Profiling

Introduction

Profiling is generally a good tool for finding the relative performance between parts of code, and allowing developers to drill down to hot spots. But it's not useful for finding absolute performance measures, because profiling tools, especially Unity's, affect performance with their overhead.

The recommended performance analysis path is:

1. Measure simulation times, rendering times, etc. using a Quantum Release build (in Tools/Quantum/Toggle Debug Dlls/Release) and an IL2CPP Unity build with the Quantum Graph Profilers added to the game scene, to give overall numbers over time;
2. Make sure to set the SessionConfig Checksum Interval (DeterministicSessionConfig.ChecksumInterval) to zero, since running checksums have impact on performance. After measurements, feel free to increase the interval again if desired;
3. Then, with a rough idea of where to look (is it the simulation, is it rendering, etc.), follow up with a profiling session using the Unity Profiler or Quantum Task Profiler.

Unity Profiler

static readonly HostProfilerMarker FooMarker = HostProfiler.CreateMarker("Foo");
static readonly HostProfilerMarker BarMarker = HostProfiler.CreateMarker("Bar");

using (FooMarker.Start()) {
  using (BarMarker.Start()) {
    // do work
  }
}

static readonly HostProfilerCounter<int> SpawnCounter = HostProfiler.CreateCounter<int>("Spawned", HostProfilerDataUnit.Count, autoReset: true);

SpawnCounter.Add(1);

Quantum.Profiling.HostProfiler.Init(..)

HostProfiler.Start("Foo");
{
  HostProfiler.Start("Bar1");
  // do work
  HostProfiler.End();

  HostProfiler.Start("Bar2");
  // do work
  HostProfiler.End();
}
HostProfiler.End();

Quantum Task Profiler

The Quantum Task Profiler is a custom and standalone graphical performance profiler for Unity similar to the Unity Timeline profiler.

It can run with debug and release Quantum dlls.

• Start the game
• Open Tools > Quantum > Window > Task Profiler
• Toggle the Record button

Remote Profiling

Similar to the Unity Profiler an app running on a remote device connects to the Unity Editor via UDP inside the same local network.

Make sure to configure the firewall of the machine running the Unity Editor to unblock UDP port 30000 and to disable rules that block every connection for a specific Unity Editor installation.

To enable it select the QuantumEditorSettings asset and toggle on Enable Remote Task Profiler (current platform only). It will add the scripting define QUANTUM_ENABLE_REMOTE_PROFILER to the current selected build platform. The define has to exist for the build platform used to create a build that is profiled.

Quantum Graph Profiler

The Quantum Graph profiler is a tool that can be integrated into a game scene to display game performance and network state graphs. This profiler is part of the Quantum SDK and can be found in Assets\Photon\Quantum\Runtime\GraphProfilers.

To install: Drag the prefab QuantumGraphPrefabProfilers into the scene or use the menu Tools > Quantum > Profilers > Add Graph Profilers Prefab.

To remove all graph profiler code, for example to reduce the build size, add the scripting define QUANTUM_DISABLE_GRAPHPROFILER.

Real-Time Profiling

These runtime graphs help tracking the overall performance of the game and the Quantum simulation under various network conditions. The graphs and their values are based on the Unity update rate where each value equals the accumulated time/count/etc... in a single Unity frame.

A Note on Markers

For better legibility, the markers graph is running 2x faster than the others. This can be adjusted via the Samples property on the Profilers prefab.

Multiple instances of QuantumGraphProfilerMarkers are supported:

1. Get an instance by name var profiler = QuantumGraphProfilerMarkers.Get(GAMEOBJECT_NAME);
2. Call profiler.SetMarker(INDEX);

Other tools

The real-time profiling tool also contains other (more basic) tools for:

• changing target FPS (Application.targetFrameRate); and,
• to simulate network conditions (lag, jitter, loss).

These are useful to quickly simulate different rendering speeds and bad networks. The effects can be seen immediately in graphs (predicted frames, simulation time, ...).

N.B.: When simulating network loss, set values carefully. Use 1-3% to simulate loss on network and higher values to simulate local loss (e.g. bad connection to router behind 3 walls).

Last updated on 06/11/2026