tools for rendering and audio mixing THAT far is to me a way to convince the big studios. That's not wrong and obviously Unity have to sell them, but not if that costs performance for simpler graphics. That's what I think happened. They changed the rendering in a way that now it has all the features a big studio may want, but it's not as efficient for simpler stuff.

 

The "Dynamic baking" or whatever it's called of the GI has kinda put a damper on my enthusiasm for using it

 

What resources are you referring to though? I feel like Enlighten is primarily a matter of understanding lighting than it is anything else. SpeedTree is another great feature and is only $19/mo for the modeller. Or you can buy pre-made foliage for reasonable prices.

Their audio mixing is another matter entirely. Unity was simply lacking good audio mixing support.

 

I'm talking about the dozens, if not hundreds of artists they have to produce high-quality content.

Most indies will never be able to compete on the graphics/audio with AAA studios, and the main appeal of the AAA studios nowadays is exactly the audiovisual quality (let's agree that the modern AAA games sucks more every release. The only thing that improves consistently is the art)

Most indie games don't have photorrealistic graphics nor sophisticated sound effects.

 

It's not fair to blame the passage of time that has aged all of us, decreasing our typing speed, on Unity3D and their release schedule.

Unity took a step in the unreal direction, so by default, things are much shinier now. If you bring graphics and materials to their legacy modes / reduce them however, it should perform like it did before.

Accessibility isn't a bad thing. In fact, there are constant demands on this thread for even more bloating in terms of unecessary features that are simple for advanced users. It is likely that people will continue to demand more even after UT caves on Unity 89 and adds a "make my mmorpgfps" button. Maybe future releases will strip 'bloat' from the engine and offer it on the asset store as editor scripts.

Never had that issue except one time when mono bugged out and opened a second copy of my script and it was only reading changes to the original. Fixed by closing the duplicate and editing the right one.

Having a script extendable editor makes this a non-issue for intermediate programmers.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only developer who actually likes monodevelop

 

You don't need dozens or even hundreds of artists to produce high-quality content.

As the term "AAA" is mostly a matter of budget, it is natural they won't be able to go the same route as a "AAA" studio for producing their game. That does not eliminate their ability to make it high-quality though.

You do not need photorealism in order to produce a high-quality game. Sound effects are going to be harder to produce, but you can simply purchase these from companies who specialize in them.

 

I see that completely opposite. Big studios have always had access to that stuff, whether a "premium" engine or in house. Now small studios have a tool set equivalent to that. Also bear in mind, a lot of big studios that use Unity do so for mobile, a lot of the improvements are more targeted at PC games and, not overly practical for mobile (yet).

Performance didn't really take a hit, sure if you use the new graphical tools they are going to be more expensive, but you don't need to use them, the performance is pretty much the same as it was in 4. (build times are a little slow now, but that will improve).

 

100% correct. In fact the more artists you have the more risk you run of having an inconsistent visual direction. (unless you have an AD with an iron fist). We have around 5(ish), They are just really good.

 

That is one of the best things about Unity, being able to create all the tools you need right in the editor. If you can script games, you can just as easily create tools.

 

I'm a one man shop and I use FMOD Studio. It's absurd overkill for my pathetic audio but after seeing what that's capable of ... I haven't even looked at the audio improvements in 5.

Improving the audio stuff probably had more to do with a "strengthen our weak points" rather than being market driven.

 

I'm sorry, but that's not true. You do need many professional artists to produce a large quantity of quality assets. It's simple math, a good artist can produce x assets/day, if you need 2000x high quality assets in 6 months you need 15 artists. There's no magic in there. That talk about "inconsistent visual direction" is also wrong imho, that's what art directors and supervisors are for.

That's a valid point. However, in terms of game engines, indies also have access to other high quality engines nowadays, and don't get me wrong I still think Unity is the best out there, but when I see that the decal system is still 'under review' after 6 years, and the rebrand from personal to indie has been declined in the unity feedback, I don't have that clear picture that Unity is paying much attention to the indies and the community. I surely miss the days when Unity was a small company based in Denmark.

Fanboyism is something that also seems to be getting detrimental to Unity nowadays. I see a lot of people denying the reality and accepting whatever changes Unity throws at them. That was acceptable in the past because you really didn't have an option (but in the past they wouldn't do that), but now there are options, and I (along with others I believe) won't stay loyal to Unity if it's not good for me.

 

The only thing I know that changed is that now 2D vs 3D sounds is on the audiosource instead of the sound import. Not sure what that does for performance, but at runtime you can modify an audiolistener's "spatial blend" setting. I have a feeling it's all 3D now but choosing 2D sound simply places the 3D sound on the scenes audio listener.

Well to be fair, their point is focused on quality, not quantity. Also as a game design student in college I can tell you that there are some very capable artists. Watch out for when Cory Moy enters the industry, he turned out ~10 high quality models over a weekend!

 

The entire concept of large "AAA" games being the only form of high-quality is entirely in your head. It is worth noting that @zombiegorilla works in DIsney's game development department on their Star Wars games. I believe him far more than someone who we know nothing about.

 

I'd trust the reality more than someone's opinion. I mean, what better depicts the reality than the reality itself... the level of denial is getting high in this thread.

 

Who are you again? How much have you worked in the industry? What products have you shipped? We know very little about you except you're among those who apparently are having problems with Unity 5.

 

Could you please update your critique list, preferably with examples as the mentioned points are rather broad and let a lot of space for interpretation.
I don't know where you are getting the Fanboyism from. No one here is saying that Unity is perfect and everyone has their own preferences where improvements are wanted or new features.

 

Exactly. My statements can just as easily fit with Unreal 4 and almost any other game engine. You don't need a large quantity of assets nor do they need to be "AAA" to produce a high-quality game.

 

I don't need to prove anything to you. Don't take my word for it, just open your eyes, do you see any big studio hiring one or two artists for their next big game?

I'm not talking about this thread.

 

I don't need to pay more than cursory attention to big studios to understand that you do not need a large quantity of resources nor do they need to be "AAA" to produce a high-quality game. A large budget does not automatically equate to a quality game.

Note that I'm not stating that a "AAA" game doesn't need a "AAA" staff. I'm simply stating that high-quality does not automatically mean "AAA" or require a "AAA" budget to achieve.

You seem to have this belief that indie developers cannot make good use of modern engine features. That's nonsense.

 

Again just a general statement that is very open for interpretation.
Still you fail to name some actual issues and not just something that doesn't kind of feel wrong. Could you give some actual examples for everything you mention instead of giving some broad and vague areas that don't feel right to you.

 

Maybe I'm just dumb. But for me the big difference between 4 and 5 is just the lighting options and new shader.

At the end of the day... unity 5 feels largely the same. And my scenes have slightly better lighting.

 

If anything the new PBR shader has made it easier to achieve photorealism.

 

there is definitely a big change in Unity 5, I have over 25 years experience with computers and graphics and the one thing that keeps coming to the top of my mind is a phrase 'demoted instruction sets', older GPUs and CPUs like mine, are not running unity 5 at full speed , because even the 32 bit data from unity, is being demoted to 16 bit, that is why it runs slow on my laptop and PC, both older GPUs and older Intel CPUs.

I have to narrow it down to the advanced PBR shading and how my video card is interpreting that data from unity . I possibly I have to force OpenGL.but you can only push older video cards to do so much and then they start slowing your system down

to really run unity 5 fast, you need 16 gigabytes of RAM , 64bit quad-core processor and video card manufacturered, no later than 2012..


My opinion...there's nothing wrong with Unity 5, there's everything wrong with the hardware that I'm trying to run it on.

P-

 

My aging system from before 2012 is easily handling it though. I'm on an AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8GB DDR3-1333, and a GTX 460 that is very rapidly beginning to show its age. Contrast this to UE4 which barely runs acceptably for me.

 

On my computer, I have no problem to run Unity and I can't even start UE4. Though that has nothing to say about Unity or UE, because my computer is really not the best

 

From Unity 4.3.x to Unity 4.6 Unity became faster and Unity 5 is equivalent or faster the Unity 4.6.