Question PhysX Visual Debugger on latest 2021.2 alpha

I noticed this on 2021.2.0a14 release notes:

I'm curious how do we trigger the PVD connection now from Unity's side and is there specific PVD version we should use for this? I tried this with PVD 3.2021 but I couldn't see any obvious way to connect it to Unity editor.

@yant any chance you could give some more info on this?

 

I was surfing the internet, do not know if it related but found this:

https://subscription.packtpub.com/b...h10lvl1sec52/physx-visual-debugger-pvd-basics

 

@AlanMattano oh I know how to use PVD, I've used it with Unreal and Cryengine in past. But to interface with PVD you have to enable the connection via code and you often need to hook in specific PVD version for it to work well (altho we know Unity has PhysX 4.1 so PVD compatible with it should do). Even if you have supported PVD version, there can be oddities on certain versions and it may be preferred to use some earlier version that works nicer on your combo.

What I'm asking here now is more like, how to actually connect the PVD from Unity side and what is the recommended PVD version that is known to work with it. Since Unity is handling the PVD connection already, we need to trigger that somehow (or if it's done automatically, would love to know further details on it).

 

Oh, and I just got my hopes up :/ PVD is priceless for debugging weird physics glitches. You can't playback the whole physics scene with built-in physics debugger frame by frame later..

Is there some good reason why PVD access isn't even allowed for us developers? I mean you already run special build of PhysX anyway with Unity. If the binary size is a concern, it could even be development build + editor only thing. Other mentioned engines let us hook PVD via simple command.

 

Why would you need two? I mean, in editor the extra physx library for PVD isn't that big that it would cause issues for people. Normally you'd just have it included and only use it once user demands it, making it invisible for people who don't need it. Extra size caused by PVD lib is negilible for anything but mobile players.

I know PVD can sometimes be crash happy (and resource hungry) but when setup properly, it's super handy. I can imagine Mac support being pain, I've only ever used it on Windows. I don't know how Unity has implemented PVD connection but for example in CryPhysX they even synced main camera to it, so when you play back the physics on PVD, it can even follow your game view there.

I can code all similar functionality in Unity myself but it just takes a long time and feels frankly silly when there's already tool out there that does all this

 

I'd love to see this one happen

 

Ah yes, I completely forgot about that, it's not there if you use release build:
"PVD integration is enabled in the debug, checked and profiling configurations of the SDK", basically on every other option but release conf.