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Unity cluster#

Quickstart#

You must make sure your application is correctly synchronized on all cluster nodes. This means you must make sure its inputs/events (causes) or the results (consequences) of your scripts are correctly synchronized.

Typically this means using MiddleVR's input devices and time API which is automatically synchronized, and using MiddleVR's synchronization API to manually synchronize other data.

Let's take some examples in the order of difficulty:

  • My application is using keyboard, joystick, or VR controllers:

Those inputs are automatically synchronized if you use MiddleVR's input devices API. If your interactions don't have any random part, they should be correctly synchronized.

If your interactions use time, be sure to use MiddleVR's time API.

If your interactions use random, be sure to check Random values and Random objects positions.

  • At the end of a frame, the only modifications are the position/orientation of GameObjects:

See Synchronize GameObjects' position and rotation.

  • In my application, is is important that certain MonoBehaviours variables are synchronized:

See Synchronize MonoBehaviours' variables.

  • My user interacts with a GUI using a mouse:

See Synchronize a GUI.

  • I want to synchronize arbitrary data from the cluster server to the cluster nodes and back:

See MVR.Cluster.BroadcastMessage.

Introduction#

We have already talked about the different levels of synchronization, so will focus here on what the Unity developer should know to create a properly synchronized cluster application.

What issues are introduced by using a cluster ?#

In a perfect world#

A cluster system should in the end display the same image as a non-cluster system. The main difficulty is to get everything correctly synchronized.

In a perfect world, Unity would synchronize each and every state of all scripts and scene graph. Unfortunately this is not the case and probably never will be: this would potentially mean thousands or millions of network synchronizations per frame!

So we must try to minimize both the amount of network synchronization and also minimize the work for developers to adapt their applications.

In reality#

The root issue is that MiddleVR will run a Unity instance (player) per computer that make up the graphics system.

Also note that on each cluster node, all your scripts will still be running.

By default those player don't have any relation to each other, so they have no reason to be synchronized. More specifically they will probably have different inputs, resulting in different results:

  • user input: keyboard, mouse, joystick, trackers, GUI inputs,

  • time input: the elapsed time and time to render each frame (delta time) might be different on each cluster node.

  • even with the same inputs the result can be different: the application is non-deterministic. For example Unity's physics and particles are non-deterministic. If you run the same application twice you will not get the same result.

Cause or consequence ?#

Let's take the example where pressing "Space" on your keyboard opens a door.

There are two ways to think about cluster synchronization:

  • sharing the input (causes): this should give the same result in your applicaiton is deterministic. In our example, we have to synchronize the key press on all cluster nodes so the script will correctly open the door.

  • sharing the result (consequences): sometimes it is easier to just synchronize the result of a frame from the server. In our door example, it means that we would synchronize the door rotation.

Sharing causes#

The theory is the following: if your application is deterministic ("whose resulting behavior is entirely determined by its initial state and inputs, and which is not random"), its state at the end of each frame will be the same on all machines.

This means that:

  • the initial state must be the same: this is automatic since we run the same application on all cluster nodes (unless your application is doing random things at startup)

  • at each frame inputs must be the same: you need to make sure that your application uses inputs that are the same on cluster nodes by using MiddleVR's synchronized inputs or synchronization API.

Sharing consequences#

You can also decide that you don't want to synchronize the causes but only want to share the result of the frame from the server. This is fine as long as you don't forget any parameter.

For example if your application is only moving game objects around, you can safely use MiddleVR's MVRClusterObject script that will automatically synchronize its position and orientation.

But if your application can also change the color of a material you also need to make sure the color change is correctly synchronized with a custom synchronization.

Note: MiddleVR automatically shares the position/rotation of physics objects because the physics engine is not always deterministic if the MVRManager "SimpleCluster" parameter is enabled.

How to choose ?#

Typically you choose to share causes or consequences based on two parameters:

  • ease of development: is it easier to share one or the other ?

  • resources: it might not be practical/fast to share the position of a million game objects if they are entirely determined by the inputs.

You can also safely mix the two methods:

  • share causes for deterministic aspects of your application,

  • share consequences for non-deterministic aspects.

How to synchronize ?#

Overview#

There are three ways to synchronize data:

Input devices#

MiddleVR will automatically synchronize the state of all its devices.

So instead of: Input.GetKeys(...), you need to use: MVR.DeviceMgr.IsKeyPressed and other methods to manage the different devices.

See section Input devices.

Note: Make sure that your scripts always execute after the MVRManagerScript, which is the case by default unless you modify the Script Execution Order. See section When to synchronize ?

Time & Delta time#

Instead of using Time.time you should use MVR.Kernel.GetTime() which gives the elapsed time since the server started and is correctly synchronized on the cluster. Instead of using Time.deltaTime you should use MVR.Kernel.GetDeltaTime().

The time and delta time are only updated once per frame, when MVRManagerScript is updated. See section When to synchronize ?

Time.timeScale and Time.fixedDeltaTime are automatically synchronized.

GameObject position and rotation#

All nodes from the MiddleVR's hierarchy nodes are automatically synchronized.

Adding the MVRClusterObject to a GameObject will automatically synchronize its position, rotation and scale.

MonoBehaviour variables#

Adding the MVRClusterObject and enabling Synchronize Mono Behaviours will automatically synchronize MonoBehaviours variables.

Physics objects#

If the MVRManager SimpleCluster is enabled, MiddleVR will automatically add the MVRClusterObject script to physics objects. This will automatically synchronize their position/orientation when MVRManagerPostFrameScript updates. See section When to synchronize ?

Note that this will only work if all your objects are already created and not dynamically added later on in the application.

If your objects are created after the first MVRManagerScript update, you will need to manually add the MVRClusterObject script.

Animations#

Make sure that the Culling Mode of your Animators are set to "Always Animate" and Update Mode is not "Animate Physics", otherwise cluster nodes might not update the animations at the same time.

This is automatically done since MiddleVR 2.1.1 for animators that are enabled on startup. For animations added dynamically, make sure to do it yourself.

Random values#

At startup MiddleVR automatically gets the seed of Unity for pseudo-random values and synchronizes it across the cluster.

You can safely use the Random functions of Unity after the first update of MVRManagerScript. The Random functions will output the same sequences on all cluster nodes.

If a random value is not automatically synchronized, you can always use Cluster.BroadcastMessage to send the random value from the server to the clients.

Random objects positions#

If as a result of your scripts, objects have random positions/orientations, you can apply to them the MVRClusterObject which will synchronize their position/orientation at each end of frame.

Particles#

If the MVRManager parameter SimpleParticles is enabled, the random seed of the particles will be automatically synchronized.

Make sure to disable "Auto Random Seed".

Simple particles should then correctly be synchronized.

More complex particles cannot at this time be correctly synchronized.

Disabling the following parameters helps reduce chances of non-deterministic particles:

  • Limit Velocity over Lifetime

  • Rotation By Speed

  • External Forces

  • Noise

  • Collision

  • Triggers

  • Sub Emitters

  • Trails

GUI#

It is perfectly possible to use Unity's GUI on the cluster with a few limitations:

This means that:

Without cluster:

With cluster:

Custom Data#

I want to synchronize arbitrary data from the cluster server to the cluster nodes and back:

See MVR.Cluster.BroadcastMessage.

Limitations#

It is possible that some parts of the app won't be correclty synchronized by MiddleVR. This includes:

  • Tree foliage,
  • Particles,
  • Random events,
  • Some post-processing effects, see Unity URP & HDRP,
  • Videos (we have a script in beta that could solve this, please contact us).

Contact support for more information.

When to synchronize ?#

See Cluster Advanced Topic - When to synchronize?

MVRClusterObject#

The MVRClusterObject script can be found in MiddleVR/MiddleVR.Unity.Scripts/Cluster/MVRClusterObject.cs.

When added to a GameObject, it can synchronize automatically:

  • Transform: local position, orientation and scale

  • Mono Behaviours parameters: Experimental Automatically synchronizes all serializable fields of a MonoBehaviour:

    • All public fields
    • All private fields tagged [Serializable]

If Synchronize Children is enabled, will also synchronize all the children of the Game Object.

Note: The synchronization will only be effective after the MVRManagerPostFrameScript update. See section When to synchronize ?

Supported types and limits#

Supported types:

  • Any basic type

  • Any blittable/unmanaged struct

  • Lists/Dictionary

  • Structs and Classes marked with the [Serializable] attributes:

    • Includes any public field of a type that is serializable,
    • Includes non-public fields if they have the [UnityEngine.SerializeField] attribute,
    • Public fields with the [NonSerialized] attribute are skipped.

Notably NOT Supported:

  • Arrays (please use List/Dictionary instead)

Additionally, the top-level type being serialized can be a derived type of UnityEngine.MonoBehaviour or UnityEngine.ScriptableObject.

Limitations of this implementation:

  • It does not support arbitrary object graphs. Reference cyles will be ignored.

  • It uses dynamic code generation thus it is incompatible with any AOT (Ahead Of Time) compilation mode like IL2CPP.

Performance considerations:

  • Prefer avoiding polymorphic references in serialized objects as it is considerably slower to serialize/deserialize.

Optimization#

Objects sync#

Try to synchronize the minimum number of objects with MVRClusterObject. The more objects you synchronize manually, or the more number of physic objects that you use (which will be automatically synchronized), the slower the network will be.

Master display#

It's better to display a small viewport on the master and to disable its VSync if it's not part of the actual display system so it runs faster and doesn't slow down the rest of the cluster.

Also if the master has a different refresh rate than the rest of the cluster, use the Server Unity Window option.

Logs#

Disable Unity's output logs (in the Player Settings, Use Player Log) otherwise Unity will write its logs through the network and slow the application down.

Use a low LogLevel in MiddleVR Config.

CPU Intensive tasks#

It's better to put all the CPU intensive tasks before the MVRManagerScript::Update executes: we use a thread at the end of a frame which will handle the frame synchronization, but Unity can start to work before the frame sync is actually over, so we get some parallelization.

Just be aware that MiddleVR will update the devices state a bit later, when the MVRManagerScript executes.