Unity should internally cache .transform for a valid speed boost.

Hi,

I couldn't think of any reason why unity via mono would not cache .transform for that object after the first call to it. This would speed up nearly all ios games.

So how about it guys? do a bit of caching in realtime to boost performance of various things. I know we can cache it ourselves but that it a fair bit of micromanagement and not that well-known.

 

Nearly all ios games? How about all games.

This really should happen, but if there is some unforeseen reason as to why it isn't automatically cached, they should at least make it more well known that it is calling GetComponent. I can't remember how many times I have pointed it out and it was received as a Unity Jewel of Wisdom.

 

Are there any other things that you can think of that would benefit from a cache scheme built into unity?

 

It's not cached?

 

Its cached but you access it through a property with all its implications.

 

So, do you mean that doing:

Transform myTransform = transform;

At my Start(), and then using myTransform instead of the built in transform in my Update(), would boost performance?

 

Correct.

--Eric

 

Hmm... thanks, good to know.

 

Not sure it was cached back then when I requested it, but it is cached now (within the engine, and incurs a tiny lookup cost), which is really quite OK for the most part. But much more isn't cached, and I was thinking it would be less to code if we could specify to unity what isn't or is cached in this manner going forward. Small issues with the awareness developers now have about caching.

 

Wait, so which one is it? Should I cache, or is it already cached internally?
I am talking solely about transform, not other components.

If cached internally - do you know from which version? Is it 4 or pre 3.x?

 

Yes. go.transform is faster than go.GetComponent(Transform), but not as fast as caching the transform yourself.

--Eric