# V2 DRM Impact Benchmarking

V2 DRM impact benchmarking measures startup time and runtime overhead for
protected builds against unprotected baselines. The release gate ensures <1% FPS
impact on every covered desktop target. The benchmark comparison is protected vs
unprotected. The primary smoothness metric is 95th percentile frame time.
protected vs unprotected.

## Benchmark Coverage

`V2/ue/Build/DRM/v2-drm-impact-benchmarking.json` defines protected vs
unprotected comparisons for Win64, macOS, and Linux AppImage builds. Each
benchmark uses the signed artifact from
`V2/ue/Build/DRM/v2-game-binary-signing.json`, the protected artifact from the
DRM pipeline, and the unprotected Shipping baseline artifact.

Each benchmark must measure startup time, runtime overhead, 95th percentile
frame time, and FPS delta across 30 samples after three warmup runs. A protected
build fails release if the FPS impact exceeds one percent, if the 95th
percentile frame time violates the 18ms gate, or if startup overhead exceeds the
platform threshold.

## CI Gates

`V2/ue/Tools/plan-v2-drm-impact-benchmarking.py` emits the deterministic DRM
impact benchmark plan. `V2/ue/Tools/check-v2-drm-impact-benchmarking.py`
validates the manifest, planner output, game binary signing dependency, QA
performance gates, Horde wiring, CI workflow wiring, and this runbook.

Required release gates:

- `drm-impact-benchmark-plan-generated`
- `drm-impact-benchmark-platform-coverage`
- `drm-impact-benchmark-startup-coverage`
- `drm-impact-benchmark-runtime-overhead-coverage`
- `drm-impact-benchmark-fps-impact-under-one-percent`

The FPS gate enforces the <1% FPS impact cap, and the startup/runtime gates
ensure both boot-time and in-match overhead are measured for every platform.