Hardware Requirements for Unity's Graphics Features

Summary

	PC/Mac	iOS/Android	360/PS3
Deferred lighting	SM3.0, GPU support	-	Yes
Forward rendering	SM2.0	OpenGL ES 2.0	Yes
Vertex Lit rendering	Yes	Yes	-
Realtime Shadows	SM2.0, GPU support	-	Yes
Image Effects	Most need SM2.0	Most need OpenGL ES 2.0	Yes
Vertex Shaders	SM1.1	OpenGL ES 2.0	Yes
Pixel Shaders	SM2.0	OpenGL ES 2.0	Yes
Fixed Function Shaders	Yes	Yes	-

Realtime Shadows

Realtime Shadows currently work on desktop & console platforms. On desktops, they generally need Shader Model 2.0 capable GPU. On Windows (Direct3D), the GPU also needs to support shadow mapping features; most discrete GPUs support that since 2003 and most integrated GPUs support that since 2007. Technically, on Direct3D 9 the GPU has to support D16/D24X8 or DF16/DF24 texture formats; and on OpenGL it has to support GL_ARB_depth_texture extension.

Image Effects

Image Effects require render-to-texture functionality, which is generally supported on anything made in this millenium. However, all except the simplest effects require quite programmable pixel shaders, so for all practical purposes they require Shader Model 2.0 on desktop (discrete GPUs since 2003; integrated GPUs since 2005) and OpenGL ES 2.0 on mobile platforms.

Shaders

In Unity, you can write fixed function or programmable shaders. Fixed function is supported everywhere except consoles (Xbox 360 & Playstation 3). Programmable shaders default to Shader Model 2.0 (desktop) and OpenGL ES 2.0 (mobile). On desktop platforms, it is possible to target Shader Model 1.1 for vertex shaders.

Page last updated: 2010-09-07