Unity 5.3 Performance issues

@Martin_H
Thank you for your reply! I guess I will run into big problems then. Going to do testing on the device later and edit the results into this post here.

@Jaimi
Am I doing something wrong? I tried "open -force-opengl /Applications/Unity/Unity.app" in the Terminal, but it will tell me "open: invalid option -- o".

EDIT:
I tried to run the game on the device now to test performance, however Xcode doesn't like that too much:

A google search doesn't even show anything. I have no clue what's happening.
Going to the "Giving up" topic now.

 

There seems to be an issue in the il2cpp code generation. If you not getting errors in Unity, but in the built project only, it is very likely a bug. The il2cpp team is known to resolve issues very quickly with a reproduction in their hands.

 

Yea.. I was thinking about reporting, but it would probably take me at least about half a day to cut the project down to the problematic parts. I really don't want to upload my entire project and I don't have half a day or longer to report the problem. Also, some time ago when I ran into an il2cpp problem it took weeks if not months to be fixed. I will have to downgrade eventually. I am downgrading to 5.2.2 right now. I hope it won't break the project, because it seems to be taking much longer than expected. 5.2.2 had a slow Editor, but it's still better if I am going to be able to keep working at all.

EDIT:
One of my projects finished downgrading. Just to be able to compare, here is what the profiler looks like in 5.2.2:


Guess I have to buy some IAP-stuff from the Asset Store and work with a slow Editor then.

 

Sincere apologies for the problems being encountered. I can say that we hear you loud and clear, we're doing a lot about it and that while we fixed a lot of bugs in the past year we made some pretty bad mistakes where stuff got released that impacted more users negatively than it should have (and was preventable which is what makes it so frustrating).

We have thousands of automated tests we run on builds before release and we do unit tests, graphics test, integration tests, performance and regression tests. We do lots of manual QA too. While we just can't catch everything, we still see room for improvement here are are investing heavily at the moment to make this better in the coming months.

We believe the single best way to improve quality though is to get more people to try out the beta versions. From now on we'll start directly emailing customers and letting them know about the beta versions, what it contains and where to get it. We're also going to look at giving beta release notifications directly in the editor when a new beta is released.

The reason that this is important is that given any 30 day window there are hundreds of thousands of active Unity projects being developed across more than 20 platforms and it's simply not possible for us to catch everything, but the power of crowdsourcing will help us at least catch nasty stuff that just not acceptable.

 

It looks the same as UE4 pre releases, if it can help , why not.

 

Anyone else seeing huge CPU spikes showing up as BatchRenderer.Flush when particles are active on 5.3.1p1? Submitted a bug (case 759331) with an example project. Seems to be reproducible with a simple empty scene and a particle system.

 

Another interesting problem that might be connected, is the not working static-batching for instantiated objects.
I already opened a bug-ticket for it with a repro-project and checked it just now with Unity 5.3.1p1 and the issue is still the same. On Android the static batching is not working when we instantiate objects from a prefab, set the elements static and call StaticBatchingUtility.Combine.

This worked before 5.2 and now we have 0 batched drawcalls on Android which is a huge issue.
During this test i also came across that the same repro-project uses way more drawcalls overall with the new unity-version. So there is definitely a raise in drawcalls since the update.

For the bug-report check: https://fogbugz.unity3d.com/default.asp?746939_nj4qcr3lan55nvtm

 

As this thread is getting some traction, how about fixing this selection hang issue which has been around since 5.2.0 and still exists in 5.3: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/difficulty-selecting-items-in-unity-5-2.361185/#post-2453694

We can't stop wondering how simple, yet major issues like this which really make the editor unusable can stay for entire release cycles without being fixed. Also we are one of those pro customers who prefer to make proper bug reports with repros and generally stay away from whining here but this has now reached a melting point so to say.

 

This post about object selection problems made me remember that the same issue exists with selecting UI elements if you have multiple Canvas objects in the scene - ever since the first beta of 4.6 in 2014, so it's probably a separate issue.

Reported it back then, but became so used to working around it using the Hierarchy that I forgot about it. Just reported it again as case #759828.

 

I am sure you guys work a lot and i am very grateful for everything and all the features and posibilities you gave us. However it is so frustrating to find new bugs and broken existing features in every new Unity release since Unity 5.0. Every time there is an official release i download it to see if the performance got better, and every single time things got worse.

Unity 5.3, for example, manages to break the UI system making it unusable, at least for a release version on mobile. I mean, in some devices (maybe most) it works as expected, but in others, it just works horrible, swapping between textures. I was lucky to test in one device with this bug, but if I would have kept testing the game in my device i would have never known of that bug and could have released the game broken (for some devices) (It wasn't ready for release anyway). After a short period of time Unity released Unity 5.3.1 as an official release and a desperate try to fix Unity 5.3. With Unity 5.3.1 UI is still broken in some devices and now the particle system is broken too (you can work around the bug, but it didn't seem a bug that needed more than 2 patch releases to be fixed). Both UI and particle system isAlive function bugs have been identified.

I am just crossing my fingers to see a Unity 5.3.2 decent release with no big bugs. I mean the UI bug is really bad and still no fix after 2 patches (http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/5-...etween-different-sprites.373098/#post-2454333)

Anyway, I want to underline I really appreciate all you guys from Unity do and I really, really hope the best for this engine. I am just kinda dissapointed with the lack of human testing.

 

"We have thousands of automated tests we run on builds before release and we do unit tests, graphics test, integration tests, performance and regression tests. We do lots of manual QA too. "

I mean come on ..... Really? then why is unity 5 being released with easy to reproduce issues? you don't even have to have THAT complex of project to notice bugs, crashes and performance. you had to see that each release was getting less stable.

 

the questions we had did not get answered in this thread by Unity staff. Hence it sounded to me like a automated reply.. I have given up the battle for answers. Just waiting for the 5.4 release, public one.. If it goes anything like previous, there be a S*** storm

 

Just tried 5.3.1p2. iOS performance is still very bad compared to older versions. I have to admit that spending a LOT of time optimizing a game only to experience worse and worse performance after each Unity update is starting to feel very S***ty. I for one would really appreciate the focus on maintaining good performance on mobile platforms over building new features. I wouldn't have problem on going to previous releases, but there has been some major issues with most of the releases lately that always force you to update and accept the constantly dropping performance.

 

Perhaps Unity should consider some roadmap goal or some update focused on mobile mainly to improve it like UE4 with 4.9 release ?

 

I was curious on how they doing things over there and from latest changelog mobile getting some nice updates and improvements: https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-10-released
Impressive features for mobile controllers and overall difference seem big.

It is nice how they make there changelog with visual images to know whats new, this is helpful

No involved in the Unity vs UE power struggle, as still use Unity, but they can learn from each other

 

For what it's worth: https://answers.unrealengine.com/spaces/11/bugs-and-crashes.html

Game engines are complex beasts. There will always be problems and the grass isn't necessarily greener elsewhere.

 

Indeed we don't need stupid Vs wars (use what suits your needs) ,about the release they did, it was pretty clever and well done as many people wanted it; Unity could do the same approach on some next release (no big features but engine bug fixes and mobile improvments

Let's stay focused on Unity, let down all UE4 bugs or good features, UE4 example here was just used to point what Unity could do in some similar way.

 

Hate to have to do thread bans but if the same people keep making identical complaints even in light of a Unity response, that will occur since it's not letting others have their say. Thanks.

Currently the thread is useful and everyone wants to keep it progressive, so Unity acts on it.

 

Well, that's impressive. I don't want to change of Engine, but it is good to know UE cares about mobile plattforms in case Unity isn't fixed in next release, because currently Unity (5.3) is broken, at least for Android.

 

They really didn't care before, mobile was just left so much behind, but they are making some efforts. UE4 is lot more limitative it supports less mobile devices range and it is not as fast as Unity (versions prior to 5.3), it has also bugs, it depends on your mobile project nature but things can be somewhat better or worse with UE4.

 

Well I think we can all agree that after Unity 5 's first public release , very little QA was done. The new features they did add were not complete, which is why currently there are issues.

Also does anyone know when the QA team fully returns from holiday break?

 

We can agree that not enough QA was done in some areas. That doesn't mean very little QA was done. Not everything is black and white.

 

Good to know, thanks. I actually did some research after reading the patch notes and found many posts saying performance was slow (in UE).

 

Unity is working massively on making the engine more multithreaded.

Multithreading is not easy.

I have to assume that some of these performance issues and oddities are related to either locks or values getting overwritten on one thread when they shouldn't be.

Its painful at the moment, but in the long run its going to be better.

History will write down Unity 5.x as the necessary, eh, I hate to say evil because its not really *that* bad, but lack of a better term I'll just stick with that.

I don't want to tell anyone how to do their job or how to prioritize but I would just encourage the team to continue focusing on both multithreading systems and fixing bugs related to those upgrades.

Good job team, just relax and logically think through these tough issues.

 

I reverted back to Unity 5.3 (after trying 5.3.1 and 5.3.1p2) and performance is mostly better. I'm not sure exactly what it is in 5.3.1 and 5.3.1 patches, but whatever it is it slows down not just the runtime but the responsiveness of the editor as well.

On a side note, in Unity 4.x I would get up to 5000+ fps in an empty scene; Since upgrading to Unity 5.x I'm averaging just under 3000 fps in an empty scene. I've been curious what changes might have caused the drop but also figured that eventually the culprit would be figured out during the 5.x release cycle.

 

If you do manual testing, how couldn't you see something like this http://gfycat.com/QueasyDeadlyLangur ? (not a retorical question, waiting for an answer if possible)
That's an extremely easy bug to find and was find by multiple users and reproducable by Unity after bug reports (I know it doesn't happen in all devices, but it happens in many). If something like this (and many other bugs) wasn't catch by your eyes, there is clearly something wrong in the way you are doing QA.

The link you gave us about automatation is more than 2 years old and with a version in which uGUI didn't even exist. I'm sure you expand the test suits, but I wouldn't use that link as an example. It gave me the impression that your tests are old and doesn't contemplate Unity 5 properly.

 

Do you write your own internal bug reports? Do QA when testing make a bug report for the developer?

In all your explanation you never mention the keyword MOBILE?
So when you say test on various devices, can you be more specific.
Because if you read the whole forums and threads, the devices that suffer and most issues are mobile devices..These require most manual QA work and these are the platforms that have the worst performance and most user complaints.

You failed to mention this in your QA prefentations also, of course its not wise to speak negative about things but we need more faith that mobile is going to be improved on.
Maybe Unity not allow to split the platforms with the actual engine, because may cause a divide.

Also the streagy is not the problem, the issue is with every PUBLIC Unity 5.1,5.2 and now 5.3 soon as it hits the whole world, there instant massive problematic thread caused and its usally not even some complex, deep engine issue, its some basic problems that could have been spotted easier, so hence many users have lost faith as myself. Explain to me why 2-3 weeks where needed to fix splash screens/launch screens on iOS is just one example of such a basic thing that for some reason needs how many consumer reports, why you need bug report for this when a internal test would need short time..

I think I already expressed frustration so will not be further harsh, just need answers in the end, thats all and some guarantee things will be better for 5.4 and no more silly mistakes and hopefully mobile be good.

 

http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/ui-images-and-static-texts-glitch-on-5-dot-3

 

I agree 100%

 

http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/unity-hangs-when-selecting-objects-in-the-scene-view
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/difficulty-selecting-items-in-unity-5-2.361185/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/5-3-1-editor-bug.379145/ (Looks like possibly the same thing)

We submitted another bug report (#760690) about the selection-freeze issue and the QA responded "We have fixed this and problem should not appear in the beta (5.4.0b1) version." ..... What? You're not planning to fix it in 5.3?

Here's an example from a scene that contains a couple thousand objects and around 300k polygons. This is what the Windows task manager looks like right after opening the scene:


After trying to select a few objects from the scene, Unity freezes and this happens:


The task manager shows 6GB of memory used here, because this particular machine has only 8GB of physical RAM, but the actual usage is nearly 30GB. It took a few minutes for Unity to finish selecting the object here, but in some cases it even crashes the whole system.

This bug is absolutely destroying productivity in Unity. We have reproduced it on three different Windows PCs (Macs don't seem to be affected) and it happens in both old and new projects. All you need to do is add a lot of objects/meshes into a scene. Also it doesn't seem like a very complicated bug to fix, so I don't understand how you can justify pushing the fix to the next major release that is over two months away.

We tried the 5.4 beta and the bug does indeed seem to be fixed there, but this issue has existed since 5.2 (or at least it has the same symptoms: clicking on an object in scene view freezes Unity or doesn't work at all) and we have been waiting for the fix for months now. And now you're telling us to wait for two more months...

I have been joking around at the office about implementing my own editor script for picking objects, and ditching the whole Unity left-click thing. Every day that becomes less of a joke and more like a realistic option.

 

Maybe its communication breakdown, but although you test on these devices, you cannot apply the same tests for console and mobile. The tests have to be written differently just for Android and iOS alone. It seems to me you using generic - feature specific tests that apply to all platforms, hence the issues raised are for a particular platform such as Android.

I understand the resources needed to make specific platform tests are more and you really need someone who understands the platform. I do not feel its productive telling a QA guy to make scripts/tests for a platform they are not to confident or familiar with. I see no evidence, pie charts or some sort to show numbers of scripts/tests for specific platforms. For all we know you can have 1000 tests for Editor and 10 tests for iOS, not very balanced. My main focus is mobile development and purely use Unity for this, hence I push for more information on these particular platforms.

Im simply just to wish in future release 5.4 not to have any bad mobile performance and that QA put more work on iOS/Android platforms before the sign off release to public. Its not my decision but if you look at some of the more valid bug reports being submitted you notice the problematic areas.

 

Thank you for taking action.

 

I sure hope laziness or neglect is not a major factor in all the these errors....

 

after all the $$ I spent on license [ paid for pro fully ]+ asset store purchases

customers still have to come behind QA like babies and ask / tell them how they optimize their engine, truly eye opening

 

I'm sorry Unity Devs but I have to agree with most people in this thread. Been in development for 6+ months now and most of that time has been spent on figuring out workarounds for bugs that come and go with every release. Normally, I wouldn't need to upgrade however some features in 5.1 and 5.3 were crucial for my game. So, I updated, and well, not entirely a pleasant experience. Yes bugs do happen, but some bugs that I see makes me wonder how on earth they were not picked up on in the first place. One bug I have discovered in 5.3 is when I change graphics levels within the game which results in all UI objects being replaced with one stretched texture or being replaced with strange text and particles just disappearing entirely. UNET, which I implemented into my game months back became so unstable with every subsequent release it forced me into implementing my own solution - took me 2 days to make my own solution in comparison to 3 months of me implementing UNET.

I would greatly appreciate a release that solely focused on stability and performance. Because when the engine is stable enough, only then it is a force to be reckoned with. It's great saying "yes we have this feature" but if you break 10 other features in the process, it is entirely useless.

The moment that shocked me the most was when Unity released 5.3 which had countless bugs and regressions and then a few days later 5.4 beta came out. This showed me that you are favouring more features over stability - not a great idea.

Best Regards,
Ashley.

 

Since AlteredPlanet has decided it's just a major bitchfest, he can take a break from the thread as I did ask politely before. Please be constructive when contributing to important threads. Other people with issues need to be heard too.

 

Hello, there are some major issues with unity and I think there is a good place to share.

Click to select object on scene view doesn't work as correct as it used to before. It usually selects the farther one.
In example when there is an object on terrain, and there is a visible difference between their position, unity usually selects the terrain that's behind (same happens for non-terrain objects). Because of this, we can't use Ctrl+click to select multiple objects easily. This issue definitely didn't exist in unity 4. I am not sure which unity 5 version caused this. It's been a really long time and this issue still remains.

Another issue that we think it increased in unity 5.3; when "Animated Materials" is toggled on in the scene view, unity uses huge CPU power on nothing.
When toggled off, unity uses about 1% of cpu power. When it's enabled, about 30% cpu on i7 4720HQ, and about 14% on i7 4790K and editor becomes less responsive.

When dragging an object in project view to put in the currently opened folder, in earlier version, there was an empty area on left side and bottom side where we could drop the selected object. Right now we can't do it as there is no empty space in there, we have to drop on another object or scroll down to bottom to have some free space that we can drop on.

 

Did you ban him for outing his frustrations about a product he paid good money for?

 

I deleted a couple of replies which were purely complaining about my moderation and are off-topic. Keep it on topic. To complain about moderators, use the report post feature.

 

I'd like to know how it could be possible that some "major" bugs are not taken care off (at least like it seems).

We had reported that static batching is broken for several versions now (I think it was since 5.1.3 or so) and though we reported the bug, got even a push for it from one of the Unity members, it has not been fixed since then (ticket got even closed with a nothing telling answer ). Also lightmap baking had a horrible start and countless problems came up with relatively simply scenes.

I think that this is something what frustrates us developers. We know that some major things are broken, but we don't know why they are not fixed or what the status of it is.

I have also to admit that things are improving! Since automated testing began, I encountered about 3 blocking iOS bugs in the WWW class, but none was the same and they were mostly fixed within 1-2 weeks.
We'll keep help finding and fixing them, if someone of the Unity team is looking into it (with the last one, christophergoy was helping, thx 4 that!) though, with test projects and bug reports.

 

Was just going to say 5.3.1p2 has turned my project into a slideshow. Its really hard to work when you can't even guide an fps controller into a trigger because it constantly overshoots the mark in 3d space.

Really tiresome. I hope we see improvements in the very near future

 

Do you have a post with this specific issue, as I'm using that version and it's working really well. I'd like to aid in figuring it out, if I can.

 

A post? Hey man I have an entire project! Theres posts and buildings and all sorts.

What was 25-30fps in 5.2 is now 4-5fps in 5.3.1p2

Other than that, no I don't have a clue what the story is, but its really hard to work in stop motion.

 

That's a pretty terrible degradation, is the console spewing out any errors, and does profiler show where it might be? I can help pass on this info too if I can.