Unity's graphics performance

News & General Discussion
1

Erm…I’m assuming (hoping) that the “good portion” of your players use Intel graphics cards? Because if not, then that’s NOT good. :shock:

Also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-m4pe6UAS2M (Watch at 2:25, softbody dynamics is VERY possible)

Admittedly though, realtime fluids is still a bit away from us. But softbody’s are most certainly possible. The question I’d like to ask is:

Is there a performance problem with Unity that is preventing new things like softbodies begin built in? I only ask because all the Unity made games I’ve played so far have simple graphics, and anything that tries to have current gen polycounts/textures/shaders has framerate drops when in reality they shouldn’t (whether the objects are optimized or not, because looking at the stats tells me that it shouldn’t be a problem).

Anyone here played Dead Rising or Left 4 Dead? The number of visible zombies at a time is startling (you can also see the same thing in the Unreal video I posted)! When I played with the locomotion system in Unity, I made 20 instances of that male character and got them moving around. The stats were about 80,000 poly’s and I was getting a framerate of about 20-25. Good God. Only 80,000 poly’s, nothing else, and I’m getting THAT bad a framerate?!?!?!

There are times in Crysis when there are tons of characters on screen and the polycount is well past 1 million, and it’s usually the same framerate. I’m not using crappy hardware either (I can run Crysis on very high except for shaders on high and textures on medium at 1280x1024). I’m on a Mac Pro with an Nvidia 8800 GT. I can also run Half Life 2 at 2560x1600, full settings (including AA) and I get about 150-200 fps (no joke).

So what gives? I have visited forums and video comments about Unity and some people say that the engine is slow. Is it? :?

Hope I’m wrong (I really do), but right now, it seems like Unity is having some trouble crunching poly’s and characters right now. Unity’s graphics features are quite good though, so I’m not worried about what I can make. The REAL question is not “Can Unity do this graphics effect?” but rather “Can Unity handle those poly’s/textures/shaders when other games say my computer can?”. I guess I’ll find out for sure once I build my graphics demonstration for Unity.

P.S. That’s not to say that there is some fine work here on these forums, because there certainly is! :smile: I would just imagine that the performance would be better for some games shown here compared to their graphical complexity.

2

Hi theinfomercial,

If you read further up the post; there are numerous mentions of why this has yet to come to fruition.

3

Yeah I know. I’m just posing the question of Unity’s graphics performance.

4

Well, I don’t know exactly what is being processed with Crysis characters, but I can say Locomotion is pretty hungry for cycles; Rune’s on it and it just gets better with every release.

I mean Locomotion is essentially computing FK / IK on the fly; legs only but still. I find 20 instances is amazing (though I doubt it’s a good indicator of Unity performance).

Adding, find it’s not apples-to-apples comparing multi-million dollar engines with Unity; not that Unity is lacking (it’s the bee’s knee’s as far as we’re concerned), but you can bet those other engine providers are throwing a lot more resources into it (which is part of why you pay so much).

If you want more discussion on the topic, offer starting a new thread, as we’re very much into the Land of OT :slight_smile:

5

OMG! I totally forgot about the whole IK/FK simulation that it’s doing! No wonder! Thanks! :smile:

The reason you pay that ridiculous 6-7 figure price for Unreal and Cryengine is because they sell the source along with it and you buy a license per seat (studio plans are available too I think). Value wise, those engines cost roughly about as much as Maya, 3ds Max, etc. (more or less). It isn’t that far from Unity Pro’s price though.

I’ve read somewhere that the graphics pipeline is modifiable and that you can include your own features/performance tweaks. Is that true? Because that sounds like the answer really. :slight_smile:

6

That’s not the reason…you get the source with Torque for $100. You can get the source for Unity, which isn’t publicly priced but I’ve heard 5 figures. The real reason for the high prices is because they are high-end engines with a focus on AAA games produced by large studios.

–Eric

7

Well if you compared the prices even with source (apples), I think you might be on to something.

And with that, I leave you to email sales@unity3d.com!

:slight_smile:

8

So why does Garagegames give you Torque with the source for $100 and UT has to put that 5 figure price tag on it’s source code? The reason is different licensing policy’s (although admittedly, the difference in licensing for Unity’s and Torque’s source code is a bit odd… :shock: ).

The actual software value for AAA game engines is the same as any other high quality 3d software which is a 4-5 figure tag (Unity Pro is a 4 figure engine). The licensing for those engines is what makes them high priced for studios (1 license per seat for 50 people plus source could easily add up to a 7 figure tag).

Anyway, don’t want to talk about their prices anymore. I’m playing with the demo and loving all of it so far. If it’s some thing Unity has that no other engine has, it’s ease of use and intuitiveness. :smile:

9

That’s because they use Geometry Instancing on characters and as already stated not only are you simulating IK/FK but also creating a lot of instances of a character which is really slow.

Unless they have access to the source code, they can’t comment on the performance of the engine itself. They can only see what’s been done with Unity and comparing UE3/Crysis with Unity is just not fair.

On the one hand you have a game created by dozens of developers for years. On the other hand you have a couple of developers working on a game for a few months (and I’m talking about the biggest games made with Unity).

10

After all, there is a reason why the CryTek engine / UE cost up to 1 Million USD per project

While Unity Pro costs less than $2000 per user without restriction to projects.

So if you compare their capabilities, please also compare the prices, because the price of their technology allows CryTek for example to have the 120+ Developers they have for their tech, compared to half a dozen to a dozen at Unity Technologies

If you assume to get Crytek class technology, also expect that you will have to pay for it ($500k upwards per title)

Beside that I doubt that there are more than a handfull commercial teams using Unity that even have the menpower needed to really use such a high class technology as using it also means that you have to offer the corresponding visual quality.

EDIT:
Torque is an as bad comparision.
Torque is a fully focused shooter engine. Without using the sources, all you can do is modding it.
You are not even able to have simple vehicles working, you can’t create a simple radar hud etc.
Torque requires the sources to get anything done, scripting there is the “optional thing” (commonly for prototyping and later convert into code).

Unity is built around the idea of use the engine and expand it from scripting. You can do about everything you would want.
And in case thats not enough you still have plugins and as very last solution the sources thought you likely won’t need them. So for Unity, source code modification is the “optional thing”

11

Oh well, they do that because you need to fix often enough stuff in Torque or put in additional engine components (Radar HUD, other vehicle types to name a few extensions) and that requires a full engine recompile. Been there, done that.

It’s a complete different approach from the engine architecture in Unity. Torque’s roots have been first person shooter games back in the Tribes 1 2 times and you see those roots still today in the engine very strong. Hence to modify something you need to change often enough something in the engine, recomile and test than the new feature. Unity has a totally different approach - it’s build as ultra-generic engine without focussing in any direction or genre, hence there is no need (for most) to have engine sources because everything you want to do can be done already with the stock engine. And still then if you need something additionally, there’s the pro feature of having plugins for the engine that directly extend it without having the hassle to fully recompile the engine (focussing on the key things is the importance here).

For me the point with Torque handing out the engine source was (for me at least) always more a “marketing” thingie. When they say “You get the engine sources” they don’t say in the second sentence with a muted voice: “and you need them for even the slightest modifications”. Don’t get me wrong, no Torque bashing intended, just wanted to clarify it’s really different approaches.

12

Ok…not sure what happened here…I did not make this thread…If this is a mods/admins idea of a joke then UT needs to sort out some things here. Because this is bullying, and I’m clearly being singled out.

I was just curious about Unity’s capabilities and if I came off a bit strong, then I’m sorry about that. I’ve done a performance test for Unity and am actually quite pleased with what Unity can do and I do regard it as an amazing game engine.

All I have to say is that if UT wants to be respected, then I must say that this is NOT how you should go about doing it. Who posted this thing anyway? Because it’s quite pathetic.

13

You were dragging a thread in the wish list forum WAY off topic. Unity versus Crysis and U3 has nothing to do at all with the original thread’s wish for an upgrade of PhysX. It’s obvious a mod simply took a knife to your fork. I see nothing wrong with that. Hijacking someone else’s thread is bad forum etiquette.

14

I’d agree that this is a little weird from the mod-site - but I’m sure with no bad intentions.

As far as I can tell, the original thread was (that’s where I think you’re quote is coming from):

soft-body, deformable meshes, fluid solver.

… since I’m going “off-topic” now, I continue in:
Moving forum postings

15

I split this thread from the soft-bodies thread because people were complaining that it was getting way off topic. I certainly had no bad intentions… the thread title might be a little tongue-in-cheek but it also fairly describes theinfomercial’s concerns (you are of course able to change it btw). I apologize for any misunderstandings.

I will now reply to Jashan’s thread to keep this one on topic (which is unlikely since it’s completely derailed at this point anyway).

Ethan

16

Well ok then. As long as you did it without the intention of hurting me. But still, the title makes me sound like a brat (and I am NOT!!! :twisted: ).

I guess I sort of made that thread go off, but my post was originally supposed to be just a simple question, and I guess I got a little carried away with it and made it as long as I did.

It’s ok if you tell me I’m going off topic, but this thread kinda stunned me as this has never happened to me. So, yeah.

17

As Ethan pointed out: You have the power to change the name of the thread, any maybe you should do that. You just need to edit the first post (which happens to be your posting, so you can change the subject easily :wink: ).

18

All better. Unity’s performance (how much high poly stuff I could put in a game before the fps dropped) was one of my worries. I don’t think it will be a problem at all anymore though since I ran that performance test.

But what’s this I hear about the graphics pipeline being accessible in Unity Pro? What can you do with it?

19

You can say “Now, I will draw a triangle. Here, three vertices for the triangle.”

In other words, you can use GL class (which pretty much copies OpenGL’s immediate mode) and Graphics class. That’s about it; I’m not sure why some people think that those two classes give some magical powers.

20

So says the wizard :slight_smile: :slight_smile: