Is the performance gain of URP/LWRP worth the headache?

I’m developing a mobile app that is designed to be heavily used outdoors, where access to charging is clearly limited. As such I am bending over backwards to optimize everything as much as possible to ensure maximum possible battery life. I started my project as a new Unity developer, and started with the basic 3D template.

As I learned more and more, I saw videos about how the LWRP is great for mobile devices, as it is much more efficient in rendering/its shaders are less heavy/etc. So giving it a shot I switched over. Had some texture and shader issues, but I got those sorted out.

Now as I’m adding more and more to the app, I’m finding that using the LWRP is becoming a nightmare. Assets I purchased (but could live without) no longer work. A replacement asset I bought works, but by jumping through hoops. I recently purchased a mesh reduction and material combining asset and used it today to build a complex object from multiple smaller objects, intending on reducing the meshes, and combining them and their materials into a much more simple object. Material combining does not work with URP/LWRP and the author has no plans to add that until URP becomes more stable.

There are other features I’d like to add that are becoming more and more difficult to use with the URP restrictions.

Is using the LWRP/URP really worth it on a mobile device as compared to the standard renderer? I know it depends a lot on the actual application. This is not 3D or mesh heavy. Mostly UI menus, with some pokemon-go like GPS mapping with mostly simple polygons, with a few complex objects here and there. Will be a small AR component as well.

If it’s really a night and day difference, I’ll tough it out and make do. The power savings are worth it. But if the difference is minimal, especially in my less-than-graphics-heavy app… URP doesn’t seem to be worth the effort.

Thoughts?

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URP is not a mobile renderer. URP designed for low-end PC.

Stay on default for now, until URP has taken over completly

URP working good on mobile, but -
atm URP do not have simple lit terrain, only have Terrain Lit that cause huge FPS drop on mobile devices.

My impression (and small experience with some tests, but no major project) is that URP is currently worse than builtin in terms of performance*. Here’s a very big thread about it: Performance going downhill with latest versions of Unity, Post Processing and SRP The reason to use URP right now is if you want shader graph / vfx graph / hrv2. You’ll also lose some very fundamental features like point light shadows or AO. You can customize it, of course, to get better performance (or battery life, in your case), if you have the resources to do so.

EDIT: I’m not trying to denigrate the efforts of Unity. Scriptable Render Pipelines are a huge step forward, and someday soon URP will eclipse the builtin. We’re just not there yet, and URP was pushed as production-ready when it’s still in a somewhat preview/experimental state.

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Thanks for all the input. I’ve seen a lot that the LWRP is better than the standard pipelines for mobile, but maybe I misread. Or that is only in certain edge cases.

The VFX graph does work on the built in pipeline at the moment. Although, with future updates, that can be changed by Unity.