LWRP/SRP, Unity 2018, PS Vita compatibility

Long shot but here goes.

I am developing with 2018.2 for the PSVita. All is going well, however I would like to try SRP, specifically LWRP.

I know the PowerVR SGX in the Vita can handle GLES2, which I’m looking at the Git for SRP from that timeframe, SRP supports.

However, if I make a new project using LWRP from the get go, when the app launches, it crashes with a GPU allocation error.

Things are better if I take an existing built in project and convert it. I at least get a UI; everything else renders as what appears to be black but it’s actually just not culling or drawing at all- I know this because the FPS overlay that is a system tool (outside of the app) draws over itself.

So my long shot is- are there any developers here, who have used Unity to develop on the Vita, who can help me figure out why it fails on the Vita? Every other platform I deploy on works.

 

We’ve developed and shipped four Vita games in the past and we have an extensive experience in LWRP / URP.
Long story short: stay on built-in on Vita, even if you can make LWRP work it, I don’t think the Vita hardware would be well suited for SRP, especially considering the limited CPU.

 

I was looking at it because the regular deferred pipe doesn’t work, so I’m stuck with either forward or legacy pre pass. I’d go with the latter, but I want PBR which the lighting model in LPP doesn’t support. Then the issue becomes burning up 54 draw calls /frame because I need a depth pass. Not to go into each light adding 3 DC/object. In LWRP, with the same assets, my DC count drops by nearly half because of single pass lighting and depth.
If you have any tips on how I can optimize this, I’m all ears- I’ve done my best to optimize the shaders, etc but the fillrate is killing me on BIRP.

 

Sadly it’s been a lot of time ago. :/
Our first game on Vita was Futuridium, in 2014, and we released our last game on the platform in 2018.
The Vita was powerful when it was released, but it’s very limited by today standards: I would go full baked lighting with shaders aggressively optimized for mobile, with limited real time lights.
When we used LWRP on an Apple Arcade game, it was very limited and slower than built-in, that’s why I would not bother with it on Vita.
URP now is different, but you can’t use it, so…