allows us to quickly and accurately

assess the performance of our games.

Using this information we can keep our scenes running

smoothly and efficiently.

In Unity we can access the profiler

by clicking Window - Profiler.

Or by pressing Control-7 in Windows

or Command-7 on a Mac.

The profiler window functions just like every other

Unity editor window and can be easily docked

so that it is more readily available.

Once the profiler is open

statistics will be collected about our scene

every time it is run.

Let's run our scene now and pause execution

after a few frames.

Now that the profiler has some data,

we can begin examining it.

The profiler window itself is split in to 3 sections.

The first is the profiler area section

where we can see the various measurements being recorded.

Next we have an overview

where we can get a detailed breakdown

of each profiler area.

Finally we have the pre-object display

where we can get information about the

items in our overview.

By default the profiler measures CPU usage, GPU usage,

rendering performance, memory usage, audio,

and physics for both 3D and 2D.

Any of these can be selected to get more information

in the overview window.

To the right of the profiler area section

is a color chart outlining the specific performance

of different pieces of each area.

For instance, in the CPU Usage component,

we can see that rendering usage is freed

whilst Script Performance is blue.

We can switch these different sections on

and off by clicking the box next to their names.

Clicking anywhere in the color chart will give you a vertical line.

The line represents a specific frame of recorded data.

We can see what frame we are on

and the total number of frames

by looking at the frame count in the upper righthand corner.

We will also see some numbers appear around our line.

These numbers represent the amount of time

in milliseconds each of the sessions took

during that specific frame.

Obviously lower numbers mean faster games.

We can see the specific information for the selected frame

in the overview section.

Items in the overview section with an arrow next

to them can be expanded for more information.

With all of this information at your fingertips

you will be able to more readily determine

the performance of your games and optimise them.