I just cancelled my subscription. I was very excited about this engine, but the editor is simply too slow to even be considered functional. I have a high spec macbook pro.
I downloaded the new blueprint lobby sample project this morning, even with all the engine scaling at the lowest possible settings – I can’t run more than 1 fps. That’s not a typo, 1 frame per second.
Compiling the mobile temple sample to run on my iPhone took 40 minutes, then it runs at ~ 20 fps and the resolution seems very low.
I’m going to stick with Unity for now. The engine might not have all the bells and whistles that UE4 has, but the editor runs 60fps+ even with extremely complicated scenes, compilation takes a couple minutes and performance on device is exceptional. Also my fans rarely spin up running the unity editor, whereas they are constantly full blast with UE4 – even with engine scaling all the way down.
I’ll keep an eye on updates over the months, but I can’t imagine what it will take to bring the performance of this engine up to an acceptable level on Mac/iOS…
Kishok, compilation will take lots of time as millions of lines of the UE4 engine need to compile. You dont get engine source with Unity3D so this isnt an issue, all it does is compile your scripts and launch. Infact this is what will happen if you compile AGAIN, the UE4 engine does not have to recompile and it all happens in a flash. But I agree with you that performance on an iPad 4 Retina is less than 20 fps and I dont get bloom/HDR etc. Kinda underwhelming especially when I run the demo called “Mobile Temple” which should run on a good mobile device ???
Perhaps UE4 engineers can step in and clarify this.
I didn’t mean compiling the source, I meant I just hit the build&run button in the editor. I guess it was building light maps, but that took 40 minutes and my computer was unusable the entire time.
It’s the Radeon HD 6750M from the 2011 mbp. Reading some other threads that might be the main issue. Still, I can use Unity on this guy with no problems, it doesn’t even get warm.
I also have a really good gaming PC and UE4 runs fantastically on that – but I want to dev on my mac
Just tested on my MacBook Pro with Radeon HD 6750M 1GB, OS X 10.9.2 and I have about 40 fps on Low settings and about 15 on Epic settings, with default editor layout, maximized on 1440x900 screen. That’s using a QFE we released a while back. But even without it it’s not extremely bad. The framerate varies as I move the camera about, but it’s nowhere as bad as you report. Would you mind giving me more info? Do you have 10.9.2 installed, do you have the QFE installed (UE4 Perf Woes - iMac - Platform & Builds - Unreal Engine Forums)? Is this extremely low performance limited to Blueprint lobby example? How much memory does your Radeon have? If it’s 512 MB, on some maps the driver will spend most of the time copying stuff between video and system memory.
That integrated graphics will struggle with this high end engine, since Epic did announce that the Engine is still new and is still resource hungry, what I can advice is to use UDK since it’s less resource intensive and still provide spectacular graphics.
