WebGL build size for empty scene is huge. Optimisation tips and tricks?

Unity Engine
1

Hello all,

I created a new project, saved the empty scene and made a build with these settings:

  • Optimisation Level: Fastest (very slow builds)
  • Development mode: unchecked
  • Player Settings / Other settings / Stripping Level: Strip ByteCode

The size of the output folder is a 14Mb.
Adding a simple cube to the scene and the build size is up to a whooping 22.7Mb.

Compared to an empty WebPlayer build(~28Kb), the difference is huge. I understand that part of the engine is included in the WebPlayer plugin. Understandably, a part of the engine has to be included in every WebGL build.

Unfortunately in my real world scenario, I have to keep my file size under 10Mb. Therefore, for my previous WebPlayer and Flash builds, all I did was splitting my scenes as asset bundle and it did the trick.

Here is the size of the main hub of the project I’m trying to convert:

  • WebPlayer: 10.7Mb
  • Flash: 11.3MB
  • WebGL: 75.2Mb

I really have to lower that 75.2Mb as much as possible…

Questions:

  • How can a primitive cube increase the output size by 8.7MB?
  • Are there anything else I can do to reduced the overhead size of a WebGL build?
2

Hi.

I think your measuring of size is kind off of; I did the same thing and I can see how you got to those numbers, but they are “all inclusive”.

In a deployment folder, you’ll find a index file, a .htaccess file and 2 folders.
Your measurement is a measurement of all those folders, but that is never what will go over the wire; instead, depending on how your webserver is configured (which we try to help with by providing the .htaccess file), you should measure the index file and the compressed folder.

That will give you this number, for an empty scene with a cube.
3.98 MB (4,181,830 bytes)

Flash already does this compression (actually it does better compression through lzma), and the unity webplayer has compression for the .unity3d files.

Now, the uncompressed folder can still be served up through your webserver, but using the .htaccess file, the server will gzip for you. The compressed folder is all the files pre-compressed, so the server does not have to do it upon request.

Regards,
Ralph.

2 Likes
3

@RalphH , this is great! Getting close to my 10MB limit is all the more possible now!

On the server we want the converted project to run, we have a problem of MIME Type. Basically the .mem and the .data aren’t seen on the server. Until, we are able to add these MIME type (it’s a long and complicated process, since are not in complete control of the server), is there a way to change that extension to say .txt or anything else that is seen by the server?

Wondering if there is a setting or a file somewhere that can be configure. Looking at the principal JS file from the build, I can easily see where the .mem file is being use. Except changing it there, won’t affect the change in the Compressed folder.

4

The compressed folder is the exact same files, just gzip compressed. The .htaccess file will then tell apache or compatible web servers to serve those when a client requests the files without the gz extension. So you should be able to edit that to match. The question is whether your server will allow that level of setup at all, if you can’t even get it to server files with arbitrary extensions. (In that case, maybe you should consider changing your hosting setup).

5

The server should allow that level of setup. It’s just not our server, but the client’s. For security and obvious reason, we do not have access. It’s just a painfully long process.

I need to figure out the MIME type for the .mem and the .data as these are not standards.
What are they? text/plain? application/x-javascript? Something else?

6

push
We have the same problem and it would be great to know the MIME types of the .mem and .data files!
@sluice : in the mean time we just set attribute compression=“force” to our (using Apache Tomcat 7)
Maybe this is suitable for you too.

7

@lami
On my local machine (OSX), I configured Apache, and at first it didn’t work. Obviously I had to use .htaccess that comes when you do a WebGL build. Now it works (on my machine).

My issue is on the clients server, it’s using IIS (and I won’t be able to a web.config file)…

But one thing for sure, I really need to figure out those MIME types for the .mem and .data files otherwise the WebGL platform is useless to me.

Hopefully we get an answer soon.

8

you can use application/octet-stream as both are binary files

3 Likes
9

@Ostwind
Just confirming that using application/octet-stream for both .mem and .data file works!

1 Like
10

Can anyone point me to tutorials on how to configure WAMP to serve Unity WebGL compressed files?

I know close to nothing about Apache, but I installed WampServer 2.5 on my Windows 7 PC so that I can test WebGL exports locally and not have to upload those huge files to a server every time I make a build. WAMP works ok as is and I can load my uncompressed WebGL projects, but out of curiosity (and also to learn what to tell to my clients when they deploy Unity WebGL apps), I’d like to know what to change in the Apache config to support those compressed files

11

you can google: wampserver gzip

or other thousands of apache tutorials around the net for case specific instructions

12

I made a comparison of webplayer and webgl builds made from the same project.
Basically looks like the webgl loads 1,5 longer, as the file’s weight is 1,5 bigger.
But as a reward the webgl loads 3 times faster once the files get cached on the machine. (in Firefox on my desktop computer)
Here it is in my blog post:

1 Like
13

@tomekkie2 , nice comparison.

14

Wow … that is all so cool.
I am a long time Unity developer but totally new to all this server side stuff. Have always wanted
to know. And now with gl it looks as though I finally need to.
Is there a tutorial or other source that someone could point me to that would give me some sort of
practical overview? A general, not necessarily basic, how too? Something to get me started?
Thanks …

15

Hi, good to know this i make an empty scene with a cube, i was trying to configure my server on Amazon to serve compressed files, i manage to activate the mod_deflate on my apache server, i use this tool Gzip compression testing tool to be sure i’m serving gzip files and it says “gzip working compressing 60%”.

but apparently only works on .js (as you can see on the image) but the files .data an .mem files keep serving with full size even i add the application/octet-stream, i´m doing something wrong but im not very good at servers, maibe you can give me an advice at what i´m missing. i leave the code i add to the httpd.conf to activate gzip.

669Ă—856 145 KB

httpd.conf code

# mod_deflate configuration
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
# Restrict compression to these MIME types
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/octet-stream
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
# Level of compression (Highest 9 - Lowest 1)
DeflateCompressionLevel 9
# Netscape 4.x has some problems.
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
# Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
# MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
# Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

thanx

16

After hours of trying to port our project to WebGL i can said: WebGL is veeeery young and unstable to run rich content. For example. After compilation we have 3.5mb stripped mono assemblies. DLL => IL2CPP => Emscripten => JS == 647mb(uncompressed) ~60 mb(compresed). And the problem is: some browsers just cant allocate > 600 mb of RAM to compile to ASM JS and execute. More over its just cant allocate more 512 mb to emulate unmanaged RAM for asmjs runtime… Its very very sad:(…

17

PrefabEvolution, that sounds extreme and likely a bug; did you build a development build ? Could you file a bugreport with us ? Preferrably just the entire project, but otherwise (if it’s big) please file it after doing a build and zip up Temp/StagingArea/Data/Managed (in the project folder).

18

I’m getting a similar problem trying to get a scene working. It’s trying to allocate about 1.6GB of memory but it (obviously) fails. I’m not using a dev build and I’ve tried some different levels of stripping / optimisation levels to no avail.

I’ll file a bug report tomorrow when I’m at work again.