archived-dots

[pliant pike]

but what if it doesn't exist yet

[slim nebula]

structs must either have no constructor, or must have a parameterless constructor that populates all fields. so if you create an EntityQuery variable without assigning anything to it, it will construct it that way

with the value equivillant to default(EntityQuery)

EntityQuery blah; and EntityQuery blah = default(EntityQuery); statements are identical

default of a struct is a populated struct

[hollow sorrel]

oo interesting, seems like entityqueries use same trick as nativearrays where it just holds a ptr to allocated data somewhere else

don't see a way to check if they're actually initialized tho

i think unity just assumes they're always gonna be initialized if you're using them

[slim nebula]

i mean you could make a nullable one. EntityQuery? blah; then you can do if (blah.HasValue) MyFunction(blah.Value)

[pliant pike]

it removes the error so I don't know I'll keep going and see if it messes up 😕

[slim nebula]

burst might hate that tho I dunno

[slim nebula]

you're null checking the EntityQuery object? that should give you a compile error

can you go to definition on EntityQuery?

f12 by default if you're using vs or vs code

does it say class? or struct? are you sure you're on the right entities version?

[pliant pike]

it says struct

definitely sure

[slim nebula]

oh it has a conversion operator on it

[pliant pike]

I'm having to sort out other errors though so it still might not fully compile yet

I have weird ordering issues

[slim nebula]

so I think this would be right @pliant pike

            EntityQuery a = default;
            if (a == default)
            {
            }

[pliant pike]

ok np I'll use that instead thanks

[drowsy pagoda]

Does anyone know the formula to extract scale as float3 format from a float4x4 matrix? Say from LocalToWorld or LocalToParent?

[verbal leaf]

I am having trouble understanding how to resolve this error. I moved it outside... 🤔

[slim nebula]

var localMySqrt = mySqrt;, then reference localMySqrt in your query

burst doesn't want to lookup the class instance from inside your job to get the current value.

[verbal leaf]

I didnt follow that second part

[slim nebula]

MyUpdatePositionsToGridFormations is a class

you could update the value on that class instance from somewhere else

[verbal leaf]

blue variables are good for burst, white variables are bad for burst, it seems

[slim nebula]

burst can't handle that

[verbal leaf]

Is it that simple?

[slim nebula]

maaaaaybe? I'm not 100% on that

[verbal leaf]

If it was that would be sweet for simple street joe me

Im having trouble following past the second thing you posted

Well the good news is, it compiles and runs, and runs fast with 200,000 entities

[drowsy pagoda]

I got it! Your equation was backwards lol. Multiplying 4x4 matrix by float4x4.Scale(scale) returns the 4x4 matrix SCALED by the amount you multiplied, it does NOT extract the scale that exists in the matrix originally.
Here is the formula to extract the scale from a matrix:
new float3(math.length(matrix[0].xyz), math.length(matrix[1].xyz), math.length(matrix[2].xyz));

When I apply that to LTW, it will give me the world scale of the entity even if it's scale LTP is set to 1.

The set back is that it takes a couple of frames before the LTW scale is changed from the moment it is parented to another...

And to make the formula more performant:

public static float3 Scale(this float4x4 matrix) => math.sqrt(new float3(
  math.lengthsq(matrix[0].xyz),
  math.lengthsq(matrix[1].xyz),
  math.lengthsq(matrix[2].xyz)));

var entityScale = entityLocalToWorld.Value.Scale();
😉

Is there any built-in way to execute a Entities.ForEach at fixed intervals (say every 2 seconds)? Or do I just add a counter to a system and just do a condition check against that on each frame?

[crude sierra]

I don't know of any built in timeouts

[drowsy pagoda]

Yeah I can't find anything either.

[crude sierra]

did anyone get a chance to build a navigation grid in ECS? or at least use OverlapBox in ECS context?

[whole gyro]

Hmm, not sure why it wasn't working for you. This gives me the same results as your formula:

public static float3 Scale(this float4x4 matrix) => math.mul(matrix, new float4(1, 1, 1, 0)).xyz;

[drowsy pagoda]

Hmm...I'll try again, maybe I made a typo somewhere lol. If yours works, then it sure it much more efficient than my way.

Nope...scale is not even close!

[whole gyro]

I accomplished this by creating a CustomSystemGroup and then overriding the FixedRateManager field. There are some built-in options you can use such as FixedRateSimpleManager. Once set up, any system you put in this system group will update at the specified fixed rate.

[drowsy pagoda]

I am applying this formula to an entity that is nested deep inside a tree, and the parents can have different scales. I want to extract the WORLD scale from that entity. Using the formula I posted, I was able to successfully extract an exact scale from LocalToWorld.Value

[drowsy pagoda]

Genius! Thank you!

[whole gyro]

I guess I'm assuming that your matrix is all zeros except for the diagonals. Is that not true?

[drowsy pagoda]

Yeah that was my first question I asked you when you posted the formula lol

[whole gyro]

Ah got it, sorry! Yeah I thought you were just asking hypothetically since float4x4.Scale() never populates the non-diagonals parts of the matrix. But I guess with a complex parenting setup that isn't true.

[drowsy pagoda]

Yeah, no worries, you got the gears turning and a result was born nevertheless 🙂

It works! Make sure component will have a CompositeScale and at the moment of parenting:
compositeScale.Value = float4x4.Scale(entityLocalToWorldMatrix.Value.Scale() / rootParentLocalToWorldMatrix.Value.Scale());
Bam! Entity will not change sizes 😉

[whole gyro]

Nice!

[drowsy pagoda]

But this assumes that all the nodes between root parent and the entity are default scale. Once you tweak them, it scales wrong. I'm working on a method to traverse the tree and offset the scale for each parent until it gets to root.

[drowsy pagoda]

Got it. Man that took forever. Thanks @whole gyro for all your help man. You gave me the push in the right direction.

[slow iron]

Very dumb question: If I use unity dots for physics only, but still render the gameobjects on top of those entities (so I can use gameobject unity stuff), am I no longer getting an increase in performance? (Because I still have many instantiated gameobjects)

[drowsy pagoda]

Legacy unity physics objects will NOT interact with ECS physics objects. A Rigidbody answers to a different Physics engine than does a PhysicsMass, PhysicsBody, and PhysicsVelocity. ECS physics was build completely from scratch and not on top of legacy physics.

So if you want the two worlds to interact, you will need to implement an ECS conversion workflow. DOTS does allow you to setup your scene using traditional components, it's when you hit that play button is when all the magic happens under the hood. But you need to tell ECS which legacy gameobjects you want to send to that world.
Does that make sense?

But you can have them BOTH working together side-by-side. Just not intertwined with each other.

[slow iron]

Yes I know, I guess what im asking, is rendering those gameobjects less efficient than dots?

I have them both working

So I just have a game object follow the position of my entities

instead of it being purely entity based

[drowsy pagoda]

Got it

[slow iron]

will this slow everything down more?

[drowsy pagoda]

You mean you took an entire legacy setup, and just created counterpart entities and have the gameobjects follow the entities?

[slow iron]

well im converting the gameobjects to entites

with unity's convert to entity script

[drowsy pagoda]

Oh yeah, then consider them as ECS and not traditional game objects.

[slow iron]

and then I have code that just caches the gaemobject, and has it follow the entity

ah ok

[drowsy pagoda]

Wait, why do you need the game object to follow the entity?

[slow iron]

say if I want to raycast that object

or do literally anything to that object

[drowsy pagoda]

ECS Physics has racasting and more, and it's much more performant.

It's not as simple as Physics.Raycast, but once you setup it up, it's much more optimal.

[slow iron]

yes but much less documentation, basic things are hard to implement, and unity dots is difficult to get specific data from individual objects

[drowsy pagoda]

Yes, I can't argue there. It took me a couple days to figure it out...and let me tell you it's worth it.

[slow iron]

I mean I guess its a scale of performant vs how much you implement ecs

[drowsy pagoda]

I ran simulations side by side with apples-to-apples comparison, and ECS physics outperformed by a long shot.

[slow iron]

because im using a hybrid system right now to try for the best of both worlds

[drowsy pagoda]

The objects fell and reacted way more smoother and accurate.

[slow iron]

right but if I use this ecs physics

and tie my gameobjects to those entities

im still rendering tons of gameobjects, which I thought were heavy and inefficient

is that correct

sorry if this sounds odd

[drowsy pagoda]

Yeah, I would concentrate creating ECS systems for the parts that control the tons of gameobjects and have them all converted to pure ECS. That will boost your performance drastically.

Just leave the singleton objects and such on teh legacy, concentrate porting over the parts that are the most resource intensive.

[slow iron]

ahh that makes sense

[drowsy pagoda]

If you do it right, you will be able to place tons x10 gameobjects and keep the same FPS 😉

I can't lie, it took me a good solid week to wrap my head around it. And I have to admit, I don't think I can ever go back to legacy...

for me this makes much more sense, I felt like I been waiting for something like this for a long time.

[slow iron]

well thats good lol

Ive spent a few weeks on it, and Ive given up multiple times

[drowsy pagoda]

I know the feeling. I think I only scratched the surface.

[slow iron]

Building a game with all dots would be pretty next level

but I dont think im up for the challenge lol

[drowsy pagoda]

It's a LOT more coding, not a lot of mainstream boilerplate utilities like in legacy, but I think that by the time they get to the official release, that will be taken care of.

Just take your time, baby steps. If you're in a rush, then yeah don't do it.

[slow iron]

I think it will always be more code and more complex. thats why most coding is object oriented, it just makes sense

[drowsy pagoda]

🙂

[drowsy pagoda]

Whew, it was hard enough figuring out how to compensate for scale when parenting entity into a tree of parents...I thought it would be the hardest thing to do. Now I'm trying to compensate for translation...and I'm just not getting it. I need the entity to remain where it is in world space after it has been parented to something. It's parented several levels deep in the parent tree, so it needs to calculate offsets for all parents up the tree. I assumed that the translation for each parent entity is local to their respective parent (and root to world), but I am not getting it to align. Was that an incorrect assumption?

[craggy orbit]

what's the best way to set the LocalToWorld value? i know that i have to set Translation and Rotation as well, but im having trouble converting world space (which i know the value of) to local space (which i don't know)

[drowsy pagoda]

Legacy unity allowed you to do all this on a high level. But now we are dealing with it one level lower, what unity (and pretty much all game engines) do under the hood, and that is to store pos, rot, and scale in a single matrix. With this, it’s not as simple as calculating offsets between two entities using ltw.Position - otherltw.Position like we did in legacy. This is because all three transform types are combined into a single 4x4 matrix.
If you’re not familiar with this, you gonna have to learn about transform matrixes to understand how this works. Once you do, you’ll easily understand how to convert this data.

For example, if you want to know what the local position will be for an entity against another entity, then you would need to take the inverse ltw from entity a and multiply it by entity b world position (wp) like so: inverseLTW * new float4(wp.x, wp.y, wp.z, 1). And the result would be a float4 just grab result.xyz and that will be your local cords for entity b relative to entity a.

[craggy orbit]

ok, that makes a bit of sense. since i've got the target world translation and rotation, i could do something like this for the translation, if im understanding correctly

float4x4 newLTW = float4x4.TRS(affine.Translation, affine.Rotation, 1);
localToWorld.Value = newLTW;

translation.Value = math.mul(math.inverse(newLTW), new float4(affine.Translation, 1)).xyz;
```with `affine` being the component i update in the IK code, containing a float3 (world translation) and quaternion (world rotation)

[gusty comet]

is there any good way to have array in component datas

[pliant pike]

a dynamicbuffer?

[gusty comet]

oh

is it better than nativeslice

[pliant pike]

I haven't heard of nativeslice 😕

but as far as I'm aware dynamicbuffers are the only way to store arrays on componentdatas

[dense crypt]

The correct way to set the LocalToWorld is to never set it. That's why you have Position, Rotation, Scale, etc, components. If you parent an entity to another one then those components are in local (to the parent) space.

If you need world space on any child entity you read from the LocalToWorld component.

[hollow sorrel]

@gusty comet yea can be, dynamicbuffers can be used as NativeArray and unity is prob doing that internally somewhere if that error's not from your own code

oh yea they don't go inside components

they're a component themselves

yes, but you'd have to use something like UnsafeList(or Array? not sure), which I think has been implemented in collections package now but could be wrong

and you need to be sure to allocate/dispose manually

same as nativearrays, but dynamicbuffers take care of that part internally so thought I'd mention it

are you putting reference types in nativearrays?

the main thing to worry about is that you have to make sure to dispose them yourself, because if you don't you'll have memoryleaks and unity won't warn you about it

I don't think they're thread safe

but like one of the main thing of ECS is that you don't have the same component being accessed by two threads at the same time, so if that happens maybe your dependencies are wrong somewhere

what is buffer in this case?

oh do you mean dynamicbuffers, sry I lost the context there

it's a component so if you want to store a reference you store the entity and then grab the buffer on that entity

yea

same goes for dynamicbuffers

[coarse turtle]

There's something like FixedList which you can store into an IComponentData

[coarse turtle]

FixedList.Add?

[north bay]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/notice-on-dots-compatibility-with-unity-2021-1.1091800/page-5#post-7247630 Martin is catching up again 👀

[slim nebula]

yay!

[safe lintel]

heresy, the true king is joachim

[north bay]

Joachim made this repo public today https://github.com/joeante/BurstIterationBenchmark

[safe lintel]

@north bay have you tried it?

[north bay]

No I just noticed it in my github feed today

[slim nebula]

so fucking cancer putting ads on your broadcast unity...

i keep tuning in every 10-20 minutes but it continues to be terrible

[verbal leaf]

I did it again

Now how do I approach this one? 🤔

[north bay]

Are you using DOTS Physics? Rigidbody is the MonoBehaviour one that you can only iterate over with Run and WithoutBurst

[verbal leaf]

Ohhhhh

I just now am getting into physics, that I have the staples outside physics there

I have the preview Unity.Physics, yes

[north bay]

Then you probably want to use PhysicsVelocity

I think there are some extension methods for MoveTowards target and stuff but I'm not sure

[verbal leaf]

OhISee

Its time... to hit the books!

Thanks~

[north bay]

PhysicsVelocity.CalculateVelocityToTarget() should be it

[verbal leaf]

This was the solution I ended on, and is all I really need right now XD

I have another system for feeding the input componants, so I can use them however

I put the physics script on the authoring object so it already has gravity in this instance

I think I did good

[crude sierra]

quick question: whats the equivalent to Vector3.magnitude when using float3?

[amber flicker]

math.length

[craggy orbit]

ill rephrase my question. how do i set the world transform (translation, scale) of an entity with a parent?

[dense crypt]

I actually have this exact thing pinned cause I always forget 😆 https://forum.unity.com/threads/setting-the-world-position-on-a-child-entity-using-the-transforms-system.1053320/

[craggy orbit]

ah perfect, thank you!

[jaunty herald]

Any idea why I'm getting System added twice when manually adding a system to a group during runtime? I'm removing it from its current group beforehand

[drowsy pagoda]

You know about performance penalty when using, or should I say overusing, math.length right?

Anyone has or had experience with ECS and DOTween?

[drowsy pagoda]

I jumped on the ECS wagon only a week ago, so I am not familiar with old deprecated code. I cloned a repo that I want to use in my project but it seems that it is using deprecated code. I managed to convert some on my own, but I'm stuck on this one. What are they trying to do here?

JobComponentSystem
EntityQuery m_TranslateGroup;
override JobHandle Onupdate
var translateTransforms = m_TranslateGroup.GetTransformAccessArray();

I can post the actual method, maybe someone can help me convert it?

[crude sierra]

no, what's that?

[craggy orbit]

it uses math.sqrt under the hood

if you only need to compare against another length, you can use math.lengthsq for both to skip the sqrt calculation

[craggy orbit]

thanks for that link! i was finally able to get my IK system working thanks to you 🙂

[crude sierra]

i'm doing math.length(onefloat - otherfloat) to calculate distance betweeen them

is there a better approach?

[craggy orbit]

if you need the real, actual distance, then that's the best way to go afaik (you can use math.distance(x, y) to make it a little clearer though)

[crude sierra]

gotcha, thanks

there might be a different approach for this, i'm doing it to find the closest grid cell from any world position

[craggy orbit]

ah! i dealt with something like that a while back. to make the comparisons quicker, i converted the cell position and entity position to 2 uints and compared those. gimme a sec and i'll get some example code

this is the code i used to get the uint (and back out, but it'll give the position of the bin, not the original input). it's not perfect since it has to be constrained, but it works pretty well imo.

        [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining)]
        public static uint PositionToBin(float3 position, int3 gridSize, float cellSize)
        {
            position = math.floor((position + (float3)gridSize * 0.5f) / cellSize);
            return (uint)(position.x * gridSize.x * gridSize.x
                        + position.y * gridSize.y
                        + position.z);
        }

        [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining)]
        public static float3 BinToPosition(uint bin, int3 gridSize, float cellSize)
        {
            float3 gridSizeHalf = (float3)gridSize * 0.5f;
            int binInt = (int)bin;

            float x = binInt / (gridSize.x * gridSize.x);
            float y = (binInt / gridSize.y) % gridSize.y;
            float z = binInt % gridSize.z;

            return (new float3(x, y, z) - gridSizeHalf) * cellSize * cellSize;
        }

[crude sierra]

so the usage would be
BinToPosition(PositionToBin(enttiyPos)) ?

[craggy orbit]

ah no

1 sec ill get some more code 😅

your use case might be very different from mine. it really depends on how you want to structure your code. as i look over my code again, i realize that there's a few things i need to fix, but here's an example of how im using it as a vector field to control entity movement. there can be multiple entities in a "bin", but im using the bins to narrow down the comparisons instead of checking against every single tile. i'm a little tired so i'm not able to comment everything right now, but if there's something you need clarification on in my code, lmk
https://hastebin.com/unupuretub.csharp

[crude sierra]

i'm actually trying to do the same thing - force field navigation

your code should be a godsend thanks

[crude sierra]

btw am I the only one crashing unity like 20 times a day?

specifically when dealing with dots stuff

[amber flicker]

Is that because you disabled burst safeties? 😅

[crude sierra]

nope

[crude sierra]

is it possible to schedule jobs while inside ScheduleParallel?

[dense crypt]

You mean schedule a job while inside another job? No you can't

[crude sierra]

damn okay

[dense crypt]

If you need that pattern you can usually schedule job A and then Job B, just make sure that B depends on A. Then if you don't want to run job B you can early exit it with return;

[crude sierra]

I wanted to make a job that calculates distances between two positions, with IJobParallelFor

    struct CalculateDistanceJob : IJobParallelFor
    {
        public NativeList<float3> positions;
        public float3 origin;
        public NativeList<float>.ParallelWriter distances;

        public void Execute(int index)
        {
            distances.AddNoResize(math.distance(positions[index], origin));
        }
    }

making a Job A and then Job B pattern won't work here, because the array im iterating over is not recognized

[dense crypt]

I think I misunderstood your question then. This job seems valid to me, what is the issue exactly?

[crude sierra]

I need this job to work from inside another IJobParallelFor

Entities
           .WithAll<FlowFieldAgentComponent>()
           .WithReadOnly(gridLocs)
           .WithReadOnly(gridBest)
           .ForEach(
               (ref FlowFieldAgentComponent agent, ref Translation translation) =>
               {
                   var handle = new CalculateDistanceJob
                   {
                      
                   }.schedule(gridCellPositions, 128).Complete()
               }
           )
           .ScheduleParallel();

in essence

[dense crypt]

Ah I see, give me a minute. But yeah you can't do this

[crude sierra]

but I read now that jobs can only be scheduled and completed on the main thread

[dense crypt]

Where do you intend to get NativeList<float3> positions from?

Is that the position in the translation component?

[crude sierra]

that one is determined inside OnStartRunning()

[dense crypt]

Right, where do you need FlowFieldAgentComponent agent and Translation translation?

I think you can fix this by using an Entity Query as opposed to a ForEach job.

[crude sierra]

I didn't link the entire code but it does more things inside this foreach loop

i can send you the code

basically this loops over all my nav agents, and for each of them it iterates over all the grid cell positions to find the one they are standing on

im doing this by measuring their real world position's distance from all cells

and the closest distance is the one im picking

[dense crypt]

Yeah put all of it in a bin please. I doesn't matter if it doesn't work as I just need to see the overall idea, to make sure we're on the same page

[crude sierra]

https://hastebin.com/gawahitexi.csharp

lines 138 commented is the working but underperforming version

line 147 is my attempt which doesn't work

[dense crypt]

So what you could do here is completely skip the Entities.ForEach that calls GetNextCellDestination

Convert that ForEach in to a query and do query.ToComponetDataAsync<T>(Allocator.TempJob, out var THandle) for each component you need, and then ToEntityArrayAsync to get your entities. Then modify your CalculateDistanceJob to manually take all of those components. Since Execute(int i) gives you an index to work with you can use that to safely access the correct components/entities and perform your heavy calculations.

[crude sierra]

I will try it out, thanks!
also, it was suggested earlier to try to conver the positions into int2 to make the distance comparisons simpler, seeing as if I remove that line alone everything runs very smoothly

[dense crypt]

I'm not sure why int2 here would make it better. It depends completely on if you need decimal precision or not, so if you don't then you use int2. But if you need decimal precision stay with float.

[crude sierra]

I don't really need that much precision

worth testing out the accuracy loss and performance gain

[dense crypt]

Then the decision is in your hands 😄 Keep in mind that you want to register your query with GetEntityQuery as opposed to EntityManager.CreateEntityQuery. To make sure your system is not run if you have no matches.

[crude sierra]

there's also an option to iterate over a radius from the position rather than the entire array of cell positions every time

[crude sierra]

I just figured out how stupid I am, the entire thing can be solved with this line:
int closestIndex = ((int)origin.x / cellSize * gridWidth) + ((int)origin.y / cellSize);

instead of iterating over all the grid, i can straight up know which cell the agent is on if i know the width and the cell size

[amber flicker]

We will come back to you with an updated plan, that will describe how we fix this situation.``` https://forum.unity.com/threads/dots-audio-discussion.651982/page-6#post-7247231  🥲

[pliant pike]

shit happens, engine development is a complicated thing, hopefully they don't just give up with it

[safe lintel]

wish they would just let us have a look at whats been done

[deft stump]

hahahahahaha so in the end.
they went and admitted that "holy crap we're riding a wrecked train"

"stop! stop! let's go back to station 1 and see what went wrong"

[dense crypt]

☝️ This is only for DOTS Audio though, not DOTS in general.

[safe lintel]

did we go off the track somewhere? 😅

[deft stump]

I wont' be surprised if they extended this reasoning to other parts of DOTS

[drowsy pagoda]

I noticed that old code has World.Active.EntityManager, which is no longer the case, is World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EnityManager the same thing?

[dense crypt]

ye

[north bay]

Still no posts from Martin? This teasing act is a bit sadistic, isn't it?

[drowsy pagoda]

I have a separate system I am creating that I can call statically from anywhere, even inside ForEach Burst Schedule loops. Inside these methods, it does a check to see if entity has required ComponentData structs before it updates their state. The only problem is that I do it using var manager = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager; which all operations aren't burstable. I tried creating a command buffer, but it doesn't have things like: manager.GetComponentData<LocalToWorld>(entity); or manager.HasComponent<MyDataStruct>(entity);

Is there a way for me to achieve the same thing but make it burst compatible, and without having to pass in ComponentDataFromEntity structs from the caller's context?

[drowsy pagoda]

If this is not possible, perhaps my static method will need to create a job that will wait for a sync point or main-thread before executing? Is possible to do?

[robust scaffold]

Imagine if unity actually answers our questions rather than saying they will.

[hollow sorrel]

@drowsy pagoda you sure the get/set/hascomponent methods aren't burstable?

[drowsy pagoda]

I think they are. In my static method I am getting the active world entity manager, and World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld getter is NOT burstable.

I’m thinking my approach to this would be to create a native array outside ForEach. Then after that Job.WithCode(() => StaticMethod(nativeArray)).Run().

[hollow sorrel]

ahh

@drowsy pagoda what if you pass in the entitymanager to your static method?

[drowsy pagoda]

I tried. It gave me conflicting errors during runtime. Something about writing to Entity Manager without calling Job.Complete.

I tried Dependency.Complete but it created another error.

[hollow sorrel]

oic

[fluid kiln]

What do I have to do to get shader graph shaders to work in URP HRv2? It used to work before but now I'm getting ```A Hybrid Renderer V2 batch is using the shader "Shader Graphs/Health Bar", but the shader is either not compatible with Hybrid Renderer V2, is missing the DOTS_INSTANCING_ON variant, or there is a problem with the DOTS_INSTANCING_ON variant.
UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent (int,intptr,bool&)

[pliant pike]

I don't suppose anyone knows how you use the Nativearray.Sort() method or whether you can use LINQ with nativarrays? I need to sort a dynamicbuffer in ascending order

[coarse turtle]

I thought you can pass in a Comparer to the Sort methods?

[pliant pike]

yeah that may be the part I'm trying to figure out, Comparer.default doesn't work

I guess I have to manually create the code for the Comparer, it just doesn't seem to be working

[jaunty herald]

It just uses the default IComparer interface

If you need an example let me know

[pliant pike]

its cool thanks roamer I finally solved it

[drowsy pagoda]

It is a limit of my understanding, or the ECS system? I have a SystemBase that runs ForEach with Burst and Schedule. In there, I need to fire off a static method that will take an entity and check if it has a certain component, and add/set it based on that condition. This static sits outside SystemBase in it's own class.
The only way I was able to accomplish the check and mutation was via World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager but that is not burst compatible.

What would be a way I can do this? I was also thinking of maybe doing a NativeArray outside ForEach, have the ForEach store the entities in the NativeArray, and then cycle the array on the main thread? But I don't know how to do that. Can someone give me some advice?

[plush stirrup]

is there any way to modify global shader properties from threads like jobs? it looks like Shader.Set* API is exclusive to main thread which makes it impossible to use jobs or traditional threads for what I had in mind, but maybe Unity added other thread friendly API I'm not aware of at some point

[keen root]

afaik you need to pass in the ComponentData/BufferFromEntity to the function for this. Calling functions on EntityManager is just not possible from a job unless running with .WithoutBurst().Run()

[crude sierra]

what can I do when I have two systems running on the same entity, and one of those systems destroyed the entity while the other is running and then I try to access the entity that got destroyed? right now accessing the destroyed entity either crashes the entire editor or throws exceptions
ArgumentException: The Unity.Entities.EntityCommandBuffer has been deallocated, it is not allowed to access it

[frosty siren]

Second system cant run on destroyed entity. Do you mean you trying make structural changes through ECB on destroyed entity?

[safe lintel]

If you do this with a regular job and componentdatafromentity its possible @drowsy pagoda

[drowsy pagoda]

Thanks guys @safe lintel @keen root

[drowsy pagoda]

Is it computationally cheaper to add/remove from dynamic buffer than to add/remove component data? Or is it about the same?

[hollow sorrel]

@drowsy pagoda add/removing buffer elements should be cheaper than add/removing an entire component from an entity
adding buffer elements should be similar to adding stuff to a list, doesn't change archetype which is the expensive part about add/removing components

[drowsy pagoda]

Yeah, I presumed the same thing, just wanted to see if I was missing anything. Thank you for the confirmation!

[drowsy pagoda]

Ok, I finally setup my static method issue to take in a command buffer as an optional parameter. If you are scheduling and calling this method, you pass in the command buffer and it will use that instead of entitymanager.
It determines this via an if (commandBuffer.HasValue) and runs code accordingly.
HOWEVER, now the issue is that the burst check is giving me burst error saying that it doesn't support EntityManager code on burst. But the issue is that it WILL not be executing that part because of the conditional.
Is there a way to disable that burst check for that method? Or am I stuck with it?

[jaunty herald]

afaik burst is simply not able to compile it

It will run your function as a normal managed function

Ideally you split it into multiple pieces and burst those that you can, or just disable burst for that piece of code

[drowsy pagoda]

The code runs fine even with that warning, but I didn't think about that it won't compile burst even though it is being called within a ForEach Burst?

[jaunty herald]

If it throws a burst error it will simply be run as managed code

(until you fix the error)

[drowsy pagoda]

Got it. Thanks.

[drowsy pagoda]

Quick question. Is ForEach.Schedule(); CompleteDependency(); the same as ForEach.Run();?

[hollow sorrel]

not sure what other things CompleteDependency does, but between .Schedule() + .Complete() and just .Run(), afaik .Run is guaranteed to run main thread, while with the .Complete it might be scheduled on a different thread and the main thread waits on that thread

and also the .Run doesn't incur the .Schedule overhead

so doing .Run is generally better compared to doing .Complete right away

[drowsy pagoda]

Perfect explanation, just what I was looking for thanks!

[low tangle]

just curious was looking to see if mike acton was still lead of dots and yeah

also it looks like the team had a overhaul 5 months ago

restructuring makes sense for all the silence and we dont knows

[pliant pike]

so good news they haven't abandoned it quite yet

[low tangle]

yeah def not

that looks like a double down and trying to clean up disjoint teams

better product comes out of that, but it gets a bit of the big team tax on speed

[pliant pike]

makes sense building dots into an engine is a complicated thing

its basically a rewrite of the whole engine almost

[low tangle]

yeah its been a long ride since 2018

need to actually check, but I only remember a few strong talks at unite lately

2019 was a good year, seems like 2020 was rough/less short term progress

[drowsy pagoda]

I have a need to use a NativeHashMap in a system ForEach. This one does not let you instantiate with only the Allocator, you MUST specify capacity. At that stage, I don't know what capacity I need. The ForEach job cycles through the entity's DynamicBuffer, and there could be anywhere between 1 and 1000 items to cycle. Should I specify a capacity of 5000 to be safe, or is that just inefficient and bad coding? Or should I pick a low number like 20, and limit the iteration to 20 BufferElements, sort of spread out the work to several frames?

Also, it's throwing a fit if I try to ScheduleParallel, should I avoid scheduling parallel on ForEach jobs that need to write to a Native[Array][List][HashMap][etc]?

[coarse turtle]

if you need to write using multiple thread take a look at NativeHashMap.AsParallelWriter(), this returns a container which allows concurrent writing.

I would allocate more up front, because the way unity resizes containers like NativeLists when it needs to do a resize is NativeList.Length + 1.

[drowsy pagoda]

Oh awesome thanks!

[left zenith]

Is there an updated guide for ECS in Unity 2020?

[drowsy pagoda]

I couldn’t find anything, only thing I can recommend is youtube. There is TurboMakesGames user who does a pretty good job breaking you into it. And there was one more, I think it was Code Monkey.

Anything beyond that was docs, trial and error. I’m a little over a week into it, and the training wheels are about to come off.

[left zenith]

Thanks! Last I heard, ECS wasn't a thing in 2020. Anything is better than nothing 🙂

Glad to hear it's still usable 🙂

[drowsy pagoda]

Depends on where you heard it from lol.

[drowsy pagoda]

So I declared it AsParallelWriter, and I can't find option to Add, Remove, ContainsKey, Clear, and all that good stuff. How does this work?

Or am I supposed to declare it, then call AsParallelWriter separately?

[coarse turtle]

You can only write to it

TryAdd

[drowsy pagoda]

Oh, how about reading?

If you can only write, not quite sure how to utilize this then lol

[coarse turtle]

well you can't read and write with a parallel writer because that's not a safe operation to do simultaneously

you need to write first and then read later

[drowsy pagoda]

Ok, how would I read later then?

[coarse turtle]

you read from the native hash map

the parallelwriter is just a container that points to the same data buffer

[drowsy pagoda]

Oh, so I create just the HashMap. And in the part where I want to run parallel I AsParallelWriter. And then when that is done, in a non-parallel container I just refer back to my original instantiated HashMap and use Add, Remove, Clear, and all that and it will have been populated by the parallel writer?

[coarse turtle]

yea

[drowsy pagoda]

Wow cool. Thanks for the explanation!

[drowsy pagoda]

Thanks to all your help guys. I managed to write my own Tween system fully compatible with ECS, Jobs (Single and Parallel), Burst. It can been called from anywhere background thread or main thread via static method var tweenManager = Tween.Manager, and then inside ForEach tweenManager.Translate(entity, from, to, duration, true) or tweenManager.Rotate(entity, from, to, duration, true)
It's still in early stages, but will build on it.

[karmic basin]

👍

[karmic basin]

I assume you saw all the links in the pinned messages

• there's a short guide on Unity learn

https://learn.unity.com/course/dots-best-practices

Hope that helps

[drowsy pagoda]

Hey cool. I’m gonna dive into this. Thanks.

[safe lintel]

@low tangle did mike acton leave unity? Thought he was vp of dots

Oh I thought that image was a job listing my bad, got worried there 😉

[drowsy pagoda]

I just found out the hard way that this: inventory.Item = commandBuffer.Instantiate(player.RightHandItem); was storing an entity -1:0 instead of the instantiated one. This makes sense because it cannot know the entity id at this stage since it is a deferred job.
Is there a convention for something like this already, or I need to get creative?

Is there a way to query all the ComponentData<MyType> based on one of their values? Kind of like components.Where(c => c.myValue == mysearchquery) ?

[low tangle]

He didn't, that's what I was checking

[karmic basin]

Entity queries have Filters on value for shared components, don't know if there's an equivalent for regular ones

Alright so looks like the regular one only checks a change in value. So I guess you'd have to query everything and check yourself. Or put a tag or something.

[drowsy pagoda]

Where can I find example code of a query of a shared component based on it's containing value?

[pliant pike]

here? https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/ecs_entity_query.html

[drowsy pagoda]

thx

[mortal gyro]

we're having an issue with burst compiled function pointers that live inside of a static generic class

i managed to boil the issue down to a pretty simple example: https://pastebin.com/0tEEwATF

short question: anyone know of a way to force feed Burst specific functions that might not be explicitly used by our code?

[crude sierra]

I have 30,000 entities moving in my game, and I want them to not overlap with one another. How would I go about this? what's the most efficient way to implement this behavior?
I tried enabling collisions but because of their amount it just crashes

[pliant pike]

if you figure it out let me know , because I've been trying to find something that works like that in dots for a while

you need something like Unitys Navmesh system with RVO, local avoidance in dots

[crude sierra]

I have a grid that I can increase the cost of moving to a cell to the max if an entity is on that cell, but because I have something like 50,000 cells it also crashes

(flow field)

[pliant pike]

cool, I built a flow field too

[crude sierra]

iterating over the cells is crazy expensive though

[pliant pike]

yeah I think I had to limit mine to stay under 40,000

not because of the performance, because of using a byte to store some data

it shouldn't be that expensive to iterate through them all though

[crude sierra]

well, I have to check if an entity exists in each

which is a raycast

raycasting 50,000 times a frame is rip

[pliant pike]

you shouldn't need to use raycasts

[crude sierra]

i could send the indexes of each entity from the entity itself i guess

but then i have to keep track of when they leave the cell too

[pliant pike]

if you know the size of the grid and the cell sizes you can convert that to a world grid position to find where they are

[crude sierra]

yep, i have that functionality

but what happens when they leave the cell they are currently in

I have to store it's previous value somewhere

[pliant pike]

how do you mean they are just in a new cell then

[crude sierra]

the previous cell's cost was increased

it needs to be reset back once they leave it

[pliant pike]

are you counting the actual moving entities into the flowfield cost

[crude sierra]

thats what i was thinking

how would you do it?

I was thinking that if every cell that has an entity in it have increased cost, other entities wont overlap with it

[pliant pike]

interesting but that would surely mean you'd have to have a seperate flow field calculated for each entity surely

[crude sierra]

why?

[drowsy pagoda]

Is this correct? When an entity is created, it's index will always be greater than -1. When an entity is scheduled for creation via commandBuffer.Instantiate(entity), an entity is created with an index less than 0 until the sync point actually creates the entity, which it will just change the index on that entity to next available index that is greater than -1.

[pliant pike]

I don't know maybe not 🤔

[crude sierra]

the only flaw in my algorithm is knowing when to playback the previous cost of a cell once an entity been through it

if I don't raycast, by default I iterate always over the cells which do have entities in them

so I have to iterate over all the cells minus the ones the entities report they are in

[fluid kiln]

Any way to NOT have a subscene convert to entities?

[pliant pike]

so your making it so the cells turn into obstacles

[crude sierra]

yes exactly

but i dont know how to turn them back

[pliant pike]

could you not just have a bool component to tell if an cell is occupied or not

[crude sierra]

and then iterate over all those that don't currently have an entity in them but are set as occupied

then decrement their cost back and set it to false

could work

[pliant pike]

yeah well only set it to true when the cells are occupied

[crude sierra]

actually i dont need the costs even

just this bool should work

or will it

idk

[pliant pike]

yeah maybe 🤔

[crude sierra]

then it gotta be integrated into the flow field

[pliant pike]

if(occupied dont go here) etc

[crude sierra]

might go with the cost so the flow field will do the work out of the box

[mortal gyro]

forum post and bug report made if anyone else was curious: https://forum.unity.com/threads/burst-issue-with-function-pointers-compiled-inside-of-generic-class.1129022/

[jaunty herald]

Why does stuff like Bytes16 not have the IEquatable interface implemented? Really annoying...

[solid rock]

a few months ago I tried to do:

NativeList n;
foreach (var element in n) {

}```
And I discovered that the implementation for `GetEnumerator()` for NativeList at the time was:
```cs
throw new NotImplementedException();

not sure if they fixed that yet...

[jaunty herald]

its not iirc

tried the same recently

I just use a normal for loop anyways so I don't really mind

[solid rock]

indeed - I was just illustrating that the API still has a long ways to go

[jaunty herald]

Yep, still a little frustrating sometimes

👌

[amber flicker]

just to check, I assume 16 is far more than math.all offers?

[jaunty herald]

It is, but now I finally know how to check if a bool2 is true. You have saved me from despair

What does it do for types like float2?

[coarse turtle]

Another option

public unsafe bool IsEqual(this Bytes16 b, Bytes16 other) {
  byte* bytePtr = &b;
  byte* bytePtrOther = &other;
  for (int i = 0; i < 16; i++) {
    if (bytePtr[i] != bytePtrOther[i]) {
      return false;
    } 
  }
  return true;
}

[jaunty herald]

I only need Bytes16 for now so I went the non-sophisticated route for now :)

[coarse turtle]

otherwise you could try

return math.hash(&byte, 16) == math.hash(&other, 16)

[jaunty herald]

are the hashes unique?

[coarse turtle]

Well it uses xxhash algorithm

so it's really a fast hash

believe int2. float2 uses this for hash overrides

[jaunty herald]

yeah but for equality I need it to actually be unique and have no false positives

[coarse turtle]

yeah idk much about xxhash algorithm to give you a good answer lol

[jaunty herald]

no worries, this is fine for now, thanks :)

[amber flicker]

I'm not too good at this stuff - this could well be a super dumb suggestion - but can you reinterpret the 16 bytes as e.g. a float4 for comparison? 🙈

[coarse turtle]

i guess you can lol

float4* ptr = (float4*)bytes16; // I assume float4 is exactly 16 bytes, most likely it is lol

[amber flicker]

yea... not sure how bad that is but it would make the comparison succinct 😅

[drowsy pagoda]

I just realized that using GetComponent and SetComponent directly in ForEach is allowed on burst and schedule and even parallel. Before I was using the GetComponentDataFromEntity approach.
I just updated my code with this simpler approach, but it did raise a question for me about performance. Is first method the same as second method in terms of performance, or is there a difference between them?

[jaunty herald]

I think it is auto converted

i.e. performance is the same

although I am not 100% sure

Also not sure how read only access is done in that case...

[drowsy pagoda]

Yeah, I can't tell if they considered that or not. Would be nice to find out somehow.

Actually, in the first method, I would set all the GetComponentDataFromEntity to readonly. And using commandBuffer.SetComponent still worked.

So I have a feeling the readonly thing is covered. Just only worried about performance mainly.

[dense crypt]

Both GetComponent and SetComponent get auto converted to ComponentDataFromEntity. It's different from commandBuffer.SetComponent because the set is not deferred until the Command Buffer Playback. It's slower than setting the component directly (by passing it with ref). GetComponent is readonly unless you also do SetComponent (was a while since I tested this but I'm like 95% sure that's how it worked.)

All of the above only applies to SystemBase and Entities.ForEach

[drowsy pagoda]

Awesome thanks for the explanation

[dense crypt]

Yeah, that's pretty much how it works. Keep in mind that an entity is an index and version. Since index alone wouldn't be stable. Regarding what you wrote earlier about the same thing. If you need to store the entity (let's call it "A") you are creating through commandBuffer.Instantiate in a component on an existing entity ("B") , the easiest way would be to attach a component on A that has a field pointing to B. Then you have a job that looks for this component, and assigns A to B, in the correct component.

[drowsy pagoda]

Yup, that's exactly the solution I had to come up with. Feels a bit dirty, but I don't see another way. I suppose later I can come up with a system that I can call from anywhere for any data structure.

[dense crypt]

Yeah. There you can do some things to keep it fast though. Instead of AddComponent make sure the "pointer component" already exists on whatever you instantiate, so you can use commandBuffer.SetComponent instead. Also when removing it sometime later, use a query instead of marking every entity for deletion.

[drowsy pagoda]

Can you give me an example of the query for deletion protocol?

[dense crypt]

It's identical to a normal commandBuffer.RemoveComponent only it takes an EntityQuery (I would give you a better example but it's too hard on the phone). This page explains them fairly well: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/ecs_entity_query.html

[drowsy pagoda]

Thanks, I'll look into it

[frosty siren]

So many cool features in 2021.2, and two concrete i need - URP 2D VFX and render features support, but we locked on boring 2020 🥲

[safe lintel]

and uitk still breaks entities subscenes on 2020

[frosty siren]

yes, more pain pls😃

[coarse turtle]

I think 2021.1.12 still works

actually yeah updated and reimported my project for 2021.1.12 and looks like entities is still working - I should make a built to see if that's still the case tho lol

[karmic basin]

That's risky though

You adventurer

[coarse turtle]

Lol yeah, when they made the announcement I was already on 2021 and I just froze it at version 1.2 😅

Figured I'd try to see if later versions would work

[fluid kiln]

I am destroying an entity that resides within a dynamic buffer. How do I remove the destroyed entity from the buffer? Or how can I check if an entity has been destroyed? 🙂

[safe lintel]

@coarse turtle yeah it works in later editors but i'm annoyed that they act like updating beyond 2020 has supposed major incompatibilities and they don't even acknowledge one of the most pressing ones in 2020. they wont accept bug reports beyond 2020 either, which is why I grudgingly went back to 2020, and tore out uitk for the time being.

[coarse turtle]

o 😐

Honestly I'm having a problem with UITK where the debugger isn't displaying the font in 2021.1.12 which sucks

[safe lintel]

i found that 2021.2a9 was totally solid(with uitk as well), and then beyond that entities did break. wouldve stayed on it if it werent for the bug report thing.

[coarse turtle]

Ah damn, that sucks. Yeah the current beta version UITK - complains with the dots editor afaik

[safe lintel]

yeah I really wanted to try out and give feedback for the new toolbar stuff

also I think submitting bugs might be the only sane way to get a new gpu these days, even if it is like a lottery system

[coarse turtle]

True lol

[drowsy pagoda]

Is it correct to assume that in a Schedule/Parallel ForEach job, if I use just SetComponent it will defer the execution of that method until the next upcoming sync-point? Or does it default to the end or some place specific each time?

[dull coral]

    [Unity.Burst.BurstCompile]
    public struct TerrainMeshJob : IJobParallelFor
    {
        [ReadOnly] public NativeArray<float> texture;
        [ReadOnly] public TerrainMeshSettings settings;

        [WriteOnly] public NativeArray<Vertex> vertices;
        [WriteOnly] public NativeArray<ushort> indices;
}

I have a job like this, but i am getting error

InvalidOperationException: The writeable UNKNOWN_OBJECT_TYPE TerrainMeshJob.vertices is the same UNKNOWN_OBJECT_TYPE as TerrainMeshJob.indices, two containers may not be the same (aliasing).

I am new to job system and burst. I dont understand what this means. I read the blog post on aliasing, but i cant understand what i am doing wrong.

Whole code -> https://hastebin.com/oravuxilum.csharp

[untold night]

you don't need to do [WriteOnly], it's implicitly there if you don't add [ReadOnly] adding it may force the field to be unreadable, which could explain the error.

[dull coral]

same error without [WriteOnly], just tried

[untold night]

is Vertex a managed job?

er

managed struct

[dull coral]

    [System.Runtime.InteropServices.StructLayout(System.Runtime.InteropServices.LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    public struct Vertex
    {
        public float3 pos;
        public float2 uv;
    }

it is this

[untold night]

that should be fine. hmm

what is the data type for LOD?

I don't see it in the paste

[dull coral]

enum

in the paste its at line 86

[untold night]

I see, I missed it the first time

2 things left I can think of:

1. You need [NativeDisableParallelForRestriction] on both of your write target native arrays. (Likely)
2. There's some burst compiler issue with splitting things into two sections with the same file. (unlikely, but stranger things have happened)

If it's indeed the first, you should still report a bug, as that error message is the opposite of helpful

[dull coral]

okay, i am trying both. thanks

same error with first one. for second one what should I do? move the job to a separate file?

using [WriteOnly, NativeDisableContainerSafetyRestriction] public NativeArray<ushort> indices;

[untold night]

no, that shouldn't be an issue at all.

[dull coral]

I am not getting the error anymore

[untold night]

huh

you Shouldn't need WriteOnly, but if that makes it work you should be ok.

I'd still report an error as I've never seen this happen.

Also, there could also be an issue with the mesh data API, if it returns an invalidly sized vertex or index array.

Verify you're getting the correct data back from GetVertexData<Vertex>() and GetIndexData<ushort>() in terms of those array's lengths, just in case

I'm not as familiar with the Mesh Alloc API

[dull coral]

okay, i will do that. my mesh is still not generating properly because of some indexoutofrange exception. Thanks for the help!

[untold night]

no problem

you may want to be a bit more pedantic with the VertexAttributeDescriptor setup and ensure it's float32, sizes you expect. AH!

The default size is 3

your uv discriptor should be 2 if you're just using normal UVs

and the stream defaults to 0, you may not need to setup the additional submesh information

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Rendering.VertexAttributeDescriptor-ctor.html

[dull coral]

            mesh.SetVertexBufferParams(verts * verts, new VertexAttributeDescriptor(VertexAttribute.Position, VertexAttributeFormat.Float32, 3),
                                                      new VertexAttributeDescriptor(VertexAttribute.TexCoord0, VertexAttributeFormat.Float32, 2));
            mesh.SetIndexBufferParams((verts - 1) * (verts - 1) * 6, IndexFormat.UInt16);
            mesh.subMeshCount = 1;
            mesh.SetSubMesh(0, new SubMeshDescriptor(0, (verts - 1) * (verts - 1) * 6, MeshTopology.Triangles));

Sorry i made this change but forgot to update in paste.

you mean like this right?

[untold night]

yes

if the Vertex structure and the VertexBufferDescriptor data doesn't match, that would cause wonky stuff and buffer overruns

[dull coral]

yeah, i just found more problems with my code. Will fix those.

[dense crypt]

CommandBuffer.SetComponent or SystemBase.SetComponent? SystemBase.SetComponent can't be used in a Parallel job. Only the CommandBuffer commands are deferred (hence it being a command buffer), the other ones are immediate.

[pliant pike]

I don't suppose anyone knows what the current best ways to make a UI with Dots are?

[amber flicker]

One entity(dot) per pixel is the way to go - just give it a Color : IComponentData{ public float4 Value; }, collate data into a buffer -> gpu via compute -> render - then just gotta set the entity values as appropriate 👍 😏

[pliant pike]

cool sounds simple and straightforward enough

[amber flicker]

On a more serious note... nothing particularly helpful to say - I think most people I've seen try and use UITK with some abstraction layer but.. yea.. compatibility woes for some atm. A 'Pure' dots approach is a long way off having good/any editor tooling so think some form of hybrid is probably the way to go?

[dense crypt]

There isn't a UI solution for DOTS atm. Your best bet right now is to use Unity UI and use EntityManager in MonoBehaviours to communicate with ECS world

[pliant pike]

yeah figured that might be the case as always, but best to check first, thanks guys

[deft stump]

random non-dots question.
but has FSR been integrated into Unity yet?

[pliant pike]

is that the AMD upscaling thing?

[deft stump]

yeah.

[pliant pike]

I doubt it I haven't heard anything, I mean Nvidia's DSR barely has yet

[deft stump]

hrmm.
I just saw a pic that Unity is an FSR partner so...
well it'll probably take months to integrate it

[pliant pike]

yeah plus we have yet to know if its even any good

[drowsy pagoda]

I see thanks.

[crude sierra]

I still didn't manage to implement collision avoidance for my grid navigation, did anyone achieve this?

I tried increasing the navigation cost of a grid cell if an entity is already in that cell, but that caused navigation bugs

[amber flicker]

Not sure if this interests you @crude sierra - https://github.com/reeseschultz/ReeseUnityDemos

[crude sierra]

interesting, thanks!

btw, is it possible to change a value by index using NativeList.ParallelWriter?
for example list[index] = 5 doesn't compile, is there an API for this?

[jaunty herald]

Is there any point in Job.WithCode().WithoutBurst().Run()?

[coarse turtle]

If you need to do something with managed objects

But otherwise I don't see too much of a point

[jaunty herald]

I mean at that point its just main thread managed code

[drowsy pagoda]

What’s an efficient way of removing items from NativeListA that are contained in NativeListB?

[coarse turtle]

Yea pretty much haha

[coarse turtle]

You can take a look at IJobParallelFilter jobs

you can either store a list of indices to include or a list of indices to exclude with it if you need specifically done in a job.

[drowsy pagoda]

ListA and ListB get set from different places of the program at different times (non-interval). And so if I use the indices approach, I will STILL have to "search" for the index in A when element is about to be committed to B.

[dense crypt]

No, Job.WithCode().Run() will ensure that previous jobs have completed before being run. But then you may aswell just Dependency.Complete();

The only real kicker for it is if you have a Job.WithCode().Schedule() that you need to debug, then you can just convert Schedule to Run.

[light mason]

Quick question, anyone have an example of how to assign a material to renderMesh component

[light mason]

Never mind got it working

Stupid typo

[vital sandal]

Is this a good place to ask a Job system question even if im not using dots?

[slim nebula]

this channel should be ideal for that.

[vital sandal]

Hi, I'm just starting with the Jobs System and I'm having a hard time finding the info I need. I'm working on a modular system that will iterate over a large list of "entities" (but I'm not using dots or ecs). Most of those modules will use jobs and will either work on the same data, without changing it, and others will need to work on the output from a previous job. Question 1- Do I have to create a new array for each job, or can I share a single array for the jobs that only read the data? If they do write, it will never be at the same place. Question 2- For the jobs that need the output of other jobs do I need to copy the results to a new array for the next job or can the array be passed on to the 2nd job or reused somehow? Question 3- Do I even have to worry about the performance of creating arrays? i.e.: if I have 10 arrays with 10,000 values each and 5 jobs that need all 10 arrays? If someone can point me to the appropriate part of the manual, that would also help.

[dense crypt]

Q1: You don't have to create a new array for each job. You can mark them with the [ReadOnly] attribute to allow reuse between jobs. If you want to do parallel writing and you can guarantee you won't write to the same index from two jobs, you can use the [NativeDisableParallelForRestrictionAttribute] attribute. This will disable any warnings though, so now it's all on your table.

[dense crypt]

Q2: You can just pass the same container with the results to the next job, no need to make copies. You should use Dependencies to ensure that your jobs won't accidentally run parallel if you expect them to run sequentially (if JobB needs the output from JobA, then JobB will depend on JobA.) You set and get the dependencies when scheduling a job.

[dense crypt]

Q3: No there will be no real performance issues. The way NativeContainers work is that they are themselves small structs that just contains pointers to the real memory. So there will be no "copy" or similar when inputting them in the jobs. Manual link: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/JobSystemNativeContainer.html

[ionic sierra]

Can I instantiate, destroy, change materials, use triggers, and all basic gameplay stuff with DOTs?

Any good projects out there with this stuff in it? is Unity tiny recommended?

[minor sapphire]

Yes you can. But your question is broad because dots is broad. If you mean ecs, then also yes, but because ecs (entities package) is still early, and secondary feature packages as well (physics, audio, animation, etc), you have to find ways to deal with missing features or refactor against api changes.

But you can use burst and jobs with existing mb projects without much hassle.

[ionic sierra]

thanks for the reply

so is hybrid method ok. mono behavious cant interact with dots?

[dense crypt]

They can through the EntityManager. Your question is still too broad. If you mean stuff like "can an entity trigger OnTriggerEnter?" then the answer is no.

[ionic sierra]

trigger dont work?

does it have its own triggers?

Is the DOTS community in limbo, or is anyone actually making anything ?

because the forum is full of ambiguity

so I can have a dots player controller.....and dots triggers?

No animation, timeline stuff?

Cinemachine?

[dense crypt]

I never used DOTS Physics so far so I can't answer for sure. Yes people are making stuff with it. Keep in mind that it's not production ready. So don't expect to release anything made with it (yet).

You can use practically none of the tools that exist in Unity editor for it at the moment.

[ionic sierra]

ok. I guess I should wait then

[deft stump]

DOTS is still in very early development.

none of the features you expect from MonoUnity will be present at the current state of dots. Chinemachine, Animation. none of it.

You really have to roll your own.

the community isn't in limbo per se, it's still quite active like this channel.
Yes there are people actually making stuff on this early tech.

[ionic sierra]

WHat about text?

Text mesh pro?

[deft stump]

UI? nope

[dense crypt]

No, no

[deft stump]

You have to either work around the limitations

or roll your own solution

[dense crypt]

It's no like you can't use it, because you can. But for all of those you need a wrapper to get the data from DOTS world

[ionic sierra]

WHat about the hybrid method. I'm only interested because of the high number of Gameobjects i want in the scene.

[deft stump]

Hybrid approach is just way for you to design the game via Unity's UI and then have it convert to Entities.
And some components that doesn't exist in ECS you can "borrow" it from the Mono side

[ionic sierra]

do i specefically need entities, for many many GameObjects?

[deft stump]

No

[dense crypt]

The concept of GameObject doesn't exist in DOTS.

[deft stump]

There's lots of hacks you can do to keep your game performant even with plenty of GOs

[dense crypt]

I could give you better answers if you would give me a concrete question instead of just theory

[ionic sierra]

sure. like, its a block based game dealing with very large numbers........on a 2d plane.

[dense crypt]

Okay, what do you do in this game

[ionic sierra]

ok. well you would basically be drawing graphs....like equations.....and then beable to modify them yourself by turning blacks on and off.

but the numbers get very very large

so when the user types 10000....every block of that will be able to turn on and off

imagine like...instead of minecraft...this sounds off the wall I know...but imagine minecraft but instead of drawing a block you would draw a funtion like xsq

and then you could draw that anywhere on the graph.

just imagine graph paper......

[dense crypt]

Having a hard time grasping the concept. But DOTS is best when you have a lot of data, where you need to do a lot of operations. Say you have an RTS where there's 5000 vs 5000 tanks fighting and now you need for each tank to shoot at the closest enemy tank. This would be a good usage of DOTS. The whole point of DOTS is to make performance better by using multithreading and well thought out memory structures.

[ionic sierra]

this is why i am intersted. because of the large number of objects

[dense crypt]

You could try it, I think it could be a good use case, but make a small sample to figure out how DOTS works first. It will take you quite some time to get in to. Make sure to read the manual throughly. There are some examples here: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples

But they are a little outdated, but not a lot.

[ionic sierra]

thanks. I will give it a look.

[dense crypt]

Be prepared to roll your own solution for a lot of stuff though.

[ionic sierra]

ok. youve dissuaded me

im going to maybe use tilemap.

actually i should try it

[dense crypt]

It's up to you, I would recommend against it unless you already have at least, say 5+ years of Unity and programming knowledge.

[ionic sierra]

RIP my dreams

Thanks . probably saved my days

i have 4 years...but my programming is just starting to make sense to me

[dense crypt]

Then I wouldn't recommend you use it at the moment and just work on your normal C#/Unity skills.

[ionic sierra]

cool. You wouldnt just happen to know how to programme tilemaps?

[gusty comet]

does int2 serialize properly? i had public variables with arrays for longg time but they all dissapeared (theyre now array size 0) and i literally have zero code that could reset, destroy, null or cancel such array

[dense crypt]

I'm fairly confident they do? I worked on a project where we used intX and floatX, floatX,Y all over the place, but I can't say for certain that we used specifically int2, but it's very likely we did. We didn't have any issues regarding them.

Are your sure the issue isn't with your containers?

[gusty comet]

could be

[worthy rampart]

you'll be wanting to do all of this on the GPU

[solar ridge]

Vfx graph

Have one object handle all the logic

[worthy rampart]

if you are generating stuff via math formula that involves placing the same mesh in a bunch of different spots

[solar ridge]

Send all the completed tasks to a texture

[worthy rampart]

the GPU can do that much faster

[solar ridge]

I did this for a ai project. Was quite handy

Ai learning was stored in texture form

[ionic sierra]

I never considered that.

[worthy rampart]

if you do it appropriately you can render upwards of 1 million 2d quads on desktop GPUs

at 60+fps

while they move around

you couldn't do anything like that on a CPU

[frosty siren]

Can i read something about dots serialization? some guide? maybe thread on forum with tips?

[ionic sierra]

can you program each instance of the quad to be at a specific position?

[worthy rampart]

Yep

[ionic sierra]

cool thanks.

can you use text mesh pro with vfx graph?

I just tried to make 10! tiles in a scene....

still waiting

[fluid kiln]

10! is 3.6 millions

[ionic sierra]

yeah

[fluid kiln]

At this point, aren't you looking more for infographics?

[ionic sierra]

in unity?

[fluid kiln]

Well what you're explaining sounds like 2D infography

Produce and display images?

[ionic sierra]

yeah

I'm just trying to see how far can push it. might have to close unity

[vivid lotus]

Is it safe to call Dispose() on a NativeArray<T> more than once? Similarly, is it safe to do it if the NativeArray just = default?

[ionic sierra]

So which units should I use?

which node name for set position

in vfx graph

[hollow sorrel]

@vivid lotus in both cases that should throw an exception

[ionic sierra]

sorry to be bugging, but what about shader graph? would that be way more performant?

[worthy rampart]

shader graph generates... a shader

so you can do it in shader graph

or write the shader yourself

I have no idea what pipeline you are using

[ionic sierra]

urp

[worthy rampart]

but if you search for messages from me in the #archived-shaders channel

I have messages with cyan about doing instancing in URP and HDRP

it's pretty complicated though

[ionic sierra]

ok. i will search it

tx

[vital sandal]

@dense crypt Thank you so much for all that info you posted earlier!

[round oracle]

Is dots/instant games a thing ?

With Project Tiny, Unity's upcoming new highly modular runtime powered by DOTS, you will be able to build instant games that are small, light and fast.

[safe lintel]

thats a very vague question, its a "thing" under development.

[gusty comet]

Hey, I don't know if I'm on the right thread, but I made this CSharp Job that generates a terrain from a mesh with biomes etc, now my issue is that the separation of the biomes create ugly cliffs because of the height difference between the biomes noise, I'm trying to make a CSharp job that will smooth the terrain after it's been generated, so my question is, how can I run my SmoothJob after the GenerateTerrainJob to get the datas from the terrain?

[frosty siren]

@gusty comet Your 1st job can write to some native container and then 2nd can read from it. You need to chain your jobs through JobHandle dependencies. In SystemBase it goes automatically.

[gusty comet]

Could you give me an example code of JobHandle dependencies?

[frosty siren]

Do you use unity ECS or just Jobs?

[gusty comet]

oh sorry didn't see the message, I'm planning to use ECS in the future and my environment is already set up

I found this : var jobHandle = new SerializerJob{...}.Schedule(); new PacketWriterJob{...}.Schedule(jobHandle);

where PacketWriterJob can only run when SerializerJob is done is that how you do dependancies? if so how would I go if my job is in a separate file?

[frosty siren]

yes. If your jobs in separate systems, then you have no need to chain them manually, but they need to somehow transfer data between each other. There can be 2 variants:

• Use entities as technical (i mean not game) data to make systems interactable
• Inject data to system by Word.GetOrCreate<T>

There is no special need to separate logic if it always goes the same way

[gusty comet]

yeah it worked I got my vertices from the mesh thanks 🙂

[frosty siren]

i have edited previous message

[gusty comet]

When you said use Entities as technical... so for example I have my Native Array of vector3 that get me the vertices of the mesh, I'd need to create an entity for each vertex with a float3 property containing the vertexpos?

[frosty siren]

has anyone brought serialization to a working state in 0.17?

[frosty siren]

yes, instead of array you can create bunch of entities. it is not good way though. But sometimes i see how people talking about how they rewrite their linked list as linked entities

[gusty comet]

what if.. my mesh contains 62500 vertices? it's not great to have 62500 entities is it? since I'm going to use entities to create animals, plants etc...

[frosty siren]

yes

[drowsy pagoda]

If an entity has a Parent component, can it ever have Value == Entity.Null? If so, that would mean it actually is NOT a child? Or will Unity automatically toss the component if the Value ever equals null?

[robust scaffold]

Unity never automatically tosses components. Uninitialized components would start with Entity.Null if the value of that component is set.

[drowsy pagoda]

Thanks.

[light mason]

How do I query entity with disable component

If I want it enable them by removing the component

Is seems like queries totally ignore entities with a disable component

[karmic basin]

You have to explicitely add the <Disabled> component in the query

Or Entity Query have a filter to specifically include disabled entities

Similar way as Prefabs components

[dense crypt]

☝️ Also, if it's an Entites.ForEach you need to include .WithEntityQueryOptions()

[uncut rover]

Hello, I'm trying to build my DOTS project for windows and I have this compile error from the scriptable build pipeline : error CS0117: 'NativeArrayUnsafeUtility' does not contain a definition for 'SetAtomicSafetyHandle'. Everything works in the editor and as far as I can tell, this particular "missing" script is part of "Assembly UnityEngine.CoreModule, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" which is unity itself, so I don't get how it could be missing. Any one as any sugesstions ?

[uncut rover]

solved it, some of my code was missing the #if ENABLE_UNITY_COLLECTIONS_CHECKS :/

[pulsar jay]

Does anybody have an idea how to solve this without reflections:

this.getComponentDataMethod = typeof(EntityManager).GetMethod("GetComponentData").MakeGenericMethod(genericType);
var componentData = this.getComponentDataMethod.Invoke(this.EntityManager, new object[] { entity }) as IComponentData;
del.Invoke(componentData);

I am trying to get component data via type.
But using reflection causes AOT errors.

[red fiber]

I don't see a public way of doing that, unfortunately? The functions you would need to make an IComponentData GetComponentData(Entity,ComponentType) method all exist, but some of them are internal so you wouldn't be able to call them without local modifications to the entities package.

[deft stump]

we now have enable / disable components?

please say yes

[pulsar jay]

I guess you mean EntityManager.GetComponentDataRawRW? If I reference the entities package via assembly reference file I could be able to use it 🤔

[red fiber]

Actually, now that I look at it more thoroughly maybe this isn't possible without reflection? You can get a void* to the data, but to copy it into a C# structure you would need to create an object of genericType using Activator and that might fail in the same way as the reflected method calls.

[pulsar jay]

Wouldnt it be possible to cast it to an IComponentData somehow?

[red fiber]

IComponentData has to point to a managed object, the void* is going to be unmanaged.

[worthy rampart]

imo you should look into an approach that uses a shared noise function that works across chunk boundaries

so you don't have to smooth

[gusty comet]

Yeah but how would I detect an edge ?

And how would I apply noise to it? Since I only want to apply noise on the y axis of the vertices

[worthy rampart]

so each chunk is a square mesh right

you would want the chunks to overlap on the edges with a vertex from each chunk in the exact same spot

with a noise function that looks something like y = terrainHeight(x,z)

and on the borders the chunks would call that with the exact same x,z

inside terrain height you could map the x/z to whatever biome/noise function you wanted

but then the edge of chunks would always have the exact same height and overlapping vertices

so you shouldn't need any extra passes

[gusty comet]

That sound good I'll test that later!

[pulsar jay]

I see. Thats a problem 🤔

[pulsar jay]

But I guess if Unity can do this:

var componentData = entityManager.GetComponentDataRawRO(sectionEntity, typeIndex);
var data = builder.Allocate(ref metadataArray[i].Data, typeInfo.TypeSize);
UnsafeUtility.MemCpy(data.GetUnsafePtr(), componentData, typeInfo.TypeSize);

So can I?

[red fiber]

Depends on the context, I guess? If you're in a context where that stuff works then I would expect Activator.CreateInstance(genericType) to work as well.

(Which would probably do the same thing for structs.)

[drowsy pagoda]

Currently have an issue with instantiating entities and to have to be assigned to struct fields in scheduled containers. Not sure if there is a conventional approach to this but I had to come up with something like this: myData.Entity = entityDelegator.InstantiateCheck(sourceEntity, myData.Entity, startPos, startRot, newParent, out bool assigned);
This will instantiate the entity, assign optional pos/rot/parent and on the next frame will actually assign the struct field with the new entity. Once assigned starts returning true, then you’ll know on this cycle it’s a valid entity. This will work on Schedule and ParallelSchedule threads.
If there is a simpler way, please point me in the right direction.

[amber flicker]

If this is addressing what I think it is, I just add e.g. Created to the archetype/prefab I'm going to instantiate. A system runs for all entities with the tag and e.g. at the end of frame another one removes them via entity query batch method.

[drowsy pagoda]

That’s a great idea. I didn’t think about that. But it doesn’t address the issue of auto-assigning the new instantiated entity to a struct field. If it does, can you elaborate?

[round oracle]

Oh I just mean this instant games description sounds amazing !
"
Unity’s new, highly-modular runtime lets you build instant games that are small, light and fast.

Complete control over your file size
Work with the Editor you know and love
Unparalleled performance and scalability

"

and this !
"With Project Tiny, Unity's upcoming new highly modular runtime powered by DOTS, you will be able to build instant games that are small, light and fast"

[karmic basin]

Yeah problem is, Tiny is not ready so that's just marketing jibberish for now

[amber flicker]

Sorry I don't know what that means. What defines the relationship between the newly created entity and 'struct field' - is this field a component on another entity? Or some public property of a system somewhere or something?

[drowsy pagoda]

Well in the use case that caused me to side track to create this system was that I have an item that needs a "ghost" counter part. So when user wants to place it, a ghost appears showing how it would look if it were placed at the spot. So when the player holds down the Release request button, the ghost will instantiate, then move around based on his look point.
And when he releases it, the ghost gets destroyed (will implement pooling later).

This all happens on a Schedule thread for the player, and all the items have ParallelSchedule logic, none run on main thread. If I just do item.Ghost.Entity = commandBuffer.Instantiate(item.Ghost.Prefab); it will instantiate the item correctly, but the item.Ghost.Entity will be a temporary value like [-1:0] or whatever is available.
Then I have to create a whole thing to "catch" the newly created entity and then assign it to item.Ghost.Entity

Instead of creating a specific code for the player-item relationship, I created an EntityDelegatorSystem that will do all this from anywhere you call it. And it will auto assign the new entity to item.Ghost.Entity on the next OnUpdate iteration.

To set it up, you need to first create an entityDelegator outside the ForEach like this:
var entityDelegator = EntityDelegatorSystem.CreateDelegator(Dependency);
or for parallel:
var entityDelegator = EntityDelegatorSystem.CreateDelegator(Dependency).AsParallelWriter();

And then inside the ForEach iterations you can request instantiation and catch it on the next iteration automatically like so:
item.Ghost.Entity = entityDelegator.InstantiatieCheck(item.Ghost.Prefab, item.Ghost.Entity, null, null, null, out bool assigned);
Then check:
if (assigned) // then you can use item.Ghost.Entity here

[amber flicker]

hmm.. just wondering if you may be slightly over-engineering here? Why does the original item need to know about the ghost btw?

sidenote: if these are entities, you shouldn't need to do any pooling (instantiate is very fast) - I'm also highly skeptical that the cost of scheduling the job in parallel will be less than executing it on main thread for < 10000 entities

[drowsy pagoda]

It's true, DOD and DOTS patterns is new to me, so there is a big chance that you are right about me over-engineering. But in some cases, I need to instantiate something and use it, and I would have to make a sync-point if I want to save the entity reference to another data struct. With many calls like that it can cause me to create many sync points. So I over-engineered this pattern so that it consolidates to a single sync point regardless of how many times instantiation requests are made and where they are made.

As for your sidenote, I think that does make sense, I'm still finding myself brushing off legacy pattern coding mindset. Thank you for that sidenote 😉

[amber flicker]

👍 - just always keep in mind "what's the data". Instantiate takes care of having two identical visual representations. A tag makes one follow the mouse & be 'droppable'. A system can, on mouse up, check if any droppables are in dropzones & destroy all entities with the ghost tag? I'm likely oversimplifying your use-case, just trying to give you an idea of the direction I approach this type of problem.

[north bay]

I don't quite understand what you are trying to archive, why are you not able to use a EntityCommandBuffer?

[drowsy pagoda]

Thanks for that. I will rethink my architecture, now that I realize instantiating and swapping archetypes is not as costly as I would assume if it was on legacy pattern. Appreciate your input, this helps clear the air a lot.

[drowsy pagoda]

Thanks, but I think I got what I was looking for from previous responses 🙂

[whole gyro]

Has anyone had success with changing an entity's parent on the same frame that the old parent is destroyed?

Reading through the logic in ParentSystem, it first calls UpdateDeletedParents(). This looks for deleted parents and removes the Parent and LocalToParent from all children, even if that child has a new parent. There is logic for changing parents in UpdateChangeParents(), but this runs after UpdateDeletedParents() so its too late.

[weak oak]

does anyone know when i should expect radians and when to expect degrees?

[amber flicker]

basically always radians when ecs/math class

[pliant pike]

Is there a way to get the last element in a NativeQueue without removing elements?

the only way I can see is to use queue.ToArray() and then use that I guess

[red fiber]

That's the only way, though if you're doing that regularly that suggests that Queue probably isn't the collection type you should be using in the first place.

[weak oak]

Thanks!

Does anyone know if multiplication between float2 and float works and if it changes the x and y individually scaled or based on the vector magnitude?

[dense crypt]

All math in Unity.Mathematics is component wise. So AB * C = A * C, B * C

[pliant pike]

there's no nativequeue.contains() too

[dense crypt]

You could write your own extension method for that.

[pliant pike]

I have no clue how to do that

[dense crypt]

Would you know how to write the code to check if your queue contains the item? Or do you mean both the code and how to make an extension method?

[pliant pike]

yeah I just did this csharp foreach(var boodle in robotqueuearray) { if(currobjID.IntVal == boodle.IntVal) { return; } }

[dense crypt]

public static class NativeQueueExtension
    {
        public static bool Contains<T>(this NativeQueue<T> queue, T target) where T : struct, IEquatable<T>
        {
        }
}```

yikes formatting, one second

Can't be better apparently 🤷

Put your code in that method, and you'll be able to call it like this:

var contains = myQueue.Contains(myItem);

I think you have to ToArray the Queue though :/

[pliant pike]

cool so I just place that anywhere basically

[dense crypt]

yeah exactly

But yeah, that type of method is called an extension method. They're super useful for stuff like this and I highly recommend you check it out

[pliant pike]

that's awesome I did not know you could do that

thanks

[dense crypt]

Doesn't seem that long to me? 70 microseconds. I'm fairly sure it's the main thread you're seeing. Check the Profiler if it seems wrong

Well don't trust the values you see in editor. Make a build and profile it. DOTS is notoriously slow in the editor because of the safety system/JIT-compiled burst instead of AOT and a whole slew of more things. But find the frame where it takes 0.40ms and see what's happening in the Profiler.

Sounds like a good time to read up on it now then! 😉

Sounds more like you just need more experience using it. https://youtu.be/uXRURWwabF4

This is one of the best videos Unity put out, you should check it out when you have time

[viral sonnet]

does the HybridRenderer in HDRP actually use the compute shader for culling?

[shell berry]

Might help if you're making gameplay code using DOTS:

https://coffeebraingames.wordpress.com/2021/06/26/how-to-run-jobs-using-bufferfromentity-in-parallel-children-entities-in-a-hash-map/

[solar ridge]

If this is the entity debugger, I wouldnt use it for stats atm. Profiler will be far more accurate; however, some usual causes of high times in a system: completing a job that could have run throughout the frame, debug statements, inadvertent sync point, scheduling lots of jobs

Ideally the profiler shows you a graph of all frames if live, and in any given frame you can see the timeline for what was called and how long it took

[frosty siren]

Is there a simple way to make subscene works when authoring creates additional entities? I have tried to use ConversionSystem.CreateAdditionalEntity, but it changes nothing

[coarse turtle]

I've found that I needed to nuke the subscene cache

Just to have the additional entities show up in the Entity Debugger

It's really not ideal

[frosty siren]

have tried

in fact when i try to CreateAdditionalEntities() console shows me terrible error about some corrupted meta data

[coarse turtle]

O - I haven't ran into that issue yet :/

[frosty siren]

this two threads are helpful. Seems like i wrote something wrong and CreateAdditionalEntity works. It is hard to understand what was wrong because of uninformative error logs.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/is-it-possible-to-create-new-entities-for-a-subscene-during-conversion.1113991/#post-7168432
https://forum.unity.com/threads/subscenes-help-with-live-link.699470/

[queen crest]

Soooo
Hi!
After realizing that Unity is not planning on supporting actual ECS workflows. I decided to still give it a try.... even tho the base idea of forcing people to use the conversion workflow is stupid

I have a question how do I convert from a GameObject reference? (Reference a GO / Entity in the same scene)

[safe lintel]

conversion is tangential to "ecs workflow", your runtime data in some instances is just not the same as edit time data. could you elaborate what you mean by "convert from a GameObject reference"

[queen crest]

    public class Node : MonoBehaviour
    {
        public List<Node> graph;
    }

[safe lintel]

you cant use managed types inside burst jobs, dynamic buffers are more or less the equivalent as a list that exists on an entity
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.0/manual/dynamic_buffers.html

but if you dont need burst/job and simply want to use that as is you can store references inside of class IComponentData, or add that Node as a hybrid component to your entity

[queen crest]

well you see my whole problem comes from that....

This DOST gives way too many options and ways

And none of it is straight forward

And the whole conversion workflow just adds extra confusin

as i can't even actually interact with the stuff i'm making

[safe lintel]

so do you just want to access that list as a regular monobehaviour component without any data speedup or do you want some sort of speed increase from jobs and burst?

also you can just use jobs and burst outside of ecs, as I dont know if you are even using entities

[queen crest]

Well this is gonna be a pedestrian system with many nodes... so i was thinking why not give the DOTS stuff a try

the plan is to use ECS

my idea was to add the "NodeLink" component for each link it as....

but i think i can't do that

[safe lintel]

i dont know what nodelink is, first thing you should familiarize yourself with reference types and value types, as ideally you should be avoiding any reference types where you want performance.

if you havent already read it, this is a good primer on using dots https://learn.unity.com/course/dots-best-practices

[queen crest]

Yeah sorry forgot to send the whole code

And i do know what ref and value types are (I used c# for a long time and also come from cpp.... so I get the whole idea for this)

[safe lintel]

ok my assumption here is WaypointLink should be a dynamic buffer so WaypointLink : IBufferElementData not IComponentData
add the buffer via var buffer = DstEntityManager.AddBuffer<WaypointLink>(entity);
inside the loop buffer.Add(new WaypointLink());

[queen crest]

okay... and how do I do the link?

[safe lintel]

what do you mean?

[queen crest]

well.... Entity is a struct.... so as far as i understand it it is a value type... so i can't do public Entity as that will be just a copy of the data

Soo like what can i use to ref an entity?

[safe lintel]

well you will have to figure out a way of updating that buffer any time the entities are removed

[queen crest]

Sooo what i store the fully copy and make sure i don't delete the real ones?

(or iterate and remove if i do)

I see that the entity has a GUID component... so maybe i could use that as the ref point

[safe lintel]

there are systemstate components that give you a chance to do cleanup work but I think this is a case of just geting used to working mostly without reference types

[queen crest]

i mean some for of references are needed if i want to do path finding in my graph....

[coarse turtle]

you could try storing a pointer or an index to know which element you need from the DynamicBuffer

but yeah as thelebaron said, you need to do cleanup work and make sure the data is all valid in case of removals/shifting/move

[queen crest]

hmmm okay So public Entity link; it is

[light mason]

Wondering if anyone has done a click and drag on a prefab entity

[frosty siren]

Packages\com.unity.entities@0.17.0-preview.41\Unity.Entities\ApiCompatibilityLevelTest.cs(2,10): warning CS1030: #warning: 'Project is expected to have API Compatibility Level set to .NET Standard 2.0'

I see this warning and... Is it normal that project with entities expected to have 2.0 comp level???

I'm not master of dots docs but i have never seen any notice about comp level

[stiff skiff]

That is indeed normal

[frosty siren]

Ok, thank you. Just trying to fix terrible Cannot find TypeIndex for type hash 8075963649556656072 error in build so i'm now looking at any message in console because i feel like i have already tried everything

[stiff skiff]

Are you perhaps using a generic typed component?

[frosty siren]

No

I have even found what type is 8075963649556656072 and it is UnityEngine.Rendering.SortingGroup

so it is even not my component 🙂

[queen crest]

why is the enity GUID 2 ulongs?
while there is a GUID from unity?

what is the best way to store a link to an other Enity that is in a different sub scene?

[safe lintel]

I dont think entities inside different subscenes are supposed to know each other

[queen crest]

I'm thinking that maybe i would be better of not using enities for my nav graph....

but idk what options i have to save extra data for scenes....

[slim nebula]

i use shared components to index into subscenes

my subscene has an entity with a shared component on it, i load the subscene, then go to that entity then everything I need I can get to from that entity

so I can just link that entity to something when I load the subscene so I dont have to look it up repeatedly

[queen crest]

the idea is that this graph would have data for pedestrian walking, stuff like lights and destinations (shops / workplaces etc..) and than i would find a path in that graph with destinations

[queen crest]

can you give a bit more detail on this?

As far as i understand you have a special entity in each sub scene that you can find with ease

and that entity links to the rest?

[slim nebula]

yup exactly

when you query for an entity, you can specify the value for a shared component. Then it does a hash lookup to find it, instead of looping through every entity of that architype

looping would be faster tho if you have very few subscenes loaded at a time

then your special entity would just have a tag component instead of a shared component

[queen crest]

and what would i store for the reference?
this the the code i have currently:

as you can see my problem is what to store in the component for the ref...

not even sure if storing this graph in entities is the best way to do it...

but not sure what other options i have for storing data for scenes

well... this is even trickier... as it seams that not even the normal GO inspector lets me ref a node in an other scene

[drowsy pagoda]

Hmm. this is strange. I have a companion link setup, but for some reason, the transform doesn't get updated.
I can confirm that the entity's TRS get's updated when I trigger it, but the Companion GO's transform does nothing. I even did conversionSystem.AddHybridComponent(transform); just in case, and I confirm that CompanionLink exists, the referenced components are correct. But there is no transform syncing going on. The entity even gets the Companion Game Object Update Transform System State tag, which I looked at the code, seems pretty straight forward, but nothing is being updated with the entity's transformation.

[safe lintel]

if anyone had interest in zulfa juniadi's pathfinding repo updated to the latest dots packages, just posted my take on it https://forum.unity.com/threads/dots-pathfinding-zulfas-repo-updated-to-0-17.1133773/

[drowsy pagoda]

How can I detect if a gameobject is in a SubScene? I am writing an Authoring component that has IConvertGameObjectToEntity. And I want it to be able to be attached to objects inside sub scenes and outside subscenes. In the awake function I want to detect if it isn't in sub scene and then do some extra logic with it.
I tried: _inSubScene = GetComponentInParent<Unity.Scenes.SubScene>() != null but it keeps returning false for all objects regardless.

Is there a utility I can use?

[frosty siren]

Little horror story with happy end in 10 messages https://forum.unity.com/threads/use-dots-with-multiplayer.1132831/#post-7283374

[stiff skiff]

Has there been any news on the DOTS ecs lately?

[frosty siren]

only compatibility apocalypse

[stiff skiff]

So the usual

[frosty siren]

the latest thing

[slim nebula]

Lol 13 days to catch up

[karmic basin]

to not catch up

[frosty siren]

not that big actually if consider how big is this thread and how long we have literally months of silence

[karmic basin]

Honestly if I managed Public Relations like that with my clients, I would have become quickly jobless

[amber flicker]

I’m sure it was well intended, quickly followed by someone tapping them on the shoulder and saying it’s better they leave it to official messaging.

[olive kite]

Is there anyway to filter queries by componentdata value in an entity query? I know there are for shared components, but what if you just want to query a group of entities with a specific component value

[queen crest]

Sooo if i'm understanding how ECS is supposed to be used. In my case when i want to make a pedestrian npc system:
I would make the following systems:

1. To move towards the next position, this would use a TargetComponent that has the target pos inside it
2. Make one that chooses a new target when it is close enough to the current target

And i guess i could split the first one down even more with making one that only moves in a direction and one that sets the direction to point to the target?

Also what is the difference between Vector3 and float3?

[frosty siren]

You can write simple filtering job

[olive kite]

ok that's what I suspected, just didn't know if there was an easy filter option like with sharedcomponents

thanks

[frosty siren]

but the really bad thing. that after that you can't use lambda syntax

[pliant pike]

yeah technically all the querys and getting the data(.ToComponentdataArray etc) are jobs themselves

[olive kite]

@frosty siren that's okay for me, just needed to filter.

@pliant pike yeah exactly

[frosty siren]

Also you can use tag components to separate entities. And this will be filtering by memory

[queen crest]

an i right that i can't have a scene view like free camera for moving in a dots world?

[dense crypt]

Sure you can? I'm not fully sure what you mean though.

[queen crest]

Wel when i press start than the scene view is not updating.... and i can only see what is up in the game view

[dense crypt]

Have you created your own rendering system?

[queen crest]

i mean i did import the hybrid renderer for the ECS subscenes to render

but no render code that i wrote...

[dense crypt]

That seems odd. Do you notice any other strange behavior?

[queen crest]

this is the first time using it..... so everything is strange?

because i'm not sure how it should work i don't know what is a bug and what is just not finished yet

[dense crypt]

Yeah understandable. But it renders just fine in the Game View?

[queen crest]

Yeah and my test moves in the game view

but in the scene view it does not move and stays in the original place

[dense crypt]

Ok, can your screencap the components attached to your entity?

[queen crest]

Also Script reload takes like 20s.....

scrap that ..... 40s

[dense crypt]

If you have both the Game View and Scene View open at the same time, does it work then?

[queen crest]

Nop

[dense crypt]

Seems very odd. Maybe it's a 2021 thing? They officially don't support that engine version for ECS (yet)

[queen crest]

Well than i guess i will give them a bug report... does ECS use the built in bug reporter or GH issues?

[dense crypt]

It'll probably just get closed since 2021 is not supported. But I guess the built in one.

[amber flicker]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/notice-on-dots-compatibility-with-unity-2021-1.1091800/

[queen crest]

Ahhh so the cutting edge new technology only works on a old version.... Nice

I i do not understand how can there be projects shipping with ECS if the dam thing is still in experimental/preview

[queen crest]

Well i really hope that they are moving away from the Conversion workflow. The new editor window gives me hope that maybe we might get direct editor access to the ECS scenes

[worthy rampart]

most likely by simply picking a single unity version and not updating

being on betas does not correlate with being able to ship a product

either you want to experiment with the latest features

or you want to build off a stable platform

[queen crest]

Well than it might just be a difference in how i understand beta stuff

cause this suggests that there are production ready versions of ECS while never getting a release that didn't have the -beta tag

Soo i guess some people stay on a single version and fix / work around it to make it sable

I'm really hopeful and see the potential in what ECS can bring to the table

I'm just concerned that Unity is not willing to make a it a huge change and with that it will be a half measure and confusing thing

as it is quite confusing now.... and not the programming principles but the implementation of it

[safe lintel]

they are only doubling down on conversion, but the new editor may give you the ability to edit entities after they get converted

[glossy saffron]

Can someone explain to me what are the cons of converting my projectile system (not using rigidbodies) to DOTS?

[queen crest]

idk .... i really don't like the conversion workflow... i get it, but still not being able to see/edit the actual runtime data is bad

[safe lintel]

i think it gives you too much room for error, at least the current implementation of it

[queen crest]

Hmm I'm really perplexed on what to do with my project....
I think I'm going to use MBs for now and transition later....
I think i can still use the Jobs and similar systems, just not the ECS package.
I could "remake" it and basically make my own ECS..... really not sure what to do

By "reamke" i mean i could make a similar system where I would use Native Arrays (I think that is what they are called) and store my components and make some simple inspector for them...... This would mean that I could use it for nodes and similar non visual things

For the rest I could make a data and visual separation where the complex logic for where to go and path finding is in the ecs part and the rest is GO based and they have a 1:1 link

[coarse turtle]

Well if Unity's ECS is a deal breaker, there are other ECS frameworks like Svelto's, Entitas, LeoECS which you can use as alternatives (they may not be archetype chunk based)

[queen crest]

DISCLAMER:
I know this is stupid, but i like to learn these more complex systems by making. None of this is supposed to be for production, or even necessarily a playable game

Unity ECS is deal breaker because i want to use 2021.2b1

[queen crest]

And as per this post it is not supposed to work on that

[coarse turtle]

Yeah

I'm only on 2021.1.5 because dependency reasons with some other packages

[queen crest]

Well i guess i will give my thing a try....
The ECS sub scene stuff showed me that I should be able to do this quite easily...

[coarse turtle]

Yea could possibly work as long as you do GetPrimaryEntity(component) to link entities together

[queen crest]

nah that is not what i meant.... At this point i could make a authoring experience for my own entity stuff

what that thing showed me is that i can add a """subscene""" where the items are entities directly

[safe lintel]

@glossy saffron if your projectiles are hitting things that are gameobjects, well you will need to have a way to translate your ecs data to gameobject data, the result could be messy. thats actually how I ended up going full ecs for my fps, and tbh having some regrets given the current pace of development.

[glossy saffron]

What if im using Physics.linecast for it?

and by the sounds of it, ECS isnt really worth it

[safe lintel]

you would use raycastcommand to batch your projectile raycasts, not sure what you mean by use dots though, you want the rendering, transform and raycasting to be dots or just raycasting or just transform/rendering?

[glossy saffron]

i meant using ECS

was confused what was exactly the difference between dots/ecs/burst when asking this

[queen crest]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/notice-on-dots-compatibility-with-unity-2021-1.1091800/
Soo this talks about in Scenario A that non entities packages are working and stuff....
What is and what is not entities based?

[safe lintel]

you should just make a simple test of having an ecs entity move and raycast to a physx gameobject. that will give you an idea of the complexity required to do what you want. from this tidbit of "ECS", if you dont mean raycastcommand, you are essentially wanting to build a bridge between Unity physics and Physx which there is none(gotta make it yourself). not impossible but maybe more hassle than its worth

@queen crest it means if you are primarily using jobs and burst(and possibly collections), but no reliance on anything ecs

[glossy saffron]

yeah im just going to wait for later gens of this tech

it seems too much of a pain to implement now

[queen crest]

Is there any way to know what packages fall into that category?

cause for example i can't see Collections Package in the package managger

[safe lintel]

uh yeah jobs burst and collections(and dspgraph) are not entities, just about every other package thats mentioned in terms of dots is entities based

[acoustic spire]

Are Unity.Mathematics calls mapped to hardware SIMD only on Burst compilation or even without it (eg in MonoBehavior.Update)?

[drowsy pagoda]

I know how to instantiate prefabs (and how to register them during convert). But how do I instantiate a hybrid prefab? I have an object that I made that is linked via Companion link. I’m going to turn that object into a prefab, how do I tell ECS to hybrid it during instantiating at runtime?

[mint iron]

Only on burst compilation, even then its not for sure, you need to use float4 in some cases for example, even when a float3 would do.

[little moon]

It will do it automatically so you don't need to worry about that. At least it does it for me when I spawn entities that have VFXGraph game objects companions

[pliant pike]

I have a basic stupid off topic question but If I have a method that returns a type like int,float3 or whatever is there no way for it to to return a null value or something like that

[coarse turtle]

not unless you use a nullable operator, or just return a bool and have an out parameter to read the int/float variants

[pliant pike]

that's what I figured, thanks, maybe I'll use the out param then

I did think I might try setting a single float3 value as the null value like 0,0,0 is equal to an null value, but I can't be entirely sure that wouldn't come up legitimately

[drowsy pagoda]

Maybe I explained wrong. It does instantiate the converted prefab, but it isn’t hybrid, it comes with all its children converted and what I want is just an entity that ties to the prefab with transform copy to game object pattern.

[queen crest]

Sooo I think this is the best place to ask this....
Last time I decided to try and make a custom ECS using all the other dots goodness. (Burst, collections etc). The reason? Well originally cause 2021.2 isn't supported, but now more to just learn and improve myself. This is NOT meant to be used in any project or release or anything. Just to see what I can learn from it.

Where I'm stuck now is the allocation, I spent the last day going through what the official ECS does for allocation. I think I have a somewhat usable understanding of what it is doing for allocation.
I did write an allocator for my own game engine (written in cpp) before and I was thinking I could maybe use that logic/pattern for my new c# experiment.

But I found that c# really doesn't want to let me do my pointer magic.
If anybody would be willing to help me learn about this that would be really apreciated.
The old cpp code:
https://github.com/dpeter99/ShadowEngine/blob/d3d12/ShadowEngine/src/EntitySystem/EntityContainer.h
What I tried to do:
https://github.com/dpeter99/NECS/blob/main/src/Runtime/Allocator.cs

[coarse turtle]

Type in C# is a managed class, so you're going to have to Marshal the Element struct so you can grab a ptr to Element

The way I remember how entities does it is via TypeIndex so they map type into an index and store into a lookup table with the necessary metadata

[queen crest]

Also i did find this thing: https://blog.adamfurmanek.pl/2016/06/25/custom-memory-allocation-in-c-part-4/
But it feels like it is abusing the undelying memory layout that i don't think i can use cause il2cpp / burst / unity might have a different layout

[coarse turtle]

Huh this is kind of interesting

[queen crest]

the main magic of that seams to be in:

            Marshal.WriteInt32((IntPtr)(address), 0);
            Marshal.WriteInt32((IntPtr)(address + 1*sizeof(int)), (int)typeHandle);

[coarse turtle]

Yea - maybe worth a try in il2 🤔

[queen crest]

as far as i understand it what it does is basically it has a correctly sized meory

than it constructs manually a ref to that

and uses that ref as the object

[hollow sorrel]

@queen crest you don't need to use Marshal for anything, as long as you're only using structs you can directly use ptr's for everything

what is the part you're stuck on?

[queen crest]

well for my idea to work i would need a reliable way to convert from / to ptrs and structs

and also i'm a bit confused how I handle structs without copying them

[hollow sorrel]

if you know the memory address and what struct type it is you can just cast it

to and from ptr's

[coarse turtle]

As long as the data in the struct is blittable

[hollow sorrel]

ah yea

[queen crest]

also whenever i try to use cast to a pointer it complains that I can't do that cause it is a managed object

[hollow sorrel]

i tend to add where T : unmanaged if you're working with T structs

[queen crest]

ahh that is the magic i was missing... (tho that removes the use of strings i think)

[hollow sorrel]

yea it does

you can build your own NativeString using structs, but from what i noticed after doing that is for 99% of things to interact with it you have to convert back to a managed string at some point so isn't really worth the effort

tho unity has some nativestring types with fixed sizes that you could use if you can make assumptions about the max length

[mint iron]

you can do that with refs or by writing to the memory address directly

[queen crest]

and what are ref structs ?

saw those as well

[coarse turtle]

Stack only structs

So you can't store the struct on the heap

[queen crest]

that is... not useful for this i think

[mint iron]

you probably don't want your element to be a class or to use managed arrays, cause then u can't use burst.

[queen crest]

yeah

[mint iron]

this might be interesting for you https://github.com/jeffvella/UnityEcsEvents/blob/master/UnityEcsEvents/Runtime/EntityEventSystem.cs

[queen crest]

Sooo if i do this, the alloc should give back the data in the element right?

or maybe more precisely how should I do the signature for the allocation function

so that it can return a ref to the data

[mint iron]

yeah looks like data should be a reference to the data inside the array

but since element is a class and your array is managed it wouldnt need to be ref

[queen crest]

let me update the code on gh

https://github.com/dpeter99/NECS/blob/main/src/Runtime/Allocator.cs

should be up to date now

i used the suggested "unmanaged"

[hollow sorrel]

looks like it should work
sidenote do you have some sort of constraint where you can't use nativearrays? if not those managed arrays will prob prevent you from using burst

[queen crest]

well....

my problem with managed arrays was that i couldn't get the start pointer

and for me to know witch element to free up i needed that

[hollow sorrel]

the problem with managed? or the problem with native?

[queen crest]

native arrays

[hollow sorrel]

oh you can use this https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Unity.Collections.LowLevel.Unsafe.NativeArrayUnsafeUtility.GetUnsafePtr.html

[queen crest]

WHY is it soo hidden...

i spent 2 days....

and that was the solution

that one function

[queen crest]

Soo I hammered it a bit more...

https://github.com/dpeter99/NECS/blob/main/src/Runtime/Allocator.cs
https://github.com/dpeter99/NECS/blob/main/src/Tests/MemoryChunkTests.cs

But i think what i get back is still somehow not correct

As that test fails... even tho it tells me that it is the same mem address

(found the poblem... it wasn't a union)

[pliant pike]

I don't suppose anyone knows why if it put Enabled = false; at the beginning of the Onupdate() in a system that Onupdate only runs once, whereas if I put it an the bottom below all the code then it doesn't work, the Onupdate runs constantly? 😕

[queen crest]

@hollow sorrel Sorry for the ping, do you have any idea how unity ecs links the entities and components?

[queen crest]

Second question is there any way to have NativeArray/NativeList where i can set a specific element. Cause when i'm using NativeList I can't set a position unless i have added enough items even tho i gave it a starting size

[hollow sorrel]

@queen crest so could be missing something but afaik
unity has one big array containing some metadata about what chunk each entity lives in and what its index in the chunk is
each chunk contains an archetype describing what components are in the chunk, so if you want to get a component it checks the offset of that component in that archetype, and then uses the entity index to get where that component is in the chunk

if you're making your own ecs you should decide whether you want an archetype based ecs like unity or sparse set based (maybe there's other types too but dunno)

[queen crest]

yeah i think i know what/how i want to do it

[hollow sorrel]

yea dunno if NativeList will let you do that since it's meant to be treated only as big as its count (even if its real size is bigger)
you'd prob have to do it with NativeArray and resize yourself if it's too small

[queen crest]

Is there a util for resizing?

[coarse turtle]

If you set the capacity of the NativeList it will do resizing

var nativeList = new NativeList(50, some_allocator);
nativeList.Capacity = 10;

[hollow sorrel]

yea but if your capacity is 10 but you only add 1 element so index 0 is set to something, count = 1
it won't let you set index 8 even tho it exists, because then would count be 2? but that would imply index 1 is set when it is not
so would count be 9? but that implies you suddenly added 1-8 as well even tho you only wanted to set 8

[coarse turtle]

really? doing something like nativeList[8] = some_value would throw an error or something? 👀

[queen crest]

yes

[coarse turtle]

Oh it calls CheckIndexInRange(index, m_ListData->Length)

I guess if you want to access the internals of NativeList, maybe you can do something like (T*)(nativeList.m_ListData->Ptr)[i] = some_value 🤔

[queen crest]

yes but that won't update the data of how many there are

so if i were to add a new one it would add it to the 0th element

[coarse turtle]

so you just need to keep track of an offset to write to then?

[queen crest]

Well i think i got something to work....
But it is a bit janky, iterators/Enumerators always mess with me.... so if any of you have the free time to give it a look / give feedback I would be really thankful
https://github.com/dpeter99/NECS/tree/main/src

I don't think I will focus too much on memory optimization as I don't really have the know how or the time. And rater focus on the in editor authoring experience.

[mint iron]

what are you goals with this?

[queen crest]

Sorry for the late response. My goal for this is to learn.
As for what I would like to achieve.... Well I would like to be able to directly author Entities in the world no conversation workflow. So something similar to what the DOTS Editor has but it being and actual editor. And also as a small experiment to see how fast a naïve ECS system can be using the Burst compiler.
But the main goal is to make a proof of concept authoring experience. Also not sure if I would make a renderer for it... My first idea is to allow some Entities to have a linked GO that has the same position and stuff. So the GO is only there for rendering.
This would allow me to do special code for how they are linked so maybe even use skinned mesh and similar

[mint iron]

cool, that's helpful to give useful feedback, and i totally get the projects to learn and test how far with things you can go, i do stuff like that all the time for fun. A couple things come to mind.

I'm seeing a lot of classes, need to be careful with that and id suggest maybe trying to have it run in burst sooner than you'd planned because you really can't do anything in burst with managed code, maybe call a utility method but that's about it, classes can't be passed around, created, etc I think you'll find that everything has to be converted into a struct.

If you're interested in seeing how fast it can go, you might want to look at unmanaged arrays (nativeList unsafelist etc) as your storage whenever possible because i think linkedlists are going to be slow in comparison, following pointers all the time jumps around and you won't get cache hits compared to being able to just slam a 128 block in and do the same operation 4x with SIMD etc. That's why UECS is structured the way it is.

You've written a crap load of code already and picked up a lot of new stuff seems like, it's pretty impressive.

[queen crest]

Well thanks for that last part.
Yes I know I still have a lot of classes... It is because first I wanted it to compile and also have a constructor to use for init...
Most of this code is a scarily 1:1 copy of my code for my own engine... But yes c#'s pointers and all the unsafe stuff is new to me. I think the only thing that is managed and will need to find a way around is the allocator map that maps them to the type.....
I could use the same thing I did in my engine and make up a ID for each type. Most of the other places should be easy to swap out for native arrays..

[light mason]

Anyone have any tips for efficiency turning on and off rendering an entity

Add and removing a DisableRender component is a structural change and too slow for my needs

[left oak]

Well, you could either use your own instance-based rendering system (like https://forum.unity.com/threads/200k-dynamic-animated-sprites-at-80fps.695809/), or you could use pooling to reduce the amount of structural changes (instead of disabling renderables, you reposition them for what needs rendering each frame)

[safe lintel]

i set the scale to zero for a few minor things when I dont want to do a structural change

[naive ice]

If you're using instanced rendering, pass along a per-instance flag to the shader and early out if it's enabled. 🙂

Setting scale to 0 is a neat trick, but may eat more GPU bandwidth than necessary - depends on the situation. Profile and see what's faster!

[light mason]

@naive ice any examples how to pass a per instance flag with shader graph and hybrid renderer

[scenic oak]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.rendering.hybrid@0.11/manual/index.html#custom-shadergraph-material-property-overrides

[worthy rampart]

hey has anyone here been using the double3 type

I'm benchmarking it against some other available double types

and I'm getting significantly worse results using double3

Comparing SharpDx's Vector3D

and DoubleMathematics Vector3D

200k vector adds for both of those is ~0.075ms

and using unity math double3

it's 0.4ms

tests were done via a burst compiled job with a for loop doing 100k iterations of 2 adds