Graphics OpenGL core backend default change for OSX and Linux

In 5.3.0 beta 1, the default rendering backend on Linux and OSX became the new OpenGL core backend, which you may remember from http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/05/26/dx11-features-on-mobile

If you're shipping your game on Linux or Mac, please take the time to test against the new backend.
If there are any regressions we've missed, we want to know about them now, instead of after your game forums are clogged with angry users!

Please see the OpenGL Core Support doc in the preview post.

A typical issue you may encounter is when you use #pragma only_renderers gles opengl in your shaders. We will probably need to add glcore.

Future-you will thank you, and so will we!

(Posted on behalf of devs @Tak and Christophe)

 

oh man im SO excited for this. Mac guy here dying for these new features. I know we wont get Compute Shaders because "El Capitan" only upgraded to OpenGL 4.1, but we will, i imagine, get access to geometry / tesselation shaders. yaay!

one thing i couldn't gather from that blog post was whether reading and writing of 3d render targets will be available on OSX, currently its marked as DX11. will this be the case?

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/RenderTexture-isVolume.html

 

@Alex Lian @Tak
As per request:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/openglcore-shader-error-bug.367099/

 

@Alex Lian @Tak I get rendering issues when trying to open the editor even when on an empty project when using build 5.3.0.f1 . I have reported case 744741 with attached screenshot. I'm using a MBP 4,1 and hardware is reported in the case. Below is screenshot and it's also attached to the case.

 

I get Unity editor rendering problems with this version of 5.3, editor wide on all the system text

On my mcabook sometimes the captial letters disappear.
On my iMac, the font is completely broken.

Both are on Maverics 10.9.5

 

Hi, I submitted a bug report Case 741081 a couple of weeks back. I still havent got a reply though. I am using an iMac 5K and my editor has been experiencing severe and persistent lag in play mode ever since I installed the 5.3 beta over the 5.2.2 release. I tried moving a duplicate project to an iMac that was similar but not 5K and the project worked fine there. There might be an issue with the Unity 5.3 editor running on an iMac 5K?

 

Could you please try --force-opengl as well on the command line to see if that reverts behavior?

 

I tried --force-opengl on my macbook, editor is behaving, Game window produces visual errors.

Will try on the iMac later and update.

 

not sure if this helps:
the ATI Radeon HD 4670 iMac only goes up to OpenGL 3.3
my Macbook's graphics card also only supports up to 3.3

Full chart here:

https://developer.apple.com/opengl/capabilities/index.html

 

Tried --force-opengl on the iMac, no luck sadly. Looks like like this:

 

@Alex Lian
If I open Unity normally, the header text in the Unity Window states that it is running <OpenGL 4.1>. That has severe lag on my iMac 5K (Yosemite latest) but no lag on my iMac Retina (Yosemite latest).

If I run /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity -force-opengl from the Command Line, the Unity Window states that it is running <OpenGL 2.1 (deprecated)>. The lag on the iMac 5K is gone.

Hope this helps you resolve the bug. Thank you for the fix.

note : using --force-opengl did not work. -force-opengl as stated in the docs did.

 

I noticed that VSync is not honoured on a 2011 iMac running a Radeon 6xxx series GPU. In quality settings you can enable VSync, but in game FPS hovers around 80fps and has severe screen tear artifacts. Also setting VSync to every 2 (30fps), I get around 38fps with less screen tearing. This was not an issue with the old backend.

Issue affects Yosemite and El Capitan

Thanks

 

ok I tried -force-opengl instead of --force-opengl and the errors are gone.

 

Case 744741 is still an issue on the f2 build as part of the Apple TV beta. Forcing to legacy opengl is fine, but launching normally has rendering issues all over and the editor is unusable. Any update @Alex Lian , @Tak ?

 

Apple TV is on a separate branch, but unfortunately using same versioning.
So, that branch is not in sync with official mainline, so please re-compare the editor against official f2 build once released (hopefully today).

 

I have a project on the apple tv builds (and way too many editor versions installed already) but the the 3rd Apple TV 5.3 based build did clear this up for me and I no longer need to run the force opengl flag and it does say that it is using opengl 3.3. I assume that this build did roll in the changes.