We are using Unity 4.3.0f4 (Pro, if that matters; DX11 mode, if that matters).
In trying to track down a major performance loss (from 60 fps to 20 fps) between 3.5 and 4.3, I noticed that the loss scaled with proximity to forested areas, which led me to discover that the Max Mesh Trees setting on the terrain no longer had any effect. To rule out a corruption of the terrain asset, I created a new scene with a new terrain, painted trees on it and confirmed that the Max Mesh Trees setting had no effect.
This is a major game-breaker as the only other way I can see to limit mesh trees is to adjust the billboard distance, which would only work if the trees were uniformly distributed throughout the world. I’ve tried to find settings that work both while driving through wooded areas and while in areas a little distant from wooded areas, but the best I can manage is a somewhat improved performance loss in the woods at the cost of treelines turning into ugly billboard rows when viewed from any significant distance outside the forest.
I don’t find any other threads about this and would like to confirm that this is a bug in Unity 4.3 and the changelogs don’t indicate this being fixed in 4.3.1, 4.3.2, or 4.3.3. Does anyone else observe this? If not, what version are you using, and are you in DX11 mode?
i also found out this bug 6 weeks ago orso i have send a bug report and hope it would being fixed next patch but could not find anyting about a fix on the latest release notes.
i still hope they fix it soon since its causing crappy performance.
In Unity 3 and early 4 i have an open world terrain, many trees and grass, no problems running on IOS.
I upgraded to 4.3 and now even 1 terrain tree slows down everything to be unplayable. With zero trees i can still have a large terrain and lots of grass and things are silky smooth. This leads me to believe that it isn’t just the amount of mesh trees on the scene because the billboards appear to be working, but something that as soon as you place any terrain trees now something is added or broken that does not cull trees in memory like it did before.
Even if i add 16 trees and change tree distance to be very close, so they only appear about 30m away and are hidden beyond that, the slowness is still there. So it’s not like the number of trees matter, just if terrain trees are activated at all or not.
I’m going to keep developing under the presumption that this will be fixed. Sometimes things break during upgrades and Unity is usually pretty good about fixing these things.
I’m also going to try setting Max Mesh Trees from a script to see if that will make it kick in.
@Dan I don’t know if I’m in DX11 mode but ill check. I don’t think so because it’s an IOS project.
OK so i did some troubleshooting and it looks like it is a 4.3 issue
Both of these are tested on iPhone
Currently using Unity 4.3
Opened and upgraded 4.15 version terrain project with terrain trees to 4.3 and frame rate is very choppy
Removed all trees (left details) and frame rate is smooth
Downloaded unity 4.15 and reinstalled it in a separate folder
opened original 4.15 version project with terrain and trees
Smooth even with many trees active
So…
For the moment I’m going to
a) see if Unity 4.2 has the same bug
b) export my 4.3 project essentials (terrain, trees) into packages and import them into my 4,15 project so i can continue working
c) come back to Unity 4.3+ once the issue is fixed
Update:
i tried 4.3.3 and 4.2.2 (the last 4.2 version) and the theory plays out. 4.3.3 has choppy trees and 4.2.2 is smooth.
Dear god could we please get a response from the developers that they’re aware of this and it’ll be fixed pronto? This types of game breaking bugs need to be high priority.
It definitely seems like a hit or miss bug, so I’m using the Ultimate FPS extension and it definitely affects that FPS Controller alot more than the standard FPS Controller with Mouse Look. Sometimes the slow down occurs, sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t figured out yet what causes it to kick in exactly, but when I do I’ll definitley post it so the bug can be reproducable.
I posted about this in UltimateFPS and here; it’s a related but different issue. The Unity CharacterController has some bug that causes terrible performance if you enable tree colliders and have a lot of colliders, even if you turn off collision with them in layers or place the controller far away from any trees. UFPS uses the CharacterController. so it inherits that bug from Unity. Unity appears to be abandoning the CharacterController, since its new beta Standard Assets use Rigidbody for both their first person and third person controllers. I don’t think there’s any chance to get Unity to make any fixes to CharacterController; it’s been kinda buggy for a while now. I think they’re more likely to remove it once the new Standard Assets get added.
We experience extreme performance issues in Verdun after the 4.3 update. After thorough optimizations we discovered that overhead in the terrain tree culling is causing massive GPU spikes when rotating the camera (terrain culling recalculation).
So not only is the max tree setting broken, the culling under the hood is broken as well. This requires ASAP hotfixing.
Done. But it’s not just that. Setting the billboard start from 50 to 1 doesn’t improve performance to any noticeable degree in my test scene. With dense grass I’m on 80fps, when I add trees I drop below 30, and the tree distance is only 450. Something else is very broken.
See previous posters comments
Note:
This is not related to the UFPS/tree colliders issue, as it performs the same with a different controller.
The UFPS issue is fixed by attaching a rigidbody so that it does not become a moving static.
Yes, this is a real issue for us too. We have several of our clients apps running successfully on 4.1x, but since upgrading to 4.3 it has rendered our apps unusable, so we have not been able to release updates for them. We are also on a pro version of Unity.
I can only confirm this bug. It appeared after updating to the newest Unity version.
It seems like it has nothing to do with max mesh trees. I can set this value to zero and also setting billboard start to 1 so there are practically no mesh trees around it it takes 12 ms to calculate (only one terrain).
A screenshot of the profiler is attached. It seems like Culling → Terrain.Trees.Render is causing the problem.
Confirmed, the biggest problem for us is that our game is forced to use the latest version in order to release on consoles while supporting the latest Sony and Microsoft SDKs.
I just tested my game in Unity 4.5 and this has been fixed. trees on terrain are no longer slowing my game to a crawl. Thats great because ive avoided upgrading to 4.3 and 4.4 because of this. If you upgrade your projects please be sure to back them up before you do in case you need to go back to an earlier version.
EDIT: I spoke too soon
It’s fixed for iPhone 5S - but i just tried it on iPhone 5 and the 2 frames per second returns, even with a single tree. It’s not the processing power of the phone because tons of trees work great on both phones in Unity 4.2
I tried it with forcing Open GL ES 2.0 as well.
For now I’ll stick with 4.2 and hope this will be fixed in 4.6
I honestly have a bad feeling about this… The bug has been posted several months ago and absolutely nothing has changed. They are talking about a release with the highest amount of bug fixed and didn’t even care to fix a real problem like this.
I’m really not happy with just hoping it will be fixed in a next release that problably won’t be there in the next months.
The funny thing is I’d think tons of people are using unity terrain and trees but i guess not. Yeah, my concern is that i wont have access to things like IOS8 deployment soon if i need to stick with 4.2
Its interesting that it works on 5s and not the 5. Its like SOMETHING was fixed between them, but i cant imagine its just an issue of raw processing power of the 5s that is over coming the problem. Anyways ill go file a bug report. I love Unity A LOT and I hope to be able to upgrade soon
Im getting the same issue, its unbelievable that unity terrain trees no longer work for iOS. i carnt believe more people are not having this issue. Just one tree brings unity to its knees. so far we have wasted at least a week of man power trying to fix this massive issue. its been broken for over a year now and still no fix in sight.
If unity carnt fix it they should at least update there release notes waring people that unity no longer supports trees.
Ive tried publishing from mac and pc but no luck.
Andriod does not seem to have the same issue only iOS
