URP 7.2.1 Camera Stack decrease performance on Android

The game running smoothly on a cheap-low Android device. After migrating to URP 7.2.1 with all minimum setting in Unity 2019.3.0f6, performance decrease down to 30FPS (no vsync, no setTargetFrameRate).
The Profiler and Frame Debugger Show an expected result on Editor but everything go crazy on Android device.

There are no such things like post-processing, the game screen just has two cameras using camera stack (FPS) game with specific layers renderer.

After several builds of testing, the issue may come from Camera stacking features. There are few things below will give the details:

1. The FPS and total MS time:
See picture 1 and 2, you can see the FPS dropdown to 40 and the MS add extra 10ms when use stack camera compare to no stack camera

Picture1. Stacked camera with base camera render the map, overlay camera render only weapon layer.


Picture2. No stack camera even the overlay camera only has 5 drawcalls, all unlit.
​

2. The profiler said stacked camera given double times for rendering and calculation: Picture 3. No stack camera only takes about 5-6ms

Picture 4. The stack camera takes it 2 times! About 10-11ms
​

3. The URP Asset settings are really basic and minimum, no post-processing or luxury calculation added. See attached image named URP Setting
4. The WeaponRenderer and MapRenderer are specific for the layer mask
5. The camera setting is basically default and minimum

Then please help me figure out why Camera renderer like double times even Frame Debugger didn't say that?

 

Let me add clarify here, the targetFrameRate already set for 60, and without VSync. The game still runs at 60FPS when using Built-in Render
The key here that why SRP Batcher does a good job but the performance decrease on Android? It does not make sense.

Here is my configuration for camera stacking:

 

Bump this thread for update information!

 

I already try but look like the gun still touch and go through the wall even I set the render queue higher.


About the camera stack, bug case is 1224525

 

Bump this thread to update bug case 1224525

 

>In your case however, if you just need to use camera stacking to render the gun with a different projection, I strongly recommend rendering it by injecting a `RenderObjects` feature and overriding camera instead.
At now RenderFeatures is useless for FPS Weapon rendering because it's only allow to setup fov, but not a near/far plane.

 

Just for Render on top is ok, but FPS it's not simple like that. I'm facing with ZoomIn/Out issue and moreover

 

>I'm facing with ZoomIn/Out issue and moreover
This because you can't change fov from script? Actually you can

Code (CSharp):

1.     public RenderObjects renderObjPass;
2.     renderObjPass.settings.cameraSettings.cameraFieldOfView = fov;

 

No, it's about zoomIn/out need different config for scope. Which lead into:

If I fix this, the gun never on top of the environment.

For easy understanding, I have a DepthMask which attached to the scope object, a part of a gun to render the environment and clear the scope mesh.
When changing the GunOpaques to BeforeRenderingPostProcessing queue the problem can be solved but the gun clipping the environment due to it should be BeforeRenderOpaques.

Rework on the scope or detach LensClipping which using for the attached DepthMask can solve the problem, but extra works are required and that's not what I expected for the team.

 

Update information about it just because I don't want to spam on the thread creation, following the demo and set it up, a little extra work needs to be done with DepthMask shader but the key here that both URP 7.1.8 and 7.2.1 still given bad performance vs built-in, see the picture below:

Picture 1. URP 7.2.1 with RendererObject to render GunTransparent and GunOpaques.​

The gun uses URP unlit shader and batched into one SRPBatch but adds extra 6 ms for both URP 7.1.8 and 7.2.1. Both using Vulkan with Graphics Job and Multithread Rendering enable. Remember picture 2. on the #1 post, render the everything except the gun given 60 FPS with 16.5~ ms

Picture 2. URP 7.2.1 render everything except the gun.​

And also there are lots of differences between 7.2.1 and 7.1.8 as you can see below :

Picture 3. URP 7.2.1 profiler


Picture 4. URP 7.1.8 profiler
​

As you see, the URP 7.2.1 does some extra work like RenderCameraStack() cost extra 1.2ms even no camera stacked and only Base camera on the screen and RenderCamera has given more than ~3.3ms which is crazy on mobile! Both caused by add RenderObject.

I'm looking for stable URP for our project which at least given equal performance versus built-in, or fallback is needed just because our game is live production and we hope next update will release with URP.

 

Bump this thread to update information about RenderObject.

 

I have the same issue. Is there any plan to fix the camera stacking performance issue?

 

still nothing on this????

 

God damn, Epic's please buy this small indie studio

 

Did this performance issue on Android ever get resolved?

 

Any news about this?

 

@phil_lira This is a big issue, is there any news?

 

I also have this issue in 2021.1.23f. Even with the overlay camera rendering nothing I get a 30% FPS decrease.

 

This was an issue when we made a quick mobile test for Crooks Like Us, on Android.

We're about to look at a mobile port again, and it would be great if there was a solution to this, and we could keep our existing URP overlay camera without this massive hit in FPS.

 

I have the same issue.
Unity Version: 2020.3.22

Any Update about this?

 

Same problem, is there any news on this?
Unity Version: 2020.3

 

@phil_lira any updates? Myself and many others are unable to use the camera stacking feature entirely due to it being so extraordinarily expensive.

 

Also bump, losing around 10-15 FPS on Pixel 4a and similar devices. This is horrible for mobile platforms

UPD: both Unity 2020.3 with URP 10 and Unity 2021.2 with URP 12

 

Same problem here, with Unity 2021.1 and URP 11.
When I use a base camera along with a overlay camera, the framerate drops from 60 to 30-40, but only on mobile.

 

Same problem here, I dont have any stacked cameras but still giving 7-10 ms for no reason. Solve this pls Unity.

 

Odd that there are no replies on this. I see the same issue on our game.

 

I think it's pretty clear that unity has little interest in supporting camera stack for mobile devices

 

That's perfect, seeing how 99.99% of all games release on mobiles are made with Unity
Anyhow, same terrible performance is showing on Switch (which is basically a glorified mobile).

What's the pipeline doing in the camera stack that is so damn expensive? Is it checking if the stack changes every frame or what's going on? Sometimes I wish that the automagic functions existing in Unity that eats performance would have a performance mode that would require some manual scripting work when something changes. There are several cases like this here and there.

 

Camera stacking will use at least 2 cameras. Each camera has to perform culling of all the scene geometry, to figure out what it actually needs to renderer. This operation is pretty expensive, especially for large and densely populated environment. In URP, each camera pretty much has to go through the process of executing the renderer. There's definitely some overhead, since not everything about this 2nd camera is unique.

Basically, adding an extra camera to the scene, and setting the culling mask to "Nothing" also incurs a performance cost, even through it'll practically not end up doing anything. It's figuring out that it doesn't have to render anything that's taking time.

I'm not sure if this can replace all cases for camera stacking, but a set up as outlined here using the Render Objects feature will be much much faster.

 

Yeah I get that adding a camera should and will have a performance impact. However comparing to the built-in render pipeline I can't really understand why the URP cameras as so much more expensive than the built-in ones.

This kind of feels like the post process volume system that is just about as unoptimized as it can be by running the default mode. And this is because Unity supposes that everything within a profile can be changed in runtime, which it can. However a dirty system that needs to be manually set would reduce the cost of this system a lot. And this kinda goes for a lot of features in Unity, it does a lot of calculations and expensive operations on the assumption that everything might have changed.

 

A bit dissapointed that there's no decent camera stacking to this day. 2021.2 and urp 12, stack 2 cameras, set culling mask to nothing on both of them and get a 1ms rendering time. Not bad!

Joke aside, seriously, camera stacking is important for various reasons, why not just fix it? I am getting a 2+ms overhead just for rendering a gun, some attachments and some arms on that camera. Let me be clear, the whole map rendering is 4ms, out of which 2ms go to the weapon+hands. It's unacceptable.

 

For anyone looking for a solution for changing the rendering order.
You can use RenderObjects Renderer Feature to override Stencil buffer.

Example, lets say you have 3 layers you wanna render in order.
First, go to ForwardRenderer object in your Assets
And under the Filtering section uncheck the layers you wanna change rendering order of from the LayerMask.

Here ^ I unchecked Default(Layer0), Layer1 and Layer2

Then there is button at the bottom saying Add Rendering Feature, click on that
And select RenderObjects, we are gonna add a RenderObjects feature for every layer, so 3 of them.

(Note that the order of RenderObjects inside the ForwardRenderer is important. Stuff if you wanna render a layer at the top, it should also be at the top here as well)

I name the first one Layer 0 since its gonna render the Default layer.

Here ^ I select Default layer only inside the Layer Mask.
And I override the Stencil buffer. Make its value 3 because its gonna be on top of other 2 layers.

And Layer 1 goes like this:

Here ^ I select Layer 1 as the LayerMask and override the Stencil -> Value to 2, everything else is the same

And Layer 2 looks like this:

Layer2 selected as LayerMask and Stencil -> Value is 1

So end result rendering order top to bottom will be like this:
- Layer 0
- Layer 1
- Layer 2

With this approach you only change the rendering order of things, you don't have multiple cameras.
So for UI and stuff you need to add them as a child to your camera, so they are always in-front of the camera.

How does this really work?
Stencil buffer normally used by Shaders but we want to change it for everything in a layer. So we use RenderObjects to override them.

How does Stencil Buffer work in this example?
Stencil buffer is similar to Depth Buffer/Texture, telling to Shader if it can write to a pixel or not.
So for example we first render Layer 0.
- So our Stencil -> Value is 3.
- Stencil Value for the current pixel is 0 because its empty atm.
- We check if 3 >= 0, which is TRUE, so a PASS
- We say when PASS happens Replace the value.
- So it changes the Stencil Value for current pixel from 0 to 3.
- But it leaves the parts there is nothing to render as 0 because Compare Function didnt work for those parts because we dont have nothing to render for those pixels.
Then we Render Layer 1 which is under Layer 0
- So our Stencil -> Value is 2.
- Stencil Value for the current pixel can be 0 or 3 atm since for the pixel Layer 0 rendered stuff at its 3.
- So if Stencil Value for current pixel is 0. We do a comparison for 2 >= 0 this is a PASS, so Stencil Value for those pixels becomes 2. And we can render there.
- But if the Stencil Value for current pixel is 3. So if the Layer 0 Rendered something to that pixel. We do a comparison for 2 >= 3 which is a FAIL, so we Keep that pixel same. So we dont render over places where Layer 0 rendered at.
- and same stuff for Layer 2

 

Thank you for the reply, but the project you mentioned above is a live production project that is really hard to attach and share without permission. Second, it was 2 years ago so I am no longer working on that project anymore, but the issue is still here, with a new project, Unity 2021.3.8f1, and the latest URP

 

Hi @GunLengend

> but the issue is still here, with a new project, Unity 2021.3.8f1, and the latest URP

Are you able to upload the files from that new project, along with proof that the issue is still there?

 

I have some screenshots and benchmarks when optimizing the project, this is again, a release version of live production and I can't share the project source code or any sensitive info, but I can share the screenshot and benchmark. Will update soon.

 

The issue is still here with Unity 2021.3.30f1 and the latest URP

 

Yup same is for 2022.3.12 and URP 14