Hi, I would like to compare the performance of a Gazebo simulation to a Unity simulation, and I'm trying to come up with a way how to do it.

When simulation tools are compared, one of the main metrics is a real-time factor (RTF). But I am unaware of a similar concept in Unity or how to measure it. So I was thinking about comparing the FPS performance. However, that is also not right. Because Gazebo runs the simulation and the GUI as two separate processes, the camera's FPS seems to be unaffected by the physics simulation. When the simulation can't keep up, the RTF decreases, which is perceivable in the GUI as the simulation time slows down. The FPS seems to be only affected by the mesh/scene complexity. On the other hand, Unity will always keep the simulation time in sync with the real time, but if the physics can't keep up, the FPS will also drop down.

So I was wondering if the solution is to compare Unity's FPS with Gazebo's FPS scaled by the RTF. Or is there any other way I could do this performance comparison? I would also measure CPU/GPU/RAM consumption, but those seem like complementary metrics. It won't tell you if you'll be watching your simulation as a PowerPoint presentation or at 120 FPS.

Thank you for any input!