15. Q & A

15.1. Why does the ocean not update smoothly in edit mode?

By default, the update speed is intentionally throttled by Unity to save power when in edit mode. To enable real-time update, enable Animated Materials in the Scene View toggles:

../_images/AnimatedMaterialsOption.png

See the Unity Documentation for more information.

15.2. Is Crest well suited for medium-to-low powered mobile devices?

Crest is built to be performant by design and has numerous quality/performance levers. However it is also built to be very flexible and powerful and as such can not compete with a minimal, mobile-centric ocean renderer such as the one in the BoatAttack project. Therefore we target Crest at PC/console platforms.

15.3. Which platforms does Crest support?

Testing occurs primarily on Windows.

We have users targeting the following platforms:

  • Windows

  • Mac

  • Linux

  • PS4

  • XboxOne

  • Switch*

  • iOS/Android* BIRP URP

  • Quest* BIRP URP

* Performance is a challenge on these platforms. Please see the previous question.

Crest also supports VR/XR Multi-Pass, Single Pass and Single Pass Instanced rendering.

For additional platform notes, see Platform Support.

15.4. Is Crest well suited for localised bodies of water such as lakes?

Currently Crest is targeted towards large bodies of water. This area is being actively developed. Please see Water Bodies for current progress.

15.5. Can Crest work with multiplayer?

Yes, the animated waves are deterministic and easily synchronized. See discussion in #75. However, the dynamic wave sim is not synchronized over the network and can not currently be relied upon in networked situations. Additionally, Crest does not currently support being run as a CPU-only headless instance. We hope to improve this in the future.

15.6. Errors are present in the log that report Kernel ‘xxx.yyy’ not found

Unity sometimes gets confused and needs assets reimported. This can be done by clicking the Crest root folder in the Project window and clicking Reimport. Alternatively the Library folder can be removed from the project root which will force all assets to reimport.

15.7. Can I push the ocean below the terrain?

Yes, this is demonstrated in Fig. 3.1.

15.8. Does Crest support multiple viewpoints?

Currently only a single ocean instance can be created, and only one viewpoint is supported at a time. We hope to support multiple simultaneous views in the future.

15.9. Can I sample the water height at a position from C#?

Yes, see SampleHeightHelper class in SamplingHelpers.cs. The OceanRenderer uses this helper to get the height of the viewer above the water, and makes this viewer height available via the ViewerHeightAboveWater property.

15.10. Can I trigger something when an object is above or under the ocean surface without any scripting knowledge?

Yes. Please see Detecting Above or Below Water.

15.11. Does Crest support orthographic projection?

Yes. Please see Orthographic Projection.

15.12. Can the density of the fog in the water be reduced?

The density of the fog underwater can be controlled using the Fog Density parameter on the ocean material. This applies to both above water and underwater.

15.13. Does Crest support third party sky assets? BIRP URP

We have heard of Crest users using TrueSky, AzureSky. These may require some code to be inserted into the ocean shader - there is a comment referring to this, search Ocean.shader for ‘Azure’.

Please see the Community Contributions section in our Wiki for some integration solutions.

15.14. Can I remove water from inside my boat?

Yes, this is referred to as ‘clipping’ and is covered in section Clip Surface.

15.15. How to implement a swimming character?

As far as we know, existing character controller assets which support swimming do not support waves (they require a volume for the water or physics mesh for the water surface). We have an efficient API to provide water heights, which the character controller could use instead of a physics volume. Please request support for custom water height providers to your favourite character controller asset dev.

15.16. Can I render transparent objects underwater?

See Transparent Object Underwater.

15.17. Can I render transparent objects in front of water?

See Transparent Object In Front Of Ocean Surface.

15.18. Can I render transparent objects behind the ocean surface?

See Transparent Object Behind The Ocean Surface.