Profiler memory size issues in Editor (2018 LTS)

Hi,
If your Textures are Read/Write enabled in the import settings, they will be in memory twice. At least on most platforms, though there might be exceptions.
The reason for this is, that the memory needs to be in CPU accessible RAM for reading or writing to it. Once a modification is made, the changed data is then uploaded to the GPU. Showing it as consuming double it's size in memory is therefore accurate.

The Profiler can't really guess what you are planing to do with the data on the device and there are other device and platform specific implications that are maybe not that easy to foresee either (e.g. 64bit vs 32bit). When optimizing, performance related data should always be verified on a built players running on target devices, nothing else can be totally accurate. Profiling in the Editor should be considered as a clutch for a faster iteration cycle while optimizing.

That said, we can try to give more hints about this in the tooling and maybe provide a more fuzzy "preview it as it would be on device" kind of view but I'm not sure how I'd prioritize that over making the data we have right now more actionable and the connection to devices more stable.

Maybe if you could describe the problem you are trying to solve or that you would want us to help you solve in more detail, I could put this onto our roadmap. What would you expect the Memory Profiler to know about the final build data and why? Would you be comfortable to see guesstimated data in the tools for this purpose? Is it just texture data or also model/mesh data, animation data, sound... what other data would you expect to have displayed as such?

 

Also please note that we have a Subforum for our Preview Profiler Packages (Memory Profiler and Profile Analyzer) in the Beta & Experimental Subfroum. I know, it's a bit hidden

 

Please note, that that should not be the general case. If the Import settings have read/write enabled, it should to my knowledge take double the memory on ... most platforms?
Just out of curiosity, do you happen to have different import settings per platform? And what platform did you profile?

 

ok, thank you for clarifying

One more thing you could maybe help clarify for me: Are those textures sprites or sprite atlases?

 

right, there might be something on the Editor side that needs to keep them read enabled, e.g. the Editor Process in which the Playmode player is running, Inspectors or other tools. I'll add it to the list of things to investigate if we can figure out why it is read/write enabled (the likely reason for this). I asked about Sprite sheets because those are actually twice in memory when profiling in the editor, but iirc as two separate assets, the editor one and the "built/packed" one.

So, the general advice still holds, profiling in the Editor is always to be taken with a grain of salt, because the playmode player is not cleanly isolated from the Editor process.