Performance going downhill with latest versions of Unity, Post Processing and SRP

Even I had the same performance issue. When post-processing was enabled, the frame rates would drop to 15 or 20 but without post-processing, it runs smoothly. My phone is POCO F1 with snapdragon 845 processor with 8gb of ram and Adreno 630 gpu but still, receive such a huge frame loss.

 

I am experiencing this issue with an iPhone 11 Pro Max. A blank scene and simply enabling post processing without any effects causes a big performance hit. It looks like I’m going to have to downgrade to the built in renderer as it’s too risky developing with URP at the moment. It’s a pity because shader graph and vfx graph are nice additions and it’s worrying building on a system that will soon lose support.

 

I use the built in renderer with post processing stack 2 on mobile and it works well.

 

Have Unity Technologies ever confirmed that they're aware of that performance difference and hopefully work on a fix? Would be a shame if the new tech is slower than the old and they're not aware.

 

Yes they did and they consider that a performance regression is considired as a critical bug.

 

They've confirmed, even in this thread. Other threads too. And it seems that each time they look at this case, each time it's a different kind of problem or a series of problems. It's either Render Pipeline issue, PostProcessing issue, overall engine perf. issue, low-end mobile issue or all of this combined.
All in all, a proper fix doesn't seem to exist. There might be small fixes here and there that MIGHT improve the situation a little in some rare cases, but they're far far away. This thread is what... almost 6 months old and there's nothing on the radar.

 

It's definitely not a low end mobile issue as the problems are very noticeable on iPhone 8 and 11.

 

All that doesn't seem to match with the previous "performance regression is considered as a critical bug" post.

@quixotic @phil_lira Mind to give us an update on this? Is there anything you need from us to make progress here?

 

From what i see with pipelines they upped the complexity exponentially, so i suppose at this point is also very hard for them to address anything, plus the cores are defined so would be hard to do so big changes without completly breaking everything.

At this point i just wish they abandoned the pipelines and focused on extending standard more, with srp the performance is worse, in hdrp much much worse and complexity is worse, urp features worse than standard, all things so far are worse or much slower.

I still cant understand the point of the srp system for indie development, as noone would make a custom srp and be cutoff from most assets to use.

I just hope they never go ahead with the plan to depreciate the standard pipeline, as that would be a general disaster and a huge step back, or the last step forward in the cliff edge.

 

This point of view is EXACTLY what I had in mind. SRP, on surface is a great idea, but when it comes to the execution and actually using it to its fullest, I don't think there will be too many devs customizing the rendering pipeline.. Even for the bigger companies.

What I think Unity should have done, was to polish what they had at around 5.x or even 2017, and then just start from scratch and create Next Unity (brand new) all together.

 

In 5.x days, everybody wants their own rendering. The Lab Renderer, Daydreams, Alloy(basically a custom rendering), in-house solutions for realtime gi and so one. What happens now?

 

So... Then URP is no option for mobile devices... that is sad. Should I stick with built-in render and ppv2? or even ppv1?

 

It's somewhat usable on mobile, depending on what type of project you are working on.
However, its not looking promising, fixes are slow, documentation is poor, lots of shader confusion, performance doesn't appear to be much better at all.

With that said, SRPs are meant to be the future of Unity, but really who knows, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if they suddenly threw out SRPs for some new preview BS that will be just as incomplete.

 

Maybe it's time to make community mobile rendering pipeline?(and get 4 incompatible pipelines)

 

Unity have to change their mind ...

CALL OF DUTY Mobile was built with unity ...
you can run it on Android 5.1+ phones ...
for example you can run it on Samsung J6+ [Adreno 308 - 3GB of RAM] smoothly or similar phones ...

so, we needs URP pipeline that render and handle massive crowds in dense jungles, more powerful, more performance and smoother than built-in pipeline on cheaper GPUS ...
cheap Adreno and Mali gpus ...

its huge disappointment for Unity for now :[

P.S: some unity guys had mentioned that Adreno 500 series and below are very cheap gpus!!

 

Every since I started working with URP/LWRP I've noticed that when light is fully baked there's almost no performance difference between URP and standard but URP is still far behind from complete pipeline with missing but critical feature like lack of real-time point light shadow which is in research for more than 2 years.
Getting the lighting on par with built-in pipeline is a hard but doable.

And what is the point of having SRP as package if it's tied to specific version of the engine
5.x - Unity 2019.1
6.x - Unity 2019.2
7.x - Unity 2019.3 and so on
Basically you are forcing people to upgrade if they need a fix or new feature and since every new Unity version is slower than the previous one it's make this process is even harder to follow and you don't know if the project will break after upgrade or will run slower.
Personally I still see SRP as a semi black box bc it's still heavily depends on c++ side of the engine that's why they're struggling to make progress in my opinion

 

I.. really didnt mind when unity wanted to develop srp. I mean i had to give them a chance to do something new, and from the sound of it, it seemed pretty decent. But the problem is ... the transition is taking Way toooo long.... i think srp stuff was happening like in 2017 right? I cant even remember anymore... that is how long this sega was going on for.. during this time, it had been very grim and dark days, uncertainty all over the places, news about legacy getting deprecated.. and the worst part is nobody seems to know or be confident in when this will be over... i heard that urp's goal is to be par with legacy rendering features.. and that is the goal after all these years? I dont know man... maybe when urp is "finished" then it could be better than legacy, but wow.. man.. this is taking way toooo long.

 

After all this time though is still slower and with less features, thus at this point is more like a wild dream that will get to the point to stand against the standard pipeline, which is also vastly easier to develop for.

All in all Unity has lost its way in all ways possible, making it an impossible task for Indie developers to make a game, seems like a new engine at this point where anything can happen in terms of how things will be in future and all the problems of a young engine.

 

I wish unity just keeps legacy and develop a new unity while giving supports to the current one...

 

Removing legacy at this point would be like a suicide imo, the SRPs are just worse in many ways so far, i hope they get better as i have invested a huge amount of time developing for them, but i am not optimistic.

 

I am not optimistic either, Unity's communication about all this has been sub par as well, so who knows whats going to happen, for all we know they think the SRPs are in a great state.

 

SRP batching does not even work with Unity's own default Sprite Shader...

 

Reminder that its been 6 months since this bug report was opened and acknowledged by Unity.

https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...v2-slash-universal-rp-slash-built-in-renderer

Can we get an update?

 

It runs smoothly because it's made with Unity 5.6.4p4.

 

so, we have to rollback to UNITY 5 !! XD

 

2019 + custom SRP can be silky smooth too.

 

Too bad we don't have another battle royale made with Unity 2019+ and custom SRP to test that theory, but we have @Peter77 's threads showing that you would start with a handicap since baseline frametime has basically increased with each new Unity version.

 

More important than ever, since you're marketing it as "Performant Post Processing". Otherwise I want may money back

Spoiler

 

I am even thinking.. that since current URP postprocessing is not even feature parity with pp1 or pp2, I don't even think it is fair to give accurate performance review.. still no ssao.. or bloom has less performance options available.

 

yeah ...
its horrible truth !! :]

 

From my experience, post processing effects like bloom were never an option on mobile devices, regardless of Unity version or render pipeline. There are devices out there with close to 4k dislays and mediocre cpus that would be turned into portable grills.
But there are developers who came up with their own solutions and it wpuld be nice to have some ultra-lightweight options in URP.

 

2018.4 + PPv1 works fine, 60fps on a low-end mobile device.
URP + PPv3 barely reaches 30fps.

 

Im tested on Unity 2019.4 with LWRP:
Lastest LWRP with post processing (bloom + color + vv..) is x2 performance compared to URP, > 6x fps on samsung s7, but you cant use unity light2d.
I achieved> 60 fps on a mobile samsung s7 with LWRP and some 3d lights, and it works with tile map as well as sprite renderer, just set z position = -2.5, but you cant get shadows.

 

So basically Unity tried to create a modular, flexible and easy renderer which could be extended, rewritten and tweaked, but they made it monolithic, rigid and with a lot of workarounds on top.

It can't be tweaked because you'll have to keep your tweaks with upstream and you will loose a lot of functionality like ShaderGraph support, it can't be rewritten, because URP and HDRP are hardcoded to SG and other tools. It can't be extended for the same reasons. Or can be, if you have a dedicated graphics programmers who will do all the groundwork. Ah! And it also has no compatibility between HDRP and URP (and whatever you'll write).

For me the SRP is the biggest fiasco Unity had ever had. It clearly a poorly designed system which made a lot of stuff worse. Yup, I do see some people who enjoyed the SRP, for example the guys who are making the Recompile game. But come on, they are strong graphics programmers and they have a lot of experience and time to work with all that systems.

And here we are, people who are struggling since 2018 not with creating games and solving actual problems, but fighting with the engine.

I had a terrible experience with LWRP on mobile (with the same low-end devices, I have some posts about that), then I had the same terrible experience after almost a year with URP. And almost after the year you still have the same problems which Unity ignores. Yes, they always tell you to send bugreports, and that if URP performs worse than built-in, it's considered a critical bug and you have to send them the report so they will fix it. Nah, they won't.

Also, I don't post here too much nowadays. I finally got rid of Unity and currently don't want to return (using the other engines, godot for 2d and UE4 for 3d). But I feel bad for the tech I used for more than 4 years. And I feel bad for you guys. Unity forums lost a lot of good people with comprehensive feedback in a last few years already. And mostly because Unity just pretend that they are really listening and do care.

Hope something will change in a good way and Unity will start making the right decisions. But for me -- I just lost all the hope. SRP literally killed Unity for me.

P.S. @BattleAngelAlita you are being so ignorant and passive aggressive all the time when people give valid criticism to Unity. Now, when I don't need the forum, I can say it to you. You are the type of person I can't stand, and I was reading your posts for a long time and keeping all my thoughts for myself. But everything you post here is a nonsensical defense of Unity decisions or attempt to mock other people. Like URP is not for a low-end devices, or suggestion to write their own SRP if they don't like URP. Stop posting that crap to people who actually care about the engine. Go away if you have nothing good or valid to say (and clearly most of the times you don't).

 

I think SRP was a good idea at first, but over the time, I feel like the majority of users of Unity could not actually utilize SRP's greatest strength, which is a customize-able rendering pipeline. Instead, SRP alienated a lot of good stuff happening at Asset Store in regarding to the rendering plugins which in my honest opinion the other greatest strength of Unity. Now, I don't feel SRP special anymore compared to the legacy rendering, in fact, it just feels like a ... downgraded version of it. But there is no turning back now... I just hope this SRP sega be over really soon. The worst feeling is that it is not going to happen any time soon. ( soon as how I would like it to )

 

Maybe URP is going to be feature parity with legacy by the end of next year. So like at 2021.2. That's probably more than 5 years ( if I remember correctly ) with all this... and are we going to feel like URP is revolutionary better than legacy? If we had such a hope, then we would not feel so grim. I keep crying over this, because I matter of fact, do love Unity for what it was. And I still do care it to succeed.

 

Out of the box on PC, I get 350fps on a mid-range PC with URP, 300fps with builtin, for the same topdown scene.

Low-end PC (920m) 41 fps URP vs 30fps builtin.

This is 2020.1.12b

Materials conversion is working fine but any custom materials being broken is a slight problem. Hopefully we will see old assets with custom shaders being recreated for shadergraph en-masse.

 

Is the scene using point light shadows ?

 

In my eyes the main issues are the following:

1. Features, if URP is going to be labeled as production ready, and has been in development for many years, at the very least it should have feature parity. The new features do not make up for missing features that we previously had in Built In. It is very frustrating for users to upgrade to URP to find out certain things aren't supported, especially when it isn't stated anywhere... (cough, SpeedTree). Not to mention no faith those missing features will be added in any timely matter.

2. Performance, clearly a big portion of users are having performance issues, including myself and this is not solely user error. URP was not meant to be slower and if it was we have been told to file a bug report, the only thing is, the bug reports keep being filed, but the fixes never come.

3. Communication, I am sure 99% of URP users would agree it is in a worse state overall compared to Built In, thus I believe we deserve more acknowledgement & communication on that front from Unity.

4. Rate of updates / features, why are solo Asset Store developers able to release missing features of URP quicker than the Unity team themselves? It feels as if there is only like 2 employees at Unity working on URP.

5. QA team. I near convinced they don't even have one. Again, somehow solo Asset Store developers do better QA than Unity.

I could be wrong, however I have an itch that a lot of this has to do with the internal structure at Unity, it feels as if the URP team (a few graphics programmers) who have been at Unity a long time, pretty much make most of the decisions do not have any sort of strong leadership / seniors & are overly confident in URP / themselves. Whoever is in charge of URP, pass the torch, please!

Cheers

 

I'll admit that it is not a scientific comparison, it was just for my own purposes.

Rebuilt with pointlight shadows disabled in Builtin, gives 350fps, but 400fps with the same URP build. (So something on my PC was bottlenecking the test before)

In-editor FPS test is very inaccurate particularly when you are in the hundreds of FPS.

But for low-mid range PC, URP is notably better performance.

The main concern for me is that I want to simplify eventual Switch porting. If that means going with URP now, with some of its known limitations, but also better performance on PC, thats acceptable. This is just my guess but I would hope that Unity has built URP with Switch capabilities in mind.

 

Can you let us know which builtin rendering pipeline you have tested it with? Forward or Deferred?

 

6 months is typical for Unity, which is why reporting bugs is kinda pointless.

 

Feel like after UE5 launched, investors abandoned Unity, so they no longer have money to pay their employees to fix problems.

 

Be less internet.

 

But if you don't report the bug, it never gets fixed. So it's six months vs infinity

 

I actually don't want Unity to try and beat Unreal for the 3D features and goodness. When you create a game, budget matters and if you are trying to get to UE5 quality, cost for actually creating assets is very high. And even if HDRP can come somewhere close to UE5 in the future, most of the Unity developers won't be using HDRP, because if one has budget to do such project, one may just go with UE5 instead. Unity needs to play with their own playground and serve its majority customers to its fullest first.

 

Quick reminder to keep this thread "Performance going downhill" rather than "Unity vs Unreal". Because I don't want to get this thread closed, the performance issue is too important for me

 

Actually it's a reminder, you need to have competitors.

Agreee !

 

i just mention that this is UE TECH DEMO :]
not actual game with thousands of components!! scripts or etc ...
we don't know about what is PS5's SSD specs!! what is bandwidth?? and what is memory bandwidth??
or does this TECH DEMO run on actual PS5 or on IBM's quantum super computer?? XD
where is actual PS5 on that video????

by the way ... URP is S*** for mid mobiles :]