Problem: Unity 5.6.1 - Gear VR: Choppy movements in an almost empty scene. Samsung Galaxy 8+If I create a new Unity project and add a simple moving sphere or a default particle emitter and publish to Gear VR, the resulting movement is choppy regardless of frame rate.Has anyone else experienced this problem.I will provide details if this is not already a known issue, as I have performed lots of troubleshooting tests already.I'm hoping the solution is something simple like turning on a setting. I have setup my project as per the Oculus and Unity documentation.What I would love is a bare bones, empty, pre-made unity project with all the correct settings for Gear VR set, TimeManager settings, etc.Thanks,Steve

[BackButton issue ]Hey Guys, I think we got the root of the problem, it is actually a general unity android issue from what our understanding so far ( not vr specific), we are able to test a fix and created a PR for our Unity partner to merge, will update here when we hear back from our partner about detail release schedule, thanks everyone's help on the repro projectsTech details below if anyone care about the exact reason..Most mobile phones today are using Big.Little CPU architecture, Big cores for performance , little cores for saving energy. For achieving a better performance, Unity optimized it to lock certain threads ( including Unity main ) on Big cores by setting Thread affinity mask, however, when player hit back buttons, the android activity will be push into background, the OS will do a bunch of stuff mess with core affinity eg, put threads onto small cores for power saving, then after switch the app to foreground again, their original thread affinity had been lost, so those unity thread won't be able to run on the cores they were optimized for. that' why we see UnityMain start running on little cores. For fixing this problem, we have to store all thread affinity before the app was paused, then restore them after the app was resumed. Basically, app/engine has the responsibility to restore the thread affinity. Unity seems missing this part of code to handle cases like this ( from what I see ). which means all unity versions having problems ( yes, including 5.4, I'm able to repro the problem on 5.4 as well ), but it certain affect VR apps more than other android app since VR is very performance hungry, also this affect certain phones more seriously (like S7 EU / S8 EU / S8 US) because those phone little cores is much weaker than big cores. (Also, the problem is not always reproducible since Unity main can run on the wrong cores, it can also run on the correct cores by chance )Extra: if you turn off multithread rendering under your Unity player setting, the problem is less severe, but we totally understand this is not a valid workaround.

hey @stevehinan I'm trying to profile your app, however, from what I saw, the scene is much more than "simple", there are some quite big particle sprites covering a big area of the phone screen. those are super expensive. which could be where the waitForGPU from, however, I don't see the big spikes like what shows in your screen shot ( at the menu stage ). Can you give more information?* which scene and which stage the problem shows up? * have you ever tried to delete the particle effects and see the impacts? * is it possible to repro it in a static scene instead of the full game ( hard to locate profiling point otherwise )Also for the issue itself, just want to confirm again, on the same app, S8+ US performs much worse than S7 US?The good news is we do found a few GPU issues on Unity 5.5.2p1 up and pushed the suggesting fix to Unity, we can expect a big gpu improvement after they are integrated, especially on Qualcomm devices, I'll update it here. Thanks

I have this exact issue (same phone - Galaxy S7 Exynos, Android 7.0). When you press back button and come back, performance is much worse. The same build on S6 is fine. Unity 5.6+

@jianz great to hear you've been able to repro the issue.When I mentioned 5.4.5 working ok, what I meant was an old apk of my app built on 5.4.5 runs without issue on the S7 phone (its the same apk that's live on the store). The repro project I shared here was made specifically in 5.6 to demonstrate the issue sorry.

Hi @stevehinan and everyonethe back button issue should be fixed under Patch 5.6.4p1, thanks for all the helps https://beta.unity3d.com/download/e67c4b7007d5/UnityDownloadAssistant-5.6.4p1.exe?_ga=2.168754722.2038378753.1508797842-60660381.1486692714Jian

Unity 5.6.1 - Gear VR: Choppy movements in an almost empty scene

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Hexapuss_Steve
Heroic Explorer
9 years ago
Hi and thank you for your fast response.

The bug link you shared with me sounds like what I am experiencing. The solution is to wait for a Unity patch that solves the issue. If you know of a different solution I would love to hear it.

I have attached a profile image of my Samsung Galaxy 8+ running an almost empty unity scene. Just 1 moving default sphere, 1 default particle emitter and a directional light. All 3 game object settings are optimized.
Hexapuss_Steve
Heroic Explorer
9 years ago
Profiler capture Unity 5.6.1p4
Problem still exists.
Is there an option in unity, that needs to be set by me to solve this WaitForGPU issue?
sfaok
Protege
9 years ago
I think I have the same problem. Using Unity 5.6.1p4 my app works perfectly smoothly using an S6 phone, but on S7 performance is choppy even in modest scenes. Unfortunately I don't have an S8 to test.

There were no issues in Unity 5.4.5, performance was smooth across both S6 and S7.
sfaok
Protege
9 years ago
Updating Android on my S7 appears to have fixed my issue, things are much smoother now. Apologies, probably unrelated to your problem.

Edit : Sorry issue is still there, not sure why performance appeared smoother after update but it was short lived.
Hexapuss_Steve
Heroic Explorer
9 years ago
Hi Imperativity,

Yes, I have a dropbox link to my Unity project. I'll send this link to you privately and not publicly on this forum thread. Please tell me what email address to send the link to.
Project details: Unity 2017.1, Publish to Gear VR, Test device = Galaxy 8+ (US version) with latest update as of July 16 2017.

Thanks,
Steve
appl044
Explorer
9 years ago
This might be related.
https://forums.oculus.com/developer/discussion/52675/horribly-slow-fps-on-galaxy-s8
JianZ
Expert Protege
9 years ago
hey @stevehinan

I'm trying to profile your app, however, from what I saw, the scene is much more than "simple", there are some quite big particle sprites covering a big area of the phone screen. those are super expensive. which could be where the waitForGPU from, however, I don't see the big spikes like what shows in your screen shot ( at the menu stage ).

Can you give more information?
* which scene and which stage the problem shows up?
* have you ever tried to delete the particle effects and see the impacts?
* is it possible to repro it in a static scene instead of the full game ( hard to locate profiling point otherwise )

Also for the issue itself, just want to confirm again, on the same app, S8+ US performs much worse than S7 US?

The good news is we do found a few GPU issues on Unity 5.5.2p1 up and pushed the suggesting fix to Unity, we can expect a big gpu improvement after they are integrated, especially on Qualcomm devices, I'll update it here.

Thanks
Hexapuss_Steve
Heroic Explorer
9 years ago
Hi @JianZ

Thank you for your quick response.

2 items I am troubleshooting:

1 - (RESOLVED) The previous framerate issue this thread is based on has now been resolved by upgrading to Unity 2017.1, updating my Samsung Galaxy S8+ (USA), updating the Oculus app and rebuilding the Gear VR game. The framerate has greatly improved.

2 - When testing my Unity game in Gear VR and I press the Gear VR back button, and then return to the game, the framerate is slower. The profiler screenshot shows before and after the back button is pressed, and the large spike is the actual transition of using the back button, dividing the before and the after.

Thanks,
Steve
#iloveoculus
JianZ
Expert Protege
9 years ago
@stevehinan

1. Great

2. this is interesting, just want to confirm, for the back button slow down issue, does it still exist in the project you send to us? some user report the opposite behavior ( press back button and come back will increasing FPS ), but we never got a good repro case, can you provide more information for this, like when this will happen ? menu stage? which unity version? which model (still on S8+(USA ) ?

Thank you
Hexapuss_Steve
Heroic Explorer
9 years ago
@JianZ

Yes,
The project you have reproduces this behavior every time.

Answers to your questions:

- When will this happen? - Repro steps on phone: Close all apps, launch game on phone, insert phone to Gear VR headset, play game (good framerate), press back button and return to game, slow and choppy framerate forever, until game is shut down and restarted. This reproduces every time.

- menu stage? - This game has no menu stage, this behavior reproduces any time in the game.
- Unity version 2017.1
- Samsung Galaxy S8+

Note: I am using the OVRPlatformMenu script provided in the Oculus Utilities to enable the Gear VR back button.

I am in San Francisco and can bring the Samsung S8+ to you for testing.

Thanks,
Steve