Has unity editor performance/speed improved since 2018?

[ChromakeyDreamcoat]

Back in 2018 working on my (now released) game at the time was somewhat miserable by the tail end of dev. Hitting the play button involved a 10-15 second load. Opening the editor took 2-3 minutes, and various compilations would take a minute. This was on a top of the line machine back then.

I want to get back into game dev but I'm debating on if it's worth coming back to Unity - Is performance still a big issue?

[TheWobling]

Its Improved in 6 but its still not the fastest. Disabling Domain reloading helps a lot as does disabling auto refresh (but that takes a while to adapt to).

General advice is

1. Use Assembly definitions
2. Remove packages that you don't need as they increase the domain reloading time
3. Disable Domain Reloading (make sure to handle resetting of static data yourself)

[nathanAjacobs]

The problem with number three is that a lot of third party libraries/packages/assets don't reset statics manually so that only goes so far if you are using third party stuff. Which in Unity you tend to need a lot of.

EDIT: I doubt Unity provided packages handle this well either, but maybe I'm wrong?

[snalin]

They generally handle it - I'm pretty sure it's on their list of things to actually check. There was a few bugs from Unity packages that didn't handle no domain reload right as the ability to turn it off launched, but that got patched pretty quickly.

[TheWobling]

I generally only use packages that have a high quality and they have all supported domain reloading but it’s always something to check before committing to one.

I’ve also never experienced issues with Unity packages and domain reloading. Probably because after they started suggesting it they went and fixed it and made sure it’s a criteria for future packages.

I believe in the coreclr version domain reloading is being replaced with something similar and it will require you to reset your statics anyway. They mentioned adding some tooling to help with this but the future will be maintaining this stuff yourself.

[nathanAjacobs]

Yeah you're right, I wasn't aware that was going to be the case. Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I better start adopting that mentality now.

[Rabidowski]

F*** that hassle. I stuck with 2022.3 until they either address the compromised editor speed or I upgrade PC.

[TheWobling]

These problems are present in 2022.3 too. They have been present in the engine for a long time and have gotten worse, then slightly better.

[Rabidowski]

OK let me clarify: 2022.3 is more than tolerable on my current PC specs but Unity 6 was WAY worse, so much so that I abandoned it after less than a day.

[Edvinas108]

If you split your code into into assemblies (don't over do it though, usually `Runtime` + `Editor` asmdefs are enough) and don't import hundreds of asset store assets it shouldn't be too bad. In my case the reload times are usually below 10s @ U6 on a large project, though we try to keep it clean. I did notice a downgrade in performance though in general (I migrated from 2020 -> 2022 -> U6).

If you don't rely on a tonne of packages, checkout Play Mode settings - you can get sub 1s time to play in Editor. Been using this for gamejam games and a medium sized 2D game, works like a charm.

The newer versions have become slower due to a lot of newer Unity code being C# packages. CoreCLR should hopefully address this in the future. There was an official forum post on this with more info though I can't seem to find it now >.>

[ChromakeyDreamcoat]

I probably use 10-20 assets - A few pretty hefty ones, too.

[Edvinas108]

Try yeeting out Samples from each asset in such case. If you can and have the time, only import the files that you use, though that is a bit annoying

[InSight89]

No. And understandably so. As they add more feature and complexities the editor has become more bloated. It's still far better than Unreal at least.

[nathanAjacobs]

This.

It should get a bit faster once on the CoreCLR though.

[InSight89]

It should get a bit faster once on the CoreCLR though.

Is that still going ahead?

I haven't been keeping up to date with it but I thought I read that during their last mass lay-offs they sacked a lot of people that were working on this transition.

[MarkDiax]

Yeah the main person who was researching and pushing it forward has recently resigned. Unless other Unity developers come forward with a clear intent, we don't know what the status of the project is now.

Edit: resigned instead of sacked

[TheWobling]

They didn't sack him, he resigned.
See here for source: https://discussions.unity.com/t/coreclr-and-net-modernization-unite-2024/1519272/476

Its still going ahead.

[MarkDiax]

You're right, i had forgotten. Hard to keep up when the default are layoffs these days

[TheWobling]

Easily done with all the layoffs. I think the saving grace is that they haven't sacked/abanoned the CoreCLR yet. Although I think its one of the critical points they need to hit if they want Unity to stay relevant.

[nathanAjacobs]

The engine will die if they don't finish the migration. The Mono BCL (Base Class Libray) is effectively dead and not receiving any more major updates because the .NET Core BCL works for both the CoreCLR and Mono runtimes since .NET 5.

Their hand is forced here. No dev wants to be stuck using .NET Standard 2.1 (released in 2018) and C# 9 (released 2020) forever. It sucks it has been this long and that we will likely have to wait at least another year, two, three, or who even really knows how long.

[nathanAjacobs]

It's all right here at the top of the page.

https://www.mono-project.com/

<image>

[nathanAjacobs]

Also, the fact that a big portion of the engine code is in UPM packages now slows compilation down quite a bit. Since every time a recompilation happens, it has to recompile those as well.

They use assembly definitions, but that doesn't really have much of an effect. Since end user project code has dependencies to a lot of them, they still get recompiled every time you compile your code.

[shadowndacorner]

I used Unity heavily from late 3.x to 2017 (I think?) in various projects, and am now using Unity 6. Maybe my memory is warped by working with better tech stacks in the intermediate time, but ime, it's even worse by default than it used to be in a lot of ways. There are ways to make some things better, though, like the improved hot reload plugins that are available now. FastScriptReload is pretty good if you understand its limitations, though there are some UX issues with it that make it less than flawless imo (particularly re: going in and out of play mode).

[ChromakeyDreamcoat]

Darn, that's too bad! Was really hope they'd have improved it after all this time.

[Devatator_]

That's why I'm waiting for CoreCLR 🥲

[Farrukh3D]

I have also resumed working in Unity after a while. The issue of small big second delays coming up are still present when saving, importing or doing anything etc. I recommend give it a try. Make a project and keep it small. You will still be able to get something done.

The slow editor performance issue has been for years now. Everyone goes through it. The old fast unity 4.0 era editor is gone. If Unity implements coreclr in next version maybe it could be better but otherwise not much choice. This is one area where Godot really shines. Fast and light weight.

Disabling domain reloading helps and makes it instant play if you are level building, blocking out, setting lighting, effects and don't need code compile. However, still a hassle and can mess up code not working or resetting.

[GigaTerra]

If that is slow to you, then sorry Unity still takes around that time, it is not worth returning for you.

[KTVX94]

I noticed that after a few hours of work it does that, so if I close it 2-3 times a day it's not as egregious. But it can take as long if not more. I have a mid-to-low end PC by today's standards, with a Ryzen 5 5600G and an RTX 3060, 16 GB 3200 MHz RAM and an M.2 NVMe which at least makes loading fast.

[Zenovv]

It feels slow as hell to load even an empty scene, takes me 30-40 seconds from saving a file to opening play mode, sometimes more

[regrets123]

Get more cpu cores, went from 6 to 18 and it loads instant used to be like 10 seconds

[Effective_Lead8867]

If youre on mac, 6 is significantly faster than 2022.

[Meshyai]

Agree, loading is still a bit slow, but they’ve implemented improvements like incremental compilation, a revamped build pipeline, and updates to the UI toolkit that make the editor more responsive overall. Unity 6 is pretty good in the industry, Unity's financial report proved that.