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Everything I know about the overdraw

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Jan Mróz

Proposed by Jan Mróz

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Description

Everything I know about the overdraw is Jan Mróz's Procedural Pixels article arguing that orange overdraw debug views are not proof that cutting geometry will save milliseconds. The post reframes optimization around measured frame time on real hardware.

Mróz builds a Unity island with hidden terrain under a mountain, profiles on an Arm Mali phone with Streamline, and compares deleting water versus sphere-baked triangle removal. Heavy geometry culling barely moves GPU time because early-Z and hidden fragment costs differ from heatmap intuition. He also covers discard, texture formats, and transparent versus opaque overdraw.

Beginner optimization readers who use Unity overdraw modes or mobile profilers will learn when geometry cuts help and when they waste art time. Basic shader and depth-buffer vocabulary is enough to follow the captures.

The article is a single free long-form post on proceduralpixels.com with profiler screenshots and a custom triangle-culling baker described in play mode.

Procedural Pixels overdraw writing is often cited when teams challenge folklore about always removing triangles that look wasteful in debug views.