How to profile snippets?

[MattiaMontanari]

I'm on Windows and I've build PhysX with the profile configuration. I noticed there are few Snippets I can play with, including a custom profiling. I run it, I see the various entries in the terminal, but I get not data. Is it possible to extract wall-time data and visualise them? If so, how?

[preist-nvidia]

Hi @MattiaMontanari - you can try using PVD2 or PVD3 for profiling, but we do not support them anymore. We are aware that we need to provide an updated profiling solution but I can't provide a timeline at this point.

[MattiaMontanari]

Hi @preist-nvidia, got it: I tried PVD 3 (2021.01.29532135). The exe built from PhysX5 Snippets do connect nicely to PVD, however when I export the clip PVD crashes. If I try to open the profile tab after few seconds of the SnippetCustomProfiler or SnippetCustomGeometryCollision PVD freezes.
Do you have a workaround to create a profile view (such as this one from this recent issue) with PhysX 5?

[preist-nvidia]

You could try logging only profile info, so change PxPvdInstrumentationFlag::eALL in the snippet setup to PxPvdInstrumentationFlag::ePROFILE and see if that works.

[MattiaMontanari]

No luck. After a clean build in Profile config with ::ePROFILE, PVD 3 still freezes when trying to open the profile tab.

How do you profile the engine? Do you also use a 3rd party tool?

[Zeblote]

I've been using Superluminal profiler on release builds. Accumulating samples over 10-20 seconds of frames gives a much more accurate picture of actual performance, especially with functions that get called many times in a loop, than instrumentation based profiling ever could. You'll also get insights on specifically which part of the code is slow, rather than just a high level overview.

[MattiaMontanari]

Thanks! I was hoping to get a simpler/native profiler (PVD is doesn't look that bad at the end of the day), but I did not know about Superluminal. I'll give it a go!

[Zeblote]

It's the nicest and least clunky sampling profiler I've ever used. So fast, too. Really fun to use.