I'm using Unity 4.6 to develop a 2D game. I want to know if having a lot of GameObjects in the scene (out of the camera's sight) has a considerable influence on performance. For example, is it efficient to make an scrollable list of names (like 1000 of them)? (each one is a GameObject and has a text, a button etc.) I mask them in a specified area (for example 10 of them are visible at the same time).
Thanks in advance!
Depends on whether or not the objects have visible components. If they do, the engine will draw them even if they are 'off-camera'. A game object by itself has a pretty light load - a tile based game could have thousands in memory. You'll want to toggle the visibility of sprites if you plan on drawing a large number to the scene off-camera. This is where a SpriteManager comes in. It'll check to see if the sprite is in the camera's rectangle and disabled sprites that aren't. There is a semi-offical exmaple here that is good if a little complicated: