Official Samples

I understand that it is the first element in a given key of MultiHashMap, but it same entity won't be twice in different keys as they are a hash of position. But maybe I am still missing something.

I wish code had some comments explaining why everything is done as it is it would help.

 

Yes, it does not seem to make sense. The HashPositions job would have to add the same entity to the hashMap multiple times. Or at least the same index, so maybe the index is not unique? Actually I find several thousand boids, but indeices always seem to be in the hundreds. So I guess the index is not unique.

 

Okay, so the HashPositions job that originally fills the HashMap is a
IJobProcessComponentDataWithEntity, which uses chunk iteration. The indices it writes to the hashMap as values are chunk indices and therefore multiple entities have the same index. I think the naming of many signatures in ECS could be improved. The lack of documentation and comments does not help either XD

 

Is that normal to have poor performance in the samples ?

 

Out of interest, what is your hardware specs?

 

Do you have burst jobs enabled? What level do you have set for stack trace logging?

 

I occasionally get massive slowdowns through Semaphore.WaitForSignal. It often clears up on its own... sometimes without even restarting Unity or changing scenes.

There's a thread on it here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/extremely-slow-editor-in-2019-2-0a7.640354/#post-4318279

Sometimes it happens in editor. Sometimes it happens in a standalone build. I've experienced it on 2018.3 and 2019.1. The original author of the thread experienced it on 2019.2. It hasn't been a problem for me for a few days.

Long story short: If it's affecting you (and if it's the same problem) then you might be able to just reboot or wait and it'll run faster again.

A bug has been opened but I don't think Unity has been able to replicate it.

 

It was apparently "Burst Safety Check" the issue.
Weird things is that in the menu it was shown as disable. By toggle it twice, it seems to fixed the issue.
Some kind of a refresh issue apparently

Edit: Btw I'm running on 2019.1.0b6

 

I'm getting massive Semaphore.WaitForSignal on PS4 and Switch builds using 2019.1.0b9. I've tried playing around with Burst settings as suggested, but that made no difference at all.

What did help me was to uncheck Development Build on the build settings; on Switch this made our current builds go from 28fps to 48fps. Of course there's more to it than just the WaitForSignal thing, but I don't recall having such a performance improvement by just unchecking it.

We do lose the ability to profile and debug builds, but it's useful as a workaround.

 

Same problem with Semaphore.WaitForSignal here, too.

 

Created a test scene -

Using GPU Instancing on grass (Which is placed individually, using the same material).
Sometimes I find myself not seeing GFX.Waitforpresent at all, in really empty scenes, though. Vsync is disabled, also via Geforce settings.

2019.2.0b1


Grass enabled:




Grass disabled:

 

With gpu profiling turned on, the render thread usage and gpu usage is suddenly really high, which seems to be the correct data, compared to before. Weird.


Edit:
There seems to a lot really wrong. These gpu rates weren't that high with same scene setups and tests before 2019.1, the drae call rates are sometimes off, the render usage rate isn't right until using the gpu profiler, and Semaphore.waitforsignal causes higher cpu usage because the gpu usage is high, with a nearly linear increase... soo, always higher cpu usage, it serms like.


Edit 2:
It's all running with way less problems and much faster in 2018.3 (14f1)

Edit 3:

Also, 2018.3 is not causing the TAA artifacts / frame smoothing, the editor is much faster (also, occlusion baking is faster and there are not the GI baking problems I had with 2019.1+ (Where baking took really long and sometimes GI wouldn't be displayed).


Edit 4: By the way, the problems with 2019.1 + were present in builds too, not just the semaphore.waitforsignal thing.

Edit 5: Okay, Gfx.WaitForPresent is still there in 2018.3(14f1), causing high cpu usage, but still, everything's running much faster and there are less editor problems.


Edit 6: I closed the profiler (GPU profiling was enabled, too) entirely, the fps rate is much higher in 2018.3(14.f1) now. And the render thread usage dropped from around 20ms to 5ms again. Similar to the time when I enabled gpu profiling in a newer unity version which showed that gpu usage wasn't at around 7ms, but 50-60ms (Also in the stats tab in game view)

Edit 7: Also, when having gpu profiling enabled, it can be seen that volumetric fog takes around 30ms in newer unity versions, and just about 3ms in 2018.3

Edit 8: Disabling gpu profiling sets the render thread usage way down.
Closing the profiler entirely sets render thread usage down to about 3ms from around 18 MS in a testscene (Similar to disabling the gpu profiler), and cpu usage way down, too, giving me over 100 fps in that certain testscene, to around 60 with the profiler opened. There are many inaccuracies using the profiler and testing inside the editor at all

 

Hello,

I am working on "modular game mechanics" (move/jump/shoot/...) using as much preview package as possible, including DOTS and the new input system.
You can find it here.

As you can guess the usual disclaimer is that it's all subject to changes, it has some issues that I'm discussing on the forum and it needs a bit more documentation (WIP).

Still I hope it can be of some value to anyone.

 

I'm also getting consistently poor performance over time with ECS and especially with the HelloCubes. Related thread:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-dropping-over-time-in-hellocube-08.682576/

However when just doing Jobs + Burst on regular Objects of Game, I get no decrease in performance over time no matter how much I have thrown at it for my tests so far. I wonder why.

 

Very great. I shall await the proceedings of this. :3c

 

its been almost a month since the sample stuff has been updated, and I've been left in the dust with ECS and im struggling to update my code. could anyone direct me to some up to date samples / documentation?

 

One month is actually not long at all.
You can use earlier stable release for now, which is compatible with samples.

 

Looking for ECS samples and tutorials? This is a good series by Code Monkey :

 

Where can i get the "Twin Stick Shooter" demo or url?
I got nothing about it on the top...
THX.

 

Current samples
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/tree/master/Samples
Throwing error
Library\PackageCache\com.unity.burst@1.0.4\Editor\BurstAotCompiler.cs(638,32): error CS7036: There is no argument given that corresponds to the required formal parameter 'exceptionType' of 'BuildReport.AddMessage(LogType, string, string)'
during importing into Unity 2918.2.0b10
I haven't tried load other burst preview yet.

Edit:
Upgrading to burst preview 1.1.1, seams resolves matter.

 

Testing Physics samples. Other samples including boids work well.

Spoiler

But somehow Physics NonUniformScale sample is extremely slow / laggy for me.
Any reason for that?

 

The samples here have not been updated for a while. 2 months on the latest. Is this still a good place for reference?

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples

 

I am waiting for this...

 

SoonTM

 

@MartinGram
@Joachim_Ante
Just to let know, in ReleaseNotes, Samples Version 30
https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...18c4c2e9bf114d0c50/ECSSamples/ReleaseNotes.md
3rd bullet point, link to docks is broken.

https://github.com/Unity-Technologi.../ECSSamples/Documentation/entities_foreach.md

 

When will DOTS sample come? I means the one that come with third person controller and DOTS animation.

 

Also interested in this, its been a long wait...

 

I think it will come soon after 2019.3 will be released.

 

Hey everyone, We just made a "Star Wars" like demo using ECS + ML Agents + VFX + ShaderGraph, a Unity 2019.3f one stop solution.
Great thanks to Unity Boids Sample!
Hope you like it!
Making Neural Networks with VS Tool tutorial will be released soon, about one week after VS tool Drop6.

 

Really nice video. Thank you for sharing.
Did you face any additional challenges, using current URP? Or did it work pretty much out of the box (Shader Graph)?

Do you plan implement each boids spaceship, to shoot as well at the target?

 

Really impressive use of ML agents. Would love you guys to write a guide/article/tutorial on the general workflow you did to get to this stage.

 

That's a long story.
I came along with bugs everyday. Such as:
1. you cannot install ShaderGraph7.1.6 and VFX7.1.6 together in Unity2019.3f, they are conflict with each other. I installed VFX7.1.5 instead, but it seems VFX7.1.5 cannot save your VFX file correctly. You need to leave VFX graph open when you press play button, otherwise some effects will not work correctly.
2. cannnot find namespace MLAgents sometimes, and cannot find MLAgents in the reference list of AssetBundle.
3. Unity 2019.3b is only stable on Windows Family Edition, in some other Windows system environments I cannot even open Unity.（most of my works are done in 2019.3b environment）

Below is a reference list of background knowledge for implementing such kind of project:
1. Machine Learning: Neural Network(TensorFlow, RESNET), Deep Learning, Reinforcement Learning(SAC/PPO). Python base.
2. ML Agents: Hyperparameter adjustments, Feature Engineering, Imitation Learning.
3. Singleton class: NativeContainer that can pass data across Monobehaviour world and ECS world.
4. ECS: Boids Sample, which tells you tipical workflow of jobcomponentsystem.
5. Shader Graph: GPU way of manipulating data,Computer Vision knowledge base.
6. VFX: Coordinate transformation such as World-to-Local and Local-to-World transformation.

It took me several weeks from ground zero to this demo, I'm afraid I don't have enough time to re-implement it and make a tutorial, sorry.

 

Thats fair enough, that info is good enough!

 

@wilson_p thank you, for taking time.
This is good inside anyway.
Thx for letting us know, the challenges with Shader Graphs and VFX. Do you think current Unity 2020.1a could resolve of some issues? Weather they have been fixed? Did you report such bugs to Unity?

 

I belive Unity will get better and more powerful, that's why I choose Unity instead of any other engine.

 

Maybe a silly question, but I just watched the Pong-video DOTS-example, and is it so that the scripts taking from the JobComponentSystem (like PaddleMovementSystem) do not need a reference in the scene hierarchy to run, or did I miss something?

 

I didn't watch that yet, but the Job systems do run, without any prompting or game objects controlling them from a scene.

The job systems run when the game runs, so you may want to keep that in mind, as jobs will look for work on any loaded scene. So things may happen, or errors come up, if you forget that all systems are running in every scene.

Good Luck Have Fun!
Micah

 

Thank you for answering.

However, this is a little bit concerning if you have large projects and need to control which jobs should be running as to not have a processing overload, or if you just miss a folder of jobs running. What steps can be taken to address this?

 

You are confusing jobs and systems. Jobs are scheduled from systems. If a system doesn't schedule a job, the job doesn't run. Systems get run from ComponentSystemGroups in a hierarchical fashion where the root systems are injected as delegates into a player loop. You can turn on and off systems with the Enabled property. And you can turn on and off a whole group of systems using the property of the ComponentSystemGroup.

 

Great comment!

Just be sure @Nyanpas that you do not have work for jobs, and if you are writing your systems right, they should not find work, and so not have any overhead... well very little.

Like Dreaming said, you can also fully disable the system/s.

 

Is anyone was/is able to run successfully compound demo in Unity 2020.1a ?

EntityComponentSystemSamples/UnityPhysicsSamples/Assets/Tests/Compound/
https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...ter/UnityPhysicsSamples/Assets/Tests/Compound

I used the extract from samples and I can manage to create single dynamic body, like BoxCollider and manipulate with it in 2020.1a.
But if I try using CompoundCollider, raycast throws range of errors, basically saying
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
It works no problem in 2019.3.

On side note:
Opening git samples in 2020.1a also throws range of errors on its own.

 

Is there any sample which shows how to give an object a compound collider that has a body for the object and a sphere trigger collider to see what around a certain area of the object?

 

Hey there,
I went through the samples to learn the new ECS system (I'm new to Unity, but did already some tutorials).

Sample 6 "SpawnAndRemove" says in the Readme:

and

But these red parts are missing in the example.
So I used it as exercise for myself but can't get it done.
My idea was, to create a new system, which will create new entities after lifetime is expired with 3 components, one for the time when it should be created, one for the position and the other one for the prefab.. and they should be green

1. The prefab for the red cubes was given via gui to the MonoBehaviour (From data).
   Since we destroy the spawner entity with the prefab, how can I create a new Prefab via code (From code)?
2. How can I make the new Prefab green?
   I tried this in a system (a cube should get green, as soon lifetime < 5):
   
   Code (CSharp):

   1. Entities.ForEach((Entity entity, int nativeThreadIndex, in RenderMesh render, in LifeTime lifetime, ...) => {
   2. if (lifetime < 5.0f) {
   3. render.material.color = Color.green;
   4. commandBuffer.AddSharedComponent(nativeThreadIndex, entity, render);
   5. }
   6. }
   The lifetime is random for each cube.
   But the downside is, that as soon as the first cube's lifetime gets smaller 5, all other cubes become green.
   Also the burst-compiler cannot be used, because RenderMesh is a shared component -> I guess this also explains the problem I have.. its "shared".

Would be nice if someone could finish this example & post it here, or at least answer my questions
Thanks!!

 

I can't open EntityComponentSystemSamples\ECSSamples by Unity2019.4.
I cann't open another tech demo AngryBots_ECS too. I think these are same problem, but I don't know how to resovle it. I guess the all lower version DOTS projects cann't open by Unity2019.4.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...rrors-when-open-it-by-unity2019-4-1f1.918941/

 

I can open it by Unity2019.3.15 or Unity2020 without any errors

 

hi
when I build EntityComponentSystemSamples/tree/master/UnityPhysicsSamples/Assets/Demos/6.UseCases/RaycastCar from these samples: Sample projects for the Entity Component System and C# Job System for pc. the car moves very very faster than when I run in unity editor
What is the cause of this problem?

 

Physics is running in update right now. Enable vsync or force to target frame rate

 

Is this also related to the suspension being compacted by default?

 

Is the dataflowgraph documentation anywhere here?