VR Major VR Performance Issue: OculusWaitForGPU running on CPU?

Anyone else having serious performance problems with VR enabled? I'm seeing 500+ fps in a pretty basic scene without VR, but I'm only getting 10 fps with VR enabled - both in the editor and a build. Profiler is pegging the issue as "OculusWaitForGPU" and it's showing up under the CPU instead of the GPU. I think the only way this makes sense is if VR mode somehow is swapping all the rendering to the CPU instead. Or maybe something completely different is going on and I'm an idiot. It's a distinct possibility.

I submitted a bug report (699605), but I would be surprised if I was the first to encounter this since it's happening on both of my machines with very different specs.

Admittedly, this is on 5.1.0.f1 and not f2, but I'm downloading it right now to see. Given the fairly small release notes for this version my guess is that it will still be an issue. I remember it happening before the RC cycle started up, too, but I haven't had a chance to document it until now.

 

I've also been noticing some major performance issues with VR. As you've noted, I have scenes that run at +150fps with VR disabled. As soon as I enable VR it drops to around 39fps. I'm also seeing OculusWaitForGPU taking a lot of time on the profiler.

I've noticed other VR performance issues - another scene runs at +1000fps without VR enabled. If I enable VR in the editor it keeps a high frame rate and is very smooth when viewed in the HMD. However, when I build this scene and run the build, it is extremely 'juddery' in the HMD. It's quite sickening.

I've also seen weird differences between direct and extended mode when testing VR scenes (documented here).

Unfortunately these issues are making the native VR unusable for me at the moment which is a shame because, apart from the performance bugs, it is excellent. Really hoping these issues get patched quickly after 5.1 is released.

 

I'm getting terrible results with 5.1.0f2 as well. I've got a scene that runs 400 fps normally but I'm lucky to get 40 or 50 on the Rift. It's not even usable now.

With version 0f1 Unity stats show a solid 79 or 80 with Rift as expected with VSynch (probably should be 75?), but in forward rendering mode the right eye flickers like crazy showing only part of the scene most of the time. Left eye flickers occasionally too but it's not nearly as bad there. In deferred mode (maybe linear too, but with the flickering it's hard to tell) the head tracking stutters like crazy. In both versions the Rift is unusable in my application.

 

Yeah, it's the same thing vvander reported, but not as severe in my case. 62.4% OculusWaitForGPU (7.3ms) versus 21.9% Camera Render (2.56ms). There are spikes that go much higher than that (~75% 18ms) OculusWaitForGPU.

Just now when I ran it in 0f2 to get these numbers, it ran at 75-80 fps. I'm not sure what the numbers were when it was only running 40-50 fps earlier. I have not seen it go clear down to 10 fps like vvander though.

Head tracking stutters: I have a sneaking suspicion that the little stutters in head tracking are coming from those spikes up to ~18ms in the OculusWaitForGPU. The stutters look identical to what you get when the frame rate drops to 37 very briefly. If I had to guess I'd say the long pauses during those spikes are goofing up the time warping so you see the display jump and then snap back when your head is panning. Don't really know though.

 

Here's a grab. Full size version here: http://www.performancesimulations.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/profiler1.png




Ignore the huge plateau in the beginning, that's caused by something dumb I do with particles at the beginning of the scene that I need to fix yet.

The rest of the graph where the values are lower with periodic spikes is more typical. Take away the spikes and that data point shown here would be a normal frame. I'm not sure if the head tracking stutters correspond to the spikes because I can't watch the Rift and the profiler at the same time.

Anyway, most of the time indeed is spent in that OculusWaitForGPU function which is taking two or three times as long as the rendering in a "no spike" case. I saw that in 0f1 too, so I don't know that this is really new to 0f2.

 

Come to think of it, somewhere in the middle of all this I deleted a bunch of thick grass. I might have done that when the 0f2 results were really slow which would explain why I'm back up to 75-80 fps on that last test. 0f1 didn't have problems running it with the thick grass (aside from the head tracking stutters and spikes), but 0f2 couldn't handle it.

 

Which info are you asking for, exactly? The rendering section with batches and SetPass calls and so forth?

If memory serves me correctly, batches during these tests were in the neighborhood of 800-1000 with about 100 saved by batching. If you want something else, let me know what data and where to find it and I'll try this again.

 

I apologize for the late response, I've been on vacation. Thanks for this explanation, that definitely makes more sense than CPU rendering while in VR mode. Don't have my DK2 to test right now, but my suspicion is that the maximize on play option will only help a little. I am also experiencing the stutter that Todd mentioned, but it's hard to say if that's a framerate issue since I can't even get high enough fps in an empty scene with just a cube to even test it comfortably - regardless of whether it's in the editor or a build.

The last thing I tested before the vacation was whether f2 was going to help or not, and I can echo Todd's report that it does not at all. My expectations were that the fps would drop to 25% of non-VR mode at the max (~50% for 2x rendering with some extra headroom for the Oculus SDK), but I couldn't even achieve that low benchmark. It's not just unusable for an end user, it's impossible to develop with the VR performance as it is for me right now (hence the vacation).

If UT wants to release 5.1 soon, you're going to have to fix this issue or push native VR to 5.2 :-/ Total showstopper for VR dev at the moment.

I'm happy to provide any additional info you guys need to fix this - just let me know.

 

I've also had the flickering (mostly one eye) going on really badly. The Rift isn't usable really with f1 or f2 for me because of it.

 

That makes sense, Ed. Thanks for the excellent explanation.

I'm in the middle of other stuff right now, but when I get time to run the Rift again on it, I'll report GPU info as you've described.