Performance issues with Lighting and Meta Quest 3

Hello all,

i am experiencing unexpected behaviours when it comes to performance issues and lighting.

I am working on an application which should run in standalone on the Meta Quest 3. This application involves a large environment with detailed models.
I am working with realtime lighting, as many objects will move in the scene. I’m using Unity 2023.2.20f1 and have only one directional light in the scene. However, this leads to performance issues when run in standalone on the Meta Quest 3.

I did some testing to figure out how i could improve this:

  • Set all Mesh renderers in the Scene to Cast Shadows Off → no improvement regarding the Framerate. Why is there no improvement when no Shadows are casted?
  • When i set Shadow Types = No Shadows on my directional Light, i’ve got a significantly higher Framerate. Shouldn’t this be the same as setting all Mesh renderers to Cast Shadows Off?
  • Baked lighting improves the framerate, but as i already wrote, this is not really an option.
  • Mixed lighting has not any performance benefits.

What would be an alternative to baked lighting? Why do i not get an performance improvement when switching all Cast Shadows to off?

Thanks in advance for any help!

1 Like

What is the frame rate you’re seeing?

Unity caps the frame rate to 72fps by default unless it’s unlocked via an API call: Quest 3 standalone build max framerate is 72fps

If it’s below 72… yeah. I’m seeing the same issues as well with having multiple lights (like 4, so not even that many) and mostly static objects in the scene.

I’ve got a much lower framerate, only 25fps with Realtime lights and 35fps with Baked lights. I would be happy with any improvement regarding this, doesn’t have to be over 72fps.

Please update to the latest Unity 6.
Also check if you’re not rendering too many object, have too many setpass calls, and check the profiler.

I have quite some free content which might help you: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjnZTAR0BuTDNeDPy44G4bUpYRHGzy_xh