Unity 5 Game Optimization

Faster GameObject null reference checks

It turns out that performing a null reference check against a Unity object invokes a method on the other side of the native-managed bridge (mentioned earlier and explored in more detail in Chapter 7, Masterful Memory Management), which, as expected, results in some unnecessary performance overhead:

if (gameObject != null) {
  // do stuff with gameObject
}

There is a simple alternative that generates a functionally equivalent output, but operates around twice as quickly (although it does obfuscate the purpose of the code a little):

if (!System.Object.ReferenceEquals(gameObject, null)) {
  // do stuff with gameObject
}

This applies to both GameObjects and Components, as well as other Unity objects, which have both ...