SpeedTree Instancing

I read in the beta notes that SpeedTree instancing is now fixed/included?

I have downloaded the 5.5 beta and pulled in the accompanying standard SpeedTree assets however I am not seeing the instancing working.

The frame debugger shows a few calls to DrawMesh(Instanced) in the Depth Pass, however in the forward render step all the meshes are drawn using DrawMesh.

Is this a bug? Am I using the wrong tree assets?

 

I'm getting slightly worse performance with instanced Speedtrees in 5.5b7 vs non-instanced in 5.4.1. And all tree renderers have light probes switched off. The trees are placed on the terrain in a traditional way. Am I missing something?

My stats are below. I tested on two computers (a 2014 iMac and a 2013 MacBook Air), both showing lower performance with instanced trees. Others seem to be having similar results with instancing on various hardware: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/free-critias-speedtree-grass-system.433219/

iMac (screenshots from this one)
4 GHz Intel Core i7
AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB

Macbook Air
1.7 GHz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Integrated Graphics 5000 1536 MB

Non-instance - Unity 5.4.1


Instanced - Unity 5.5b7

 

Just to check, did you turn off "bake tree light probes" in your terrain?

Also, I'm digging the art style here.

 

I did not have it unchecked, but I just did another build with it off. No change.

And glad you like it! http://thousandthreadsgame.com if you're interested.

 

What is the status on this?

I'm thinking of upgrading a project of mine to 5.4 or 5.5 simply because I would like to use instanced SpeedTrees. But if the performance is the same or even worse, obviously there would be no point.

Does anyone have information on this? Thanks.

 

I actually got it to work. I needed to regenerate the materials on each SpeedTree for it to work. Got about 5fps increase on a MacBook Air.

 

Interesting, glad to hear that. Maybe I'll give it a shot then.