performance degradation after system update (unity 2018.3, wavevr 2.1.8)

[frg-kova]

Hey guys

I had my game running at solid 75 fps at all times. After we upgraded the device to latest update (system update 2.0), performance massively degraded and dropped down to 38 fps (vsynced I guess) on most of the scenes. We're on Unity 2018.3.6f1, WaveVR 2.1.8, VIU 1.10.3.

We first noticed the problem as we gave the final build to our producer, who reported low fps, while we had high fps. After testing on older devices seem to not have the problem but new devices did, and after we noticed our dev device has an upgrade scheduled, we tested with the latest system update 2.0 and hit low fps as well.

Any ideas on what did cause performance degradation and how to fix it?

Another thing we noticed, is that if we do haptic feedback pulse every frame, originally fps dropped from 75 to 60, but after the upgrade it drops from 75 to 20.

I've seen in another thread
"We have performance improvement based on our internal testing in coming 3.1 version."
Is this going to fix it or is it unrelated?
Do you know when 3.1 will be out approximately?

Any help is appreciated.

 

@Cotta @Tony PH Lin

 

[Cotta]

Hi @frg-kova,

It's a weird problem. Is it possible you can provide us apk file for our RD team to check? You may send me where to download by private message. It will be used for internal debugging only.

And regarding to the frame drop caused by haptic. It is a known issue we've already confirmed needs to be fixed by controller firmware upgrade. We are working on it and will release a fix over FOTA once ready. The whole process may take couple months. 

[frg-kova]

Sent you a DM with apk link.

After upgrade to Unity 2018.4 / WaveVR 3.0.2 / VIU 1.10.4 - we've seen improvement, and is close, but still not as good and below solid 75 fps as before the update.

This is all GPU and rendering related, the CPU isn't the bottleneck.

[Cotta]

Hi @frg-kova,

We tested your apk that built with WaveVR 2.1.8, on Focus Plus w/ firmware 1.63.x and WAVE SDK 3.0.8. The frame rate is around 70 fps most of the time. We didn't see it dropped to 38 fps as described, but it's not solid 75 fps either. Would you confirm your device firmware and WAVE SDK version is the same as what we use here?

For the latest update you tried on WaveVR 3.0.2. We suggest to enable 'Virtual Reality Supported -> Single Pass' for better performance. You may refer to https://hub.vive.com/storage/docs/en-us/WaveVR_Render.html#preference

Just to double confirm.
  - You were seeing solid 75 fps with WaveVR 2.1.8 before firmware upgrade
  - The same WaveVR 2.1.8 apk drops to 38 fps after firmware upgrade
  - Changing to WaveVR 3.0.2 almost solves the problem
  - Still, WaveVR 2.1.8 on device before firmware upgrade is better than WaveVR 3.0.2 on device after firmware upgrade

Is our understanding all correct?

[frg-kova]

Yes that is correct.
Going single pass is a CPU optimization and we're GPU bound. We may try it but I don't expect it to help, and even if it did, I would say there's still a small performance drop somewhere.
Sorry but this is all I can give you. The apk should run noticeably better on older firmware for heavy views. I also can't debug the issue further since we upgraded all our Focuses.

 

[Cotta]

We're trying to clarify it back on older firmware here. Would you confirm your device firmware version (after upgrade) is 1.63.xx now? Do you remember the firmware version before upgrade? We saw there were two older published firmware versions 1.10.xx and 1.50.xx. If you can clarify the exact version number you saw better frame rate, it will be helpful to narrow down the scope investigating.

[frg-kova]

Our current firmware is 1.63.623.1. I don't remember the firmware version before the update. Bef ore I updated I do remember it said "system update 2.0".

@Tony PH Lin @Cotta

[Cotta]

Hi @frg-kova,

We tried running your apk on older firmware 1.10, and indeed we see higher fps than on the latest 1.63. It's not solid 75fps, but yes the difference is noticeable. We don't think it is a common degradation because it is the first time we're reported about similar issue. It will take some time for the team to investigate what caused the frame rate drop. I'll get back to you when we have further findings.

[frg-kova]

I'm glad you were able to confirm we're not crazy. Thanks for the effort.

On a seemingly unrelated note, app was made with unity with LWRP, and we noticed that unity's cubemap skybox was very slow. When we replaced it with our own skybox (nothing special, just regular skybox shader) we got a big boost in performance. Probably not related but just mentioning it if something comes to mind to you guys.