Rendering Paths Comparison
Deferred Forward Legacy Deferred Vertex Lit
Features
Per-pixel lighting (normal maps, light cookies) Yes Yes Yes -
Realtime shadows Yes With caveats Yes -
Reflection Probes Yes Yes - -
Depth&Normals Buffers Yes Additional render passes Yes -
Soft Particles Yes - Yes -
Semitransparent objects - Yes - Yes
Anti-Aliasing - Yes - Yes
Light Culling Masks Limited Yes Limited Yes
Lighting Fidelity All per-pixel Some per-pixel All per-pixel All per-vertex
Performance
Cost of a per-pixel Light Number of pixels it illuminates Number of pixels * Number of objects it illuminates Number of pixels it illuminates -
Number of times objects are normally rendered 1 Number of per-pixel lights 2 1
Overhead for simple scenes High None Medium None
Platform Support
PC (Windows/Mac) Shader Model 3.0+ & MRT All Shader Model 3.0+ All
Mobile (iOS/Android) OpenGL ES 3.0 & MRT All OpenGL ES 2.0 All
Consoles XB1, PS4 All XB1, PS4, 360 -
