Unity shaders for Windows machines with shader model 2.0

Question

I am having issues while running my project on low end machines. When I run a windows build on the following machine. Most of the 3D objects weren't showing up & some were showing up as pink:

DELL Optiplex 745

Intel (R) Core(TM)2Duo 2.20GHz

64. Bit OS, Windows 7

RAM: 2.00 GB

Video Card: Intel(R) Q965/Q963

Unity Version: 5.6.1f1

Upon investigating I came to know that Unity's minimum requirement for Windows is DirectX 9 with shader model 3.0 where as this system has shader model 2.0. I guess that is the reason its isn't working on this particular system. I tried creating a separate project & used some of the built-in shaders in it. Some of them work on the separate build (Like Standard shader works if Emission property is turned off. If I turn on emission the object doesn't show up in the scene) but when I try to add that same scene in my main project it doesn't work. I have also tried by changing all the materials to standard & turned off emission on my main project but still it doesn't work.

Can anyone guide me how I can resolve this issue? And is there a way for me to run my application on systems that don't support shader model 3.0. Or How can I setup a project on Unity that supports shader model 2.0?

Answer 1

In short, games typically are not locked to a specific graphic fidelity, rather the user is able to choose options like AA; bloom; ambient occussion and so forth which in relatity results in the application either choosing a preset of shaders (those marked low detail for example) or to regenerate new shaders based on the chosen options and tailored for the custom machine prior to the game launching.

You can always tell when the latter is occurring when a AAA game says "optimising shaders for your machine".

XNA had the concept of Reach and HiDef graphic profiles.

For more info, ask over at gamedev.net.