Warning

Warning: Unity Simulation is deprecated as of December 2023, and is no longer available.

Migrate from SensorSDK to USP Sensors

Overview

The SensorSDK and SystemGraph products have been discontinued. SensorSDK is being replaced by a new product, Unity Simulation Pro (USP) Sensors, to support sensor modeling. This migration guide will provide step-by-step instructions on transitioning from SensorSDK to USP Sensors smoothly.

Understanding the Conceptual Similarities

USP Sensors and SensorSDK share conceptual similarities as they both offer a library of prebuilt sensors and the capability to create custom sensors. Similar to SensorSDK, it is possible to develop custom sensor types in USP Sensors utilizing nodes and ports. The two packages significantly differ, however, in implementation and user workflow. So it is important to note that migrating from SensorSDK to USP Sensors will require some rewriting, depending on the extent of custom code and usage of Prefabs.

Migration Process

This page will guide you through the necessary steps and best practices for migrating from SensorSDK to USP Sensors. Detailed documentation on USP Sensors can be found here.

Feature Comparison

Please refer to the table below for a comparison between the features offered by the two products. USP Sensors are planned to be at feature parity with SensorSDK, with a few exceptions. If you require a feature labeled as "Not planned" or not mentioned in the list, please contact us for further assistance.

Comparison of Functionality with USP Sensors

Category	SensorSDK Feature	Equivalent USP Feature (all dates in 2023)
Camera	RGB Camera	CameraSensor Prefab
	Red Camera	CameraSensor: Grayscale Filtering
	Brown-Conrady Camera	CameraSensor: Distortion Parameters
	Segmentation Camera	Not planned
	Fisheye Camera	FisheyeCamera Prefab
	Parallel Stereo Camera	StereoDepthSensor Prefab
	ToF Camera	ToF Sensor
LiDARs	Camera Based Lidar	Raster Lidar, Physics Lidar
	Raytraced Lidar (all other types)	RayTracedLidarSensor Prefab
	Laser Configuration	Laser Configuration
	Scan Pattern/FoV	Scan Patterns
	Data Export/Conversion	Save point clouds to disk
	Predefined Lidar Brands: - Ouster - Velodyne - YDLidar	Planned early November
	Materials with Light Spectrum Support	Material Spectroscopy
	Motion Correction/Trajectory Component	Correct Point Cloud Motion
SystemGraph Nodes	Segmentation/Perception package integration	Not planned
	Visualization	DefaultVisualizationSuite
	Point Cloud to Depth	Planned for future release
	White Balance	Use post processing on a volume
	ACESToneMapping	Use post processing on a volume
	Noise	Within CameraSensor properties in inspector, change Camera Noise
	Red, Green, Blue, Luminance Filter	CameraSensor: Grayscale Filtering
	Azimuth Correction/ Pixel Shift	Not planned
	Synchronous Nodes/Scheduler	Scheduler, SynchronizedSensorNode

Benefits of Migrating

We understand that migrating to a new product requires effort, but we assure you it will be worth it. By migrating to USP Sensors, you will gain access to enhanced functionality, including support for Universal Render Pipeline (URP), Linux compatibility, inertial sensors, and seamless integration with other packages within USP such as ROS Integrations, Vehicle Controllers, URDF Importer, Distributed Rendering, Linux Headless Simulation, and more.

We appreciate your interest and commitment to this migration process. Should you have any questions or require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact our support team. We will do our best to ensure a smooth transition and provide you with the best possible experience.

Thank you for choosing Unity Simulation Pro. We look forward to working with you!

Technical Details

Supported Operating Systems and Hardware

All USP sensors run on Windows, macOS and Linux, except the USP Raytraced Lidar (which maps to any Lidar in SensorSDK that is not camera-based), which only runs on Windows and Linux. Additional requirements are as follows:

OS	OS Version	GPU
Windows	7, 10, 11	DirectX 10, 11 or 12-capable
macOS	Mojave 10.14+(Intel) Big Sur 11.0 (Apple silicon)	Metal-capable Intel or AMD
Linux	Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04	Vulkan-capable,with the following Vulkan extensions supported: - VK_EXT_descriptor_indexing - VK_KHR_acceleration_structure - VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline - VK_KHR_buffer_device_address - VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations - VK_KHR_pipeline_library

Making a Sensor

Read the documentation for Setting Up a Sensor.

Using Nodes and Ports

In USP Sensors, the concepts of nodes and ports are similar to those in SystemGraph, although they are not represented graphically. Here's how you can work with nodes and ports in USP Sensors.

Nodes

To make a node, create a class that extends the Sensor class, then add it to a GameObject in the Scene. Then, add Ports as needed; see below.

Instead of extending the Sensor class, you can also extend one of the following classes, which provide specialized functionality:

SynchronizedSensorNode: Allows sensors to subscribe to the Scheduler based on their UpdateRate
PublisherNode: Publishes data from a Sensor to a topic
SingleImageProcessingNode: Provides common functionality for running a compute shader on a single input texture and creating a single output texture
ImageProcessingNode: Provides the base functionality for loading and initializing a compute shader for processing images

Ports

Create a port with an instance of SensorPort<T>. This is used for both input and output ports. Access the data in a port with m_Data, and set data using SetData(). For Image Messages, use and instance of ImageMessagePort. This provides support for reading of a RenderTexture, and will convert to an ImageMsg (for use with ROS).

See an example of how Nodes and Ports work together here.

Example Migration

Suppose you have the following sensor made with SystemGraph (broken into two parts for readability):

To convert this to USP Sensors, let's break down the components step by step:

RGB Camera:
- In USP, the equivalent of an RGB camera is the CameraSensor Prefab.To incorporate it, simply add the CameraSensor Prefab to your scene.
Dummy Node:
- To create the Dummy Node in USP, follow the approach outlined in the "Using Nodes and Ports" section.
- Create a C# script that represents the Dummy Node and attach it to a game object in the scene.
Tone Mapping:
- In USP, the equivalent of Tone Mapping is achieved through ACES Post Processing on a volume.
- To apply tone mapping to the scene, follow these steps:
  - Add a Volume component to a game object in the scene.
  - In the inspector, navigate to "Add Override" > "Post-processing" and select "Tonemapping".
  - On the Tonemapping override, toggle on “Mode” and select ACES

Contact Us

For feedback on our documentation, questions or feature requests, reach out to us at unitysimulationpro@unity3d.com

FAQs

Q: Why are we discontinuing SensorSDK?

A: There is a lot of overlap between the functionality of SensorSDK and USP. USP was chosen for the following reasons:

SensorSDK is only supported on Windows, where USP is supported on Linux, Windows, and macOS.
USP is built to work with ROS connectors and supports creating custom connectors. Read more here.
USP Sensors works with Distributed Rendering. This is another part of USP which allows you to scale your sensor computations across many GPUs/machines. Read more here.

Q: How long can I continue to use the discontinued packages, SensorSDK and SystemGraph?

A: Once your UIC license expires, the package will fail the license check. The license check is done when downloading the package and every time the project manifest is resolved (i.e. when opening the project or when something has changed in the package configuration). A project which has already been built to binary with these packages will continue to function regardless.

Q: Is there an equivalent for SystemGraph?

A: There are no plans to release a visual editor equivalent to SystemGraph. However, the user can use the concept of Nodes and Ports for USP. See “Using Nodes and Ports” above.