Any plans to bring pixel local storage (PLS) to Built in RP?

Unity Engine
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We would love to be able to use PLS due to the performance and feature benefits, but URP is too unstable for us to consider moving to it atm.

Are there any plans to bring PLS to the built in render pipeline?

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There are no plans to add any features to Built-in. It’s just maintenance forever. The plan is to eventually deprecate it with URP.

If you’re on desktop and console I’d recommend HDRP!

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We are on mobile and URP is basically unusable from the tests I have done. Actually kinda crazy how slow it is.

But you are just the messenger, and I appreciate the response.

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Actually there is access on Vulkan for tile based hardware, I think. I can’t recall the name Unity calls it but you can use that for a few optimisations.

I’m also pretty sure the performance of URP varies depending on if you triggered a depth prepass or not (for example using AO). This should be resolved in latest 2021.x

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Thanks. I am not really concerned about GPU performance as we have a custom pipeline for that anyway. I mean, I would like to upgrade to further improve GPU performance, but the default URP GPU performance doesn’t matter to me.

The main issue is the abysmal CPU performance. I was blown away how long it took just to render the default URP scene. I keep hoping they improve things, but every time I check back on URP, it’s still pretty rough.

Oh also yes for Vulkan it is Render Passes, but afaik that is only for URP, not Built In.

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@joshuacwilde Unity has support for framebuffer fetch for ages. This is not exactly the PLS extension, but very similar to it. You can use it in custom shaders in any RP.

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Thanks, yes I am aware, and we do use it sparingly, but it does have limitations which keep us from integrating it further into our pipeline. The biggest of these is that it isn’t available on Vulkan, which we are majorly targeting for improved support for GPU compute.

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IIRC render passes are not built specifically for URP, but it may be I misremember things. In any case, as @hippocoder said, BiRP is not getting any new features.

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Afaict, it is only for SRP : https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Rendering.ScriptableRenderContext.BeginRenderPass.html

I appreciate the response regardless :slight_smile:

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