Performance on ipad is extremely bad

Unity Engine
1

So, I know WebGL on mobile is experimental and unsupported.
But the client has specified it… Also the client has contracted to make 900 games! (seriously) in Unity targeting this platform.
We are all having problems getting anything to work at a reasonable frame rate on ipads. A blank project with a few sprites and a UI button gets about 20 fps.
Any tips?

Draw calls with alpha seems to be a big problem it seems

2

As you note, WebGL on mobile is not supported. You should inform the client that it’s not feasible; it’s simply not possible to get decent performance at this time. If they want apps on the iPad they need to do it the traditional way.

–Eric

1 Like
3

Sad but true…

I have an iPad 4 and made a webGL-testcase a while ago with just a camera, a directional lightsource and 3 cubes… and I got something around 1 fps… same goes for my iPhone 6 which is 2 years younger, so I’m not seeing too much progress there.

I’ve read several times that while not officially supported, decent results can in fact be achieved on some of the most high-end Android devices. Being an Apple-kiddie I genuinely have to wonder which devices those are supposed to be?! Every comparative performance-test I’ve ever done between my Apple-devices and my friends’ various Android-devices my iPhone and iPad beat their phones and tablets with ease…!

So yeah, while the prospect of a project with a volume of 900 games may sound great, I have to agree with Eric here: It is at this time simply not possible. :-/

4

If there are Android devices which get usable Unity WebGL speeds, it would be due to browser optimizations. For example, WebGL performance is clearly worse in Safari on macOS 10.9 (where it’s OK) compared to 10.12 (where it’s quite good), on the same hardware. The newest iOS device I have is an iPad Air, and the best you can say about Unity WebGL on it is that it technically runs. Possibly the latest iOS devices with the A10 chip would be more usable, but since people tend not to upgrade tablets that much, relying on everyone having the latest is clearly not a workable plan.

–Eric