Official Now Available - Native Apple Silicon Editor Preview Builds

Thanks. I think I'll upgrade to 2021 eventually so this is a good enough workaround for now.

 

Hi Everyone, thinking of getting M1 Pro or M1 Max Macbook Pro, but i'm afraid it will interrupt my workflow due to compatibility of plugins, unity editor crashes, etc.
Does any use Macbook Pro M1 Pro / M1 Max and happy with deploying games to App Store and Play Store?

 

Give me a few days and I can tell you if a release build is working.

As of now I am getting some weird errors in the silicon 2021 Editor (Errors when opening scenes, textures being messed up despite working perfectly on other machines, ...). Though I admit I still have to do some digging and it's a big project. So maybe all of them are solvable.

For now I have reverted back to a pretty messy workflow:
1) Export the iOS project on Windows.
2) Copy to Mac
3) Then patch it (CocoaPods, ...) in xCode and build.
It works. But it's a real pain and basically I don't use Unity at all on my M1.

Update: Dev builds are working for me. My errors have mainly been a result of copying the project from Win to Mac and upgrading from 2020 to 2021. Some quirky things still remain, like if the texture compression is set to quality 0 then that will mess up your textures (white get's black, random colors appearing, ...) and but other than that it's working fine.

Would be interested too if someone is using the silicon Editor for making release builds?
Coming back to your question: better get and intel and be on the safe side.

 

@Tautvydas-Zilys Any updates on the NDK issue from the Android team?

Bug report case id: 1392400

https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...-studio-build-ndk-error.1219437/#post-8024705

Thanks.

 

Apple silicon supports on tile memory access in GPU, but the UNITY_FRAMEBUFFER_FETCH_AVAILABLE flag doesn't set correctly. It causes error on NativeRenderPass API, the shader macro fall back to normal MRT fetch.
If you set UNITY_FRAMEBUFFER_FETCH_AVAILABLE manually, you can fetch from NativeRenderPass attachments.

 

How is the performance of Unity Editor using Rosetta? And once compiled to Xcode, i guess we dont need to use Rosetta to build to IOS?

im using 2019.4.37f. Unable to use non lts version due to game is live in both play store and app store

 

There's a couple issues with Rosetta, mainly that debugging doesn't quite work and I had the editor hang on me several times. Having said that, there are a bunch of issues with the Silicon version - Editor text fields stop accepting input, random hangings - random GPU errors reported at run time, etc.. Had the editor crash randomly. Also, and I'm not sure if this is for 2021.0.b15, as I upgraded from 2020) Inputfields (not TMPro) OnSubmit don't work and you need to use OnEnd. Also if you use any macos native plugins, they probably don't work on Silicon (e.g. PygmyMonkey's File Browser)

Is it faster... yes. Does it work.. kind of.

My finally recommendation is not to use the Silicon editor in the current state (2021.1.0b15), unless you need debugging to work via Visual Studio

 

Do you mean 2022.1.b015, which is the current 2022 beta? I'm finding the recent 2021 Apple Silicon versions pretty reliable (e.g. 2021.2.17f1). Occasional crashes (which nobody at Unity seems able to reproduce, nor are others reporting the same crash log) but quite workable.

 

I mentioned above that I'd report on my experiences with the Apple Studio Ultra.

I ordered it as soon as it came out, as a composer who does occasional video editing but mainly in respect of my Unity work. Video work – all FCP – is good but not spectacular (we're still waiting for the version of FCP which is optimised for the Ultra). Logic Pro buzzes along and I've nowhere reached its limits. However, the same can be said for the M1 Mac mini. I can run as many tracks and with as many plug-ins as I like on the £699 M1 Mac Mini, though RAM is an issue for large sample libraries and that issue disappears completely on the 64GB RAM Ultra.

For Unity, it has been a mixed bag. As predicted by others, the single threading speed is the same. RAM and SSD are fast but they don't make much difference on compilation. A test I like to run is a road surface made of 8,000 cubes with a rolling explosive force destroying the road. It stresses CPU for both for OverlapBox/OverlapSphere type of search and for the resulting physics.

Work is distributed well over all 16 Performance cores meaning I can get pretty good FPS (130+). I'm not into DOTS or GPU shaders so can't really comment on how well they perform. GPU usage is typically pretty low for my projects and that's, of course, a Unity architectural issue.

So, I've paid a lot for double Neural Net, which I'm barely using, for extra GPU cores which I am not using at all and I admit to having buyer's remorse. I've two days to decide whether to return it or keep it.

Final point - it's not silent. I'm so used to having totally silent machines that I find the permanently-running fans a distraction. Especially given I have Tinnitus with a Blue Noise profile and the fans at a Pink Noise profile. Just what I didn't need...

 

Am I the only one who's editor keeps randomly freezing up (spinning wheel of death)? It tends to happen very often when resizing (ex. maximising) the viewport/scene view.
I know vsync was causing issues when enabled in the game view, but this doesn't seem be the culprit.
It happens VERY often.

 

2021.2.17f1 seems pretty stable for me. Debugging is working and I have done a release which uses quite some plugins and third party SDKs (some pods too). The build got approved and is now available on the AppStore

 

@KevinWelton Now that Apple Silicon is part of LTS, will this thread be closed? It is, after all, under Betas and Experimental. Should we post future questions to the Editor thread in the main channel?

 

Yes it is LTS now; even though, editor fps performance is still so lagging. Is it already fixed in 2021.3 LTS?

 

I have a question that seems obvious but I can't find the answer online anywhere. My work is getting Apple M1 macs and they want our Unity framework to be built with arm64 for the simulator. When I build to the iOS Simulator using Unity 2021.3 LTS I still get libraries that are only x86_64. Shouldn't all the .a files contain both arm64 and x86_64 architectures?

 

What do you have in your Build Settings? Here is mine:



I commonly build Apple Silicon only versions for testing and it's fine...

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I want the Mac platform here because I'm building for the iOS Simulator?
In my Build Settings the platform is set to iOS. In Player settings Target Device is iPhone + iPad and Target SDK is Simulator SDK. When I look at the library files with lipo -info XXX.a I only see x86_64 architectures.
Edit: So I just realized M1 computers can run iOS apps because they have the same architecture. So the iOS Simulator is moot on M1 macs correct? Why do so many people talk about compiling for arm64-simulator then?

 

Dunno! I'd have to see the context. I mainly use the simulator for checking dimensions and resolution. As you now know, the simulator doesn't need specific hardware but, being a Mac developer, I can't say how it works on anything other than APple Intel or Apple Silicon.

 

Has the problem been solved？i have the same problem

 

Has the problem been solved？i have the same problem

 

Unity is still spawning Intel clang++ processes when building for Android on macOS.



I'm on Unity 2021.3.5f1 LTS (Apple Silicon editor) and Unity Hub v3.2.0 on an M1 Max MacBook Pro running macOS 12.4. I thought this issue had already been solved. Is there any new information?

 

Any updates on this? Very annoying issue..

I have the same issue since I switched to Silicon Unity 2022.1.x versions until now 2022.1.21f1 on M1 Pro 2021

Freeze happens around every 30 min and mostly after changing something in Inspector or exiting Play Mode. I get the impression it also has to do with how "fast" I work with the editor, although this sounds very weird (the faster I click around/use shortcuts, the more often Unity crashes as if it needs some "thinking time" in between interactions).

Editor Log shows this as last entry:
CAMetalLayer ignoring invalid setDrawableSize width=0.000000 height=0.000000

 

Funny, I felt the same way. I tend to switch rapidly between standard and maximised view. Doing so quickly, either in or after play mode will often cause the issue. But it’s likely just an “actions per minute” thing, thus likely to happen faster. For me, it occurs much more frequently than 30 mins, at times only a few minutes in.
It really is quite impossible to work in editor.

 

Same feeling here, but it does randomly. Like ok I exited the editor and now I'm going to Add a component to a GameObject - and when I click Add Component the wheel goes spinning. However for me the crashes are on average once per day.

Macbook Air M1, Unity 2021.3.6f1 Sillicon

 

I'm having the same issue here. I'm building for iOS simulator in a Silicon Mac. I can't get the simulator working on XCode, as it doesn't show any run destinations. Does it work for anyone or is it just bad settings from my side?

 

Hi @konsnos as Apple Silicon Mac can run iOS App, why do you need to run the build on a simulator ?

 

I want to test a build on devices I don't own, with OS versions I don't have.

 

I successfully tested my Unity game on iOS simulator on Apple Silicon.
By my experiment with Unity 2022.3.9f1 Intel and Apple Silicon versions, I found:
Unity 2022.3.9f1 doesn't support arm64 build for iOS simulator, but x86_64.

Thus, for testing a Unity game on iOS simulator on Apple Silicon, we have to use an x86_64 toolchain of Unity + Xcode + iOS simulator. The steps:
1. Install Unity 2022.3.9f1 Intel.
2. Use Unity 2022.3.9f1 Intel to export an iOS build xcodeproj.
3. Run Xcode in x86_64 mode by executing the following command in terminal
arch -x86_64 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode
4. Open the iOS build xcodeproj by the x86_64 mode Xcode.
5. Run debugging iOS simulator in the x86_64 mode Xcode!

Additionally, on Apple Silicon Mas, Unity 2022.3.9f1 Apple Silicon has a better performance than Intel. It can be used to build app packages for iOS devices. I recommend install both Unity Intel and Apple Silicon on your Macs. One is for simulation, and another is for development and release.