Boat Attack starts off with plenty of scalers engaged by the menu scene, which was stabilized before the capture was done. In this example, the temperature rises quickly and the device goes into throttling.
Adaptive Performance tries to stabilize the situation and reduce effects on the GPU, as this is clearly the bottleneck. The shadow scalers thereby reduce quality rapidly – but because that’s not enough, both the view distance and resolution decrease as well. The frame rate then stabilizes and the temperature drops. The game is rescued from throttling and its frame rate raises to 60 fps.
Layer culling scaler
With the layer culling scaler, you can dynamically adjust layer cull distances at runtime.
This feature uses the indexer system to make certain decisions, like when and how much to increase or decrease layer cull distances for optimal performance and thermal stability.
The sample we ship with Adaptive Performance loops in medium CPU load until it reaches critical frame rates and then decreases the cull distance of layers. The result of this is that the cull distance for layers changes depending on the CPU and GPU load.
You can set a different value for the culling distance of each layer so that they scale proportionally. This helps you determine which objects to cull earlier to save performance. For details on how to do this, see the following code sample.
Adaptive decals
Adaptive decals target visual effects. In Amazing Adventures of Dr. Arm, there is a boss fight scenario that uses many particles and decal projectors. When the mobile device gets hot and throttling is imminent (or already occurring), the number of particles emitted scales down. In this case, less visually important emitters, things like the leaves blowing in the wind, tiny sparks, and other such elements, turn off completely. The scaler also reduces decal distances.
Source: Unity Technologies Blog