Reflection Probes vs. Screen Space Reflections in Unity

Explaining the differences between the two

Objective: Apply both reflection probes and screen space reflections in Unity and explain their differences.

Reflection Probes

To start, notice how there is no reflection on the ground for these doors, nor for the skybox. In Unity, there are two ways to obtain reflection, and one of them is with reflection probes. They’re pretty easy to set up, and they give a decent reflection quality for the area it is covering. In the following GIF, I set up a reflection probe and move its left edge to show how it reflects some of the skybox and door now.

These reflections are decent as stated earlier, but we can achieve better results through post-processing and screen space reflections.

Screen Space Reflections

Screen space reflections are part of the post-processing stack in Unity. Currently, Unity supports screen space reflections in PPv2 and HDRP. Enabling screen space reflections gives us a vastly improved effect as demonstrated in the GIF below

Now those are much better reflections.

Conclusion

Thanks for checking in and reading today’s article. In the next article, I speak about previsualization in gaming.