AkilarLiao

AkilarLiao

Building a Cross-Platform GPU Procedural Grass System in Unity URP (Optimized for Mobile)

Hello Devtalk Community,

I’m sharing a GPU-Driven Procedural Grass System for Unity URP, heavily optimized for mobile. Key Features & Challenge: This system handles Procedural Generation and implements precise ViewFrustum, Distance, and FilterMap Culling entirely on the GPU. However, I faced the common mobile hurdle: SSBOs being unstable in the Vertex Shader on low-end hardware. My Solution: To ensure robust cross-platform stability, I bypassed the unstable SSBO path. The Compute Shader now writes instance data (including culling results) to a RenderTexture (UAV), which is then sampled by the final shader. Seeking Expert Opinion: This RenderTexture method guarantees stability, but introduces potential texture cache overhead. Is this the most practical performance/stability trade-off for commercial URP Mobile development today?

I’m keen to hear your critical thoughts. — Full Technical Breakdown (Including implementation details on Culling):

Source Code (GitHub):

Most Liked

AkilarLiao

AkilarLiao

Just to close the loop on this thread:

The discussion influenced how the system evolved,
especially regarding cross-platform stability and GPU-only workflows.
I later summarized the technical reasoning and lessons learned in this write-up:

The same approach has since been packaged into a Unity tool for practical use:

Where Next?

Popular Game Dev topics Top

AstonJ
Please share!! :video_game: What did you use? What would you use going forward?
New
Margaret
Hello game developers. I’m an editor at The Pragmatic Bookshelf. I have a book by our own Tammy Coron on Native Apple Game Development wi...
New
AstonJ
Anything stand out for anyone? A few live-streams out there:
New
First poster: bot
Stride is an open-source C# game engine for realistic rendering and VR. The engine is highly modular and aims at giving game makers more ...
New
First poster: bot
Xbox 360 Architecture | A Practical Analysis. An in-depth analysis that explains how this console works internally
New
First poster: bot
Friday Facts #370 - The journey to Nintendo Switch | Factorio. We have a long history of trying to bring Factorio to other platforms, in...
New
Norpoleon
Team JethKo - Knee Deep is a detective adventure with role-playing elements & turn-based combat. What started as a small project tur...
New
AideedGameZ
I make a cafe relax game that is free and WebGL. The challenge is you need to earn as much as possible so you can pay your bills and rent.
New
New
CommunityNews
Open-source implementation of the classic GTA engine now running directly in your browser. Experience the reVC technology demo on DOS.Zon...
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Hello Devtalk World! Please let us know a little about who you are and where you’re from :nerd_face:
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Andy and Dave wrote this influential, classic book to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. Almost ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
From finance to artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms are a powerful tool with a wide array of applications. But you don't need an ...
New
AstonJ
I’ve been hearing quite a lot of comments relating to the sound of a keyboard, with one of the most desirable of these called ‘thock’, he...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Rust is an exciting new programming language combining the power of C with memory safety, fearless concurrency, and productivity boosters...
New
DevotionGeo
The V Programming Language Simple language for building maintainable programs V is already mentioned couple of times in the forum, but I...
New
AstonJ
We’ve talked about his book briefly here but it is quickly becoming obsolete - so he’s decided to create a series of 7 podcasts, the firs...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Mike Riley @mriley This month, we turn the spotlight on Mike Riley, author of Portable Python Projects. Mike’s book ...
New
First poster: AstonJ
Jan | Rethink the Computer. Jan turns your computer into an AI machine by running LLMs locally on your computer. It’s a privacy-focus, l...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Quickly turn complex problems into simple, working solutions using functional programming, safe concurrency, and the expressive tools of ...
New