Tool 2: Gain X-Ray Vision with Adaptive Performance

Why: For any game developer, especially those creating games with complex workloads, you need to extract as much performance possible from the game. Any performance issues not only affect gameplay, but can also drain the battery life of mobile devices. Adaptive Performance, with instructions on how to install here, is a package from Unity that allows you to tune-up your game to improve the overall performance. 

 

How: Adaptive Performance allows you to identify any issues with your game quickly and then tweak your applications to improve performance in a controlled way. This has a minimal impact on game development, while also saving time and costs. The tool uses four key metrics to tune-up gaming performance:

• Desired frame rate based on previous frames

• Device temperature level

• Device proximity to thermal event

• Game application bound by CPU or GPU.

 

Adaptive Performance can be integrated with a device simulator, which means you can test various scenarios rather than waiting for the device to heat up before benchmarking tests. With the thermal settings in device simulator, you can set the device to throttle or to send out a warning when throttling is imminent or when the device overheating. 

The performance settings in Adaptive Performance allow you to set any bottlenecks to the CPU, GPU, or a target frame rate. You can also set CPU and GPU levels to simulate the frequency of your game’s performance to help to establish any performance issues.

 

Further reading:

• Unity Adaptive Performance Manual

• Unity Blog - Build stunning mobile games that run smoothly with Adaptive Performance 

• Unity Blog - Mobile performance optimization with Adaptive Performance 4.0