Why does switching platforms require a reimport of all assets?

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Title says it all.

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Answer by Mikilo · Aug 06, 2015 at 04:18 PM

Because each platform has different requirement.

The easiest example is the Web Player. It forbids many things that is allowed in the standalone. Like many IO classes.

When you switch to a platform like PS4 or Xbox, they provide libraries dedicated to their hardware.

There is similar reasons for graphic assets. All platforms do not handle all format (As far as I know), they are converted to the specific platform's requirement (certainly for performance and other obscure reasons).

Thus, when you switch to a platform, Unity needs to recompile your code to check if it still work.

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BrainSlugs83 · Sep 15, 2020 at 10:01 PM 0

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So why would my .wav files need to be reimported? -- And if I'm going from mobile to desktop (e.g. from a more restricted platform to a less restricted one) why would it ever need to reimport anything? -- (those are specific examples, but I don't think this is correct -- like Unity will let you import stuff that's not supported anyway -- it will just complain at build time... so this seems wrong.)

Answer 2

Answer by Owen-Reynolds · Aug 06, 2015 at 04:32 PM

This is really a meta-question -- knowing it won't help you makes games any better. But, knowing why might help answer a better Q: "Is there any way to avoid the long platform-switch waiting times?" (I believe the Answer is "No".)

Image formats need to be converted (and possibly other formats.) If you look, textures are in DXT* format in a PC build, and become a PVRTC format in an iOS build. You can probably also read the progress bar, check for items that are there for a while, and compare before/after formats.

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Why does switching platforms require a reimport of all assets?

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