11 ms·

Unity is still using Mono? The CoreCLR should easily perform twice as good as Mono in many cases.

by andix 4y ago

wnzl 4y ago
Yes and no, Unity uses its own fork of Mono. When .NET evolved it keeps on using the forked mono and apparently CoreCLR is one of their priorities accordingly to blogpost here https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-next https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-n...
codetrotter 4y ago
> Unity is still using Mono? https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Mono.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Mono.html Seems so. In fact, not just Mono but their own fork of Mono.
0xDEF 4y ago
They use their own heavily optimized Mono runtime that is .Net Standard 2.1 compliant and supports all C# 8 and many C# 9 features. As a C#/.Net developer I'm satisfied with the C# and .Net support in Unity. The pain points are elsewhere. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/dotnetProfileSupport.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/dotnetProfileSupport.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CSharpCompiler.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CSharpCompiler.html
- glenneroo 4y ago
  > The pain points are elsewhere. Not sure if this is what you mean but one huge pain point for almost every dev is that code changes necessitate a project reload, which, even with domain reload can be extremely slow and gets worse the larger the project becomes.... which is why I'm extremely exuberant about the new hot-reload plugins which allow editing code while a project is running and changes will be patched in real time! For me it's comparable to when SSDs first came out, finally we were able to ditch slow spinning rust. I've been using it for a couple days now and I've probably already saved a few hours. I've been using HotReload.net which is free for Unity Personal Edition but there's also an asset on the store for ~40€ but i haven't looked at it yet.
- Rohansi 4y ago
  As a developer on one of larger Unity games - yes, there are paint points elsewhere. There are many pain points. The poor performance of Mono/IL2CPP is a significant one for us. We have a different game built on .NET (Core) and performance is significantly better. I also wouldn't call Unity's Mono 'heavily optimized' because they definitely trail behind standard Mono. Unity doesn't even support Mono's generational garbage collector but it has been the default in Mono since 2016.
  - Mikushi 4y ago
    Out of curiosity what engine are you using that leverages .NET (core) ? Stride?
    - Rohansi 4y ago
      It's an engine written in C++ (not Unreal) that we've added C# scripting to. So it's in the same kind of situation as Unity where their engine calls from C# land need to be marshaled into calls to native code and back, which of course has overhead.
konsuko 4y ago
They have to use Mono. New .NET Core Runtime does not yet support all platforms that Mono used to support, and won't for a while.
- jackmott42 4y ago
  You can use mono for targets that need it and .NET 6 for those that don't
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Keeping two implementations side by side would be expensive to maintain and not a good user experience: you start writing nice, "modern" .NET6 code and then need to rewrite things to run on top of .NET4-ish (and the older BCL and C#). And I think .NET6 supports mobile now?
    - kevingadd 4y ago
      Mono was largely folded into CoreCLR a couple releases ago and part of that infrastructure is used to support some targets like mobile and WebAssembly. [disclosure: I work on Mono at Microsoft.]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jackmott42 4y ago
      Yet Godot manages it, with a volunteer team and a better overall user experience.
Thaxll 4y ago
CoreCLR is not built for game, the fork from Unity is so there is little chance that CoreCLR is faster.
- andix 4y ago
  What are the specific requirements for games? C++ is also not built for games. It’s built for anything, including games.
  - mastax 4y ago
    Consistent low latency, perhaps.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - andix 4y ago
      I don't see a lot of options how you should optimize that, besides using allocation free code. .NET (Core) did a lot of work into this direction for Kestrel HTTP server already (Span, ref structs). It's still a managed platform with a garbage collector, but I don't think games have such low-latency requirements, that can't be handled with the standard garbage collector. A few milliseconds are usually fine for games, even with 120Hz the time between two frames is still 8ms. And garbage collection can be suspended during critical phases.
- jackmott42 4y ago
  This is not correct, as can be readily proven to yourself by measuring.
- gcl09 4y ago
  Sorry but that makes no sense. Here are quotes from the C#/.NET group director at unity about how the migration to CoreCLR should bring a large perf boost: "One thing that should help in the future is the migration to CoreCLR that should provide a great boost in terms of performance."[1] "What we have seen, outside of Unity, is that performance with CoreCLR compared to Mono should range from 2x to 10x faster." [2] [1] https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-optimizations-for-gameobjects.1403782/#post-8829403 https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-optimizations-fo... [2] https://forum.unity.com/threads/expected-performance-of-new-coreclr-vs-mono-vs-il2cpp.1403353/#post-8828794 https://forum.unity.com/threads/expected-performance-of-new-...

Unity is still using Mono? The CoreCLR should easily perform twice as good as Mono in many cases.

by andix 4y ago

Unity is still using Mono? The CoreCLR should easily perform twice as good as Mono in many cases.

wnzl 4y ago

Yes and no, Unity uses its own fork of Mono. When .NET evolved it keeps on using the forked mono and apparently CoreCLR is one of their priorities accordingly to blogpost here https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-next https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/unity-and-net-whats-n...

codetrotter 4y ago

> Unity is still using Mono? https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Mono.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Mono.html Seems so. In fact, not just Mono but their own fork of Mono.

0xDEF 4y ago

They use their own heavily optimized Mono runtime that is .Net Standard 2.1 compliant and supports all C# 8 and many C# 9 features. As a C#/.Net developer I'm satisfied with the C# and .Net support in Unity. The pain points are elsewhere. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/dotnetProfileSupport.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/dotnetProfileSupport.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CSharpCompiler.html https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CSharpCompiler.html

glenneroo 4y ago
> The pain points are elsewhere. Not sure if this is what you mean but one huge pain point for almost every dev is that code changes necessitate a project reload, which, even with domain reload can be extremely slow and gets worse the larger the project becomes.... which is why I'm extremely exuberant about the new hot-reload plugins which allow editing code while a project is running and changes will be patched in real time! For me it's comparable to when SSDs first came out, finally we were able to ditch slow spinning rust. I've been using it for a couple days now and I've probably already saved a few hours. I've been using HotReload.net which is free for Unity Personal Edition but there's also an asset on the store for ~40€ but i haven't looked at it yet.
Rohansi 4y ago
As a developer on one of larger Unity games - yes, there are paint points elsewhere. There are many pain points. The poor performance of Mono/IL2CPP is a significant one for us. We have a different game built on .NET (Core) and performance is significantly better. I also wouldn't call Unity's Mono 'heavily optimized' because they definitely trail behind standard Mono. Unity doesn't even support Mono's generational garbage collector but it has been the default in Mono since 2016.
- Mikushi 4y ago
  Out of curiosity what engine are you using that leverages .NET (core) ? Stride?
  - Rohansi 4y ago
    It's an engine written in C++ (not Unreal) that we've added C# scripting to. So it's in the same kind of situation as Unity where their engine calls from C# land need to be marshaled into calls to native code and back, which of course has overhead.

konsuko 4y ago

They have to use Mono. New .NET Core Runtime does not yet support all platforms that Mono used to support, and won't for a while.

jackmott42 4y ago
You can use mono for targets that need it and .NET 6 for those that don't
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  Keeping two implementations side by side would be expensive to maintain and not a good user experience: you start writing nice, "modern" .NET6 code and then need to rewrite things to run on top of .NET4-ish (and the older BCL and C#). And I think .NET6 supports mobile now?
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    Mono was largely folded into CoreCLR a couple releases ago and part of that infrastructure is used to support some targets like mobile and WebAssembly. [disclosure: I work on Mono at Microsoft.]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jackmott42 4y ago
    Yet Godot manages it, with a volunteer team and a better overall user experience.

Thaxll 4y ago

CoreCLR is not built for game, the fork from Unity is so there is little chance that CoreCLR is faster.

andix 4y ago
What are the specific requirements for games? C++ is also not built for games. It’s built for anything, including games.
- mastax 4y ago
  Consistent low latency, perhaps.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - andix 4y ago
    I don't see a lot of options how you should optimize that, besides using allocation free code. .NET (Core) did a lot of work into this direction for Kestrel HTTP server already (Span, ref structs). It's still a managed platform with a garbage collector, but I don't think games have such low-latency requirements, that can't be handled with the standard garbage collector. A few milliseconds are usually fine for games, even with 120Hz the time between two frames is still 8ms. And garbage collection can be suspended during critical phases.
jackmott42 4y ago
This is not correct, as can be readily proven to yourself by measuring.
gcl09 4y ago
Sorry but that makes no sense. Here are quotes from the C#/.NET group director at unity about how the migration to CoreCLR should bring a large perf boost: "One thing that should help in the future is the migration to CoreCLR that should provide a great boost in terms of performance."[1] "What we have seen, outside of Unity, is that performance with CoreCLR compared to Mono should range from 2x to 10x faster." [2] [1] https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-optimizations-for-gameobjects.1403782/#post-8829403 https://forum.unity.com/threads/performance-optimizations-fo... [2] https://forum.unity.com/threads/expected-performance-of-new-coreclr-vs-mono-vs-il2cpp.1403353/#post-8828794 https://forum.unity.com/threads/expected-performance-of-new-...