Unity and the Raspberry PI?

So I was wondering about if Unity works with the Raspberry PI... though the Chrome Native client, I think this could work, on the Pi. We have Chromium and I think it supports NaCL from what is stated in that. So I see no reason why it won't work... but I don't want to go on thinking it will work without some proof and I don't have a PI to test it on.

Maybe someone has a Raspberry to test it on?

Also this is an interestoid something called MonoGame runs on the PI and from what I see it is a Mono implementation of XNA, so I don't see why Unity wouldn't work on it(with a real export)

Oh and I guess it would work with Android but...

 

I too would like to see Linux-ARM support for Unity3d. Not all devices with ARM CPUs are iPhones and Androids, and Linux-ARM is just as viable as Linux x86 and x64 as a desktop platform.

 

I think the amount of RAM available in such a device would be more of a hinderence than Unity support, but don't get me wrong. Also, Unity supports Linux now.

 

Linux, yes. Linux ARM, not really.

 

The latest Raspberry PIs support 512MB, while the older ones support 256MB -- about the same as many generic Android tablets and phones.

Unity 4.0 only supports Linux with Intel CPUs.

I would imagine compiling Unity for Raspberry Pi being relatively straightforward - using their Linux code-base, then targeting the ARMv6 architecture, then replacing the OpenGL rendering with the Android NDK OpenGL ES rendering.

 

Ah, I was not aware the pi was ARM. Thank you for clearing that up.

 

I wish they would support Linux arm as it would open unity to a whole world of embedded goodness.

 

I thought you couldn't put applications made in Unity on embedded systems. I haven't been following the EULA thread recently, though, so if the embedded systems problem was cleared up, disregard this post.

 

It is only if its on more then 50 products:

 

Ah, okay.

 

Pi support would be really cool. However, from using my pi and the specs it has, it can feel underpowered at times(specially web browsing). There are some other more powerful mini computers out there that are android based (e.g. the Rikomagic MK802 II). I haven't played around with those but the specs look decent. Perhaps a dedicated 'Unity console" could be a future dream?

 

You can run android on raspberry.

But i'm not sure if unity's ARMV7 support will work with raspberry PI's ARMV11

 

It might, as raspberry pi's processor architecture is ARMv6. The "ARM11" refers to the processor family. I have an sd card with droid compiled, and may try this out this week,as I have been wondering the same thing. I'll post back my results.

 

That should be perfectly fine, then. I've done a lot in under 80MB of RAM with Unity (not counted the VRAM usage carefully, though). Both regular and headless Linux ARM versions would be an excellent addition, and seeing as they already have Android support there should be less porting involved on the ARM code portion.

 

Thanks for correcting me.

But hasn't unity allready removed the support for ARMV6 from the android publishing options?

Also i've been considering, Would it be possible to read input from the pi's GPIO pins? This would allow people to make custom controllers etc.

 

NECRO BUMP ALERT:

Yea, J-F, they did. (Curse you UT! You think every device has ARMv7 do ya?! well YOU'RE WRONG!!!) Would be great if Raspberry Pi had unity3d support though...

Beig able to read from the pins is a novel idea. because, like you stated above, you could design a custom controller to use with the Pi. Would mean motion control like the Wii would be more widespread

 

I pretty thoroughly explored Unity on these small linux/android computers a while back in this thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/202096-Unity-on-a-beaglebone-black

What I found is that, no Unity does not work good on any of them. Not the pi, not the beagle bone black, not the udoo quad (which is the fastest of them all).

First there is the issue, already mentioned in this thread, that Unity supports linux x86 not linux arm. So you cannot run unity apps in linux on these devices.

The other issue is, the android ports for these devices just do not perform good at all. The pi android just had very very poor 3D performance. The black has bad 3D performance all around. And the udoo quad, which should have good performance, just didn't. I suspect this is because the android drivers for the GPU on these devices is just not up to par. The drivers and 3D performance is extremely unoptimized. The udoo quad which is the fastest of them all had worse performance than even like an iPhone 3G.

However it was like 6 months ago I checked into all of this. The android ports may be better now. I don't know though.

But I abandoned this hope entirely as I just presume there isn't any real effort for someone knowledgable to write a performant android port for these devices, so it probably won't happen. Although maybe I'm wrong, maybe if someone has the time, look into it again and see how unity apps run with the latest android ports?

 

One quick question :

What type of application are you envisioning with Pi and Unity?

If it's about a custom controller you can easily control Unity based games on PC/Mac through Arduino.

 

You could, you wouldn't want to make the controller in Unity though you'd want to make it without the overhead of a game engine. You can use Mono on the Pi, I didn't realise how it worked but you legitimately just install mono on the pi and then run .net exe, crazy.

On a side note, this is super strange before I opened up the forums I was thinking about how its annoying that Unity doesn't work with the Pi because I got this tiny little screen (from a printer) and am going to have a go at connecting it up to the Pi.

 

I agree that Unity should really assign a couple guys to show Raspberry Pi some love.

It's another platform — one that has become extremely popular, and seems to be only growing. There are RaspPi clubs springing up in schools. The latest standard Pi operating system even ships with a free (!) copy of Mathematica and Wolfram Language. But most of those kids in the RaspPi want to make games — and what are they going to use? PyGame. :cry:

Unity's missing an opportunity here to hook into a large and growing audience of budding programmers.

Has anybody filed a feature request yet? I'd spend some of my votes on it...

 

I'd like Pi support but IMO it would probably be a big task, they stopped supporting that CPU type because it was holding them back. And also i'm sure that porting the build to Linux ARM would be difficult.

 

Yeah, I'm not saying it's trivial. But it still might be worth it. The folks at Wolfram certainly think so, and that seems like a much bigger stretch to me than Unity...

 

I have one of the newer Raspberry PI units. The Raspberry PI is fun to tinker with, but the performance is not great. Even surfing the web feels slow on a Raspberry PI. It is not a fast device. It is certainly not a 3D gaming platform. The Raspberry PI would not run Unity based games well enough for anybody to enjoy the games.

 

Being able to run Unity on the tiny cheap ARM linux computers would be hugely beneficial to anyone using unity for kiosks or on-site installations right now.

But there will be more raspberry pi updates, with faster chips, as well as other new cheap linux ARM computers.

However the problem with this isn't just unity needing a linux arm port. What I've found is that none of these tiny computers actually have good enough implementations of graphics drivers to actually have good performance. UT would also have to write a raspberry pi graphics driver. Which is all just a bit too much I think.

I do hope though we will soon a tiny arm linux computer with great OS and drivers on it, and then UT will consider a linux ARM port.

 

I respectfully disagree. The performance in X Windows is poor because (1) the windowing system is not using the 3D hardware (it's all software rendering), and (2) X is inherently inefficient.

Unity apps (if worth doing at all) would make use of the 3D hardware, and wouldn't go through X, so they wouldn't suffer from these problems. The performance would be similar to Quake III Arena (click the link for a video demo).

 

Good points, especially with the video of Quake 3 running on the Raspberry PI. Maybe the Raspberry PI could make a viable platform for certain Unity projects.

 

Mobile tech is moving at a staggering speed, and gimping Unity + blowing resources for something that can't ever run as fast as the Quake 3 engine on low, is not really a good plan overall IMHO...

It would never manage to run Angry bots at any decent speed at all. I'd imagine angry bots to be around 20 times more resource intensive than Quake 3's low setting.

 

RasPi export would be + $1,500 or + $75/month

Followed by:

Minecraft Plugin
+ $1,500 or + $75/month

J2ME
+ $1,500 or + $75/month

Cuisinart/Breville Toasters
+ $1,500 or + $75/month

Atari 2600
+ $1,500 or + $75/month

 

I can't find much on the Quake 3 but it seems they run it at 1080p with 4x AA and get 20-30FPS. Is it running at low? I know with some tinkering its possible to get the latest build to solid 60FPS and part of that is changing a file to be "low". The GPU was reported to be faster then the Iphone 4s's GPU when it came out but it might not be true.

I would install Quake 3 on my Pi but apparently it takes around 12 hours to install and I can't be bothered.

 

Sad but probably true.

 

@JoeStrout: I'm Back! anyway, that is definitely something they should look into, if there is actually that many...

@FlyingRobot: I actually have no vision of Unity and Pi. I don't even have the thing! but since i am a Linux fanatic, i decided to post my opinion, that is all. I also wish to get an arduino someday...

@TylerPerry: that easy? I thought Mono had bad licensing issues... Just take one look at the Unity 5 thread and see why! And that install time is atrocious! I thought Windows on an Old PC was bad enough...

 

I would like to revive this post. Is it possible to run Android on Raspberry Pi and then because Raspberry PI supports Android could you inherently run Unity? And do you think 516 Mb ram is enough for a 2D unity game?

 

A quick search indicates that while the Raspberry Pi will boot Android, it is too slow to be useful for anything. The reason is quite simply that Android requires GPU acceleration but there isn't a driver for it.

 

I am writing an app that uses Arduino and I just set the code based on parameters generated in Unity to send string commands to the microcontroller. Don't see why that would not work her.. Embedding Unity..well..that is a whole other ball of wax but using Unity to control microcontrollers can be done.

 

Isn't using unity on the raspberry pi kind of counter for it's reason to exist as a tiny tool designed to bring back the days of learning and custom hardware? isn't that everything unity doesn't stand for?

 

According to the Wikipedia, which I'm too lazy to look elsewhere, the purpose is to teach basic computer science. Think of it as a way to teach computers without worrying that the kids will break something valuable.

 

Yeah it's just they've said also they'd like it to be used as a hobbyist kit for the purposes of learning low level stuff, hardware and so on. Something Unity is at odds with and shields you from.

 

It depends on how you use Unity. You could write a custom plugin that allows you to work with the GPIO and make a game focused around teaching hardware.

 

You don't use Unity on the hardware. You use Unity to drive the hardware or have the hardware drive Unity.. Custom controllers, servo and actuator based haptic devices, sensors, pitch. yaw, roll and acceleration, light brightness, O2, CO2 or most other common gas levels, radiation levels, temperature, brain wave analysis, distance and direction.. Couple that to AU and VR, multi-screen projection tech and you have potent combinations available for the non-games market.. You are passing back and forth numbers that may be from 0-1024 or 0-4096 on a serial comm port how you utilize those is entirely up the developer and their imagination. I have several products in the pipeline for the company that was created to use just this combo of hardware and software that will be musical instruments and studio tools that may change the way some music is recorded...

 

Erlang on the pi... not sure I'd want to... but cool...
http://www.slideshare.net/breakpointer/using-erlang-on-the-raspberrypi
http://www.erlang-embedded.com/

 

I'd be interested to see if this is possible as I have a multiplayer setup and the code for the server is written in such a way that is just passes messages to each player and handled connections. It doesn't use graphics or sound. I don't see that in my case the server needs to be a big computer - I'm currently running the server on an EEEPC as this is the smallest thing I can find. Anyone know how I should be compiling the server? Is it for a Linux machine?

 

If your server is done in Unity then there's no hope as Unity dropped support for the CPU in the PI so even on Android it wont run.

You could write a the server in normal C# and run it on the Pi (Using Mono) and use Unity for the client.

 

What about the second Raspberry!

http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/02/raspberry-pi-2/

or more info here

http://lifehacker.com/the-raspberry-pi-2-is-faster-more-powerful-and-availa-1682814956

900MHz quad-core chip and 1GB of RAM, not sure how powerful the GPU is???

 

According to the chart on Lifehacker it is identical to the original Pi. The reason Android never got on the Raspberry Pi is due to the GPU and since that didn't change we most likely won't see Android on this one either.

 

Microsoft is releasing a Windows 10 version for it, no info on what's being culled to get it to run on the Pi 2 yet though.

http://dev.windows.com/en-us/featured/raspberrypi2support

 

Google is more strict than Microsoft with their OS's requirements. It is this strictness that allows developers to state the version of Android that is required rather than require the consumer to understand the underlying hardware. It is also why Android doesn't work on the Raspberry Pi. It requires more capabilities (features and speed) than the Pi's GPU provides.

 

People have ported Quake 3 to the Pi, but not sure if that is using the GPU or software rendering?

 

It was entirely GPU-accelerated with no software fallback. It was definitely impressive at the time and had features we still use today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arena

That said though it was released in 1999. The same year graphics cards finally gained hardware acceleration for the amazing feature of Transform, Clipping, and Lighting (TCL but sometimes called T&L). Likewise it was the year the first GeForce was released. We were still running Windows 98.

Android is more demanding now than Quake 3. It may have been more demanding one or two major releases ago. That's not really the point of strict requirements though. The idea is to ensure that consumers can see "Requires Android 4.x" and know that any device running Android 4.x will be able to run the app.

 

The Video Core IV has been used in loads of Android phones...

 

Might be something involving the driver availability from Broadcom. I seem to recall there were issues and Android would not run on the original Pi. It may have changed with the new one, but I'm doubtful until someone proves it.