Unity Deferred Jobs

A Unity prototype for deferred visibility queries using the C# Job System, Burst, batched raycasts, and time slicing. It was built after studying Allen Chou's series on Delayed Result Gathering and Time Slicing.

Note

The exposure map is a test case only. The goal is to experiment with deferred gathering and time-slicing patterns, not to build a production visibility system.

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Overview

An actor scans a grid using raycasts spread across frames. Results feed an exposure map that colors tiles and guides a runner toward the nearest hidden position.

flowchart LR
    Actor["Actor position"] --> Slice["Select ray slice"]
    Slice --> Setup["RaycastSetupJob"]
    Setup --> Batch["RaycastCommand.ScheduleBatch"]
    Batch --> Gather["RaycastGatherJob"]
    Gather --> Map["Exposure map"]
    Map --> Grid["Grid colors\nred = visible · green = hidden"]
    Map --> Runner["Runner finds nearest hidden tile"]
    Runner --> NavMesh["NavMeshAgent"]

Loading

Raycast scheduling and result gathering are deliberately separated by one or more frames, keeping the main thread free while the Job System and Burst handle the work.

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Features

• Time-sliced raycast batches
• Deferred result gathering across frames
• Burst-compiled Unity jobs
• Live grid exposure visualization
• Runtime ray-budget slider

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Getting Started

Requires Unity 2022.3.62f3.

1. Open the project in Unity
2. Open Assets/Scenes/SampleScene.unity
3. Press Play
4. Left-click a tile to move the actor
5. Use the slider to adjust rays processed per frame

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Packages

• Unity Burst
• Unity Jobs
• Unity AI Navigation
• Graphy - stats monitor