I am having exactly the same problem.
Any updates on this?
Can someone experiencing this please file a bug report with a sample project. We can’t to anything to solve this without it.
Rob
I have submitted a bug with a code sample to reproduce it, Case 31172
Hope you fix this soon, I had to temporarily remove the ads from my app until it is solved or I can replace admob with another solution.
When I ran my application along side with xCode debug console. It states “You’re using an older version of google ad mob SDK please update to the newest version” on the console. This is at the time of execution of the ad call line. Hope this helps.
I also noticed this today on my Galaxy S3. I’m running the latest public build.
It’s been 2.5 weeks since the last update. Has there been any new developments?
Engineering is looking in to it.
Hi Rob,
Can you please let us know what exactly are they looking into? The original issue, or other issues that have been raised as well? I think the original issue was about the AdMob banner ads dropping fps. My problem is that interstitials often drop the fps in my app. I think someone else said other plugins like Google play services are doing it too.
Just need a bit of peace of mind as I’m waiting for this issue to be fixed before I can make my game freemium. I’d hate to be waiting if they’re not even looking into my problem.
thx
The bug report that was submitted has to do with banners. However, this forum post which is also shared with engineering has additional information. Google is moving AdMob to the Google Play service and the point of attack may be to go that route. Beyond that I have no more information on what the plans are.
Google is moving to a Google Play based AdMob system, and we are planning on addressing this when we get the engineering bandwidth.
Rob
Well dang, if you knew the problems to the lag this whole time, why not just say so? =), I do enjoy debugging.
Does that mean until Google completes things at their end and then Corona addresses their changes we’ll have no way to use Admob without this issue?
I doubt this frame rate issue has anything to do with Google changing SDK’s. But the bug report with something we can test just got sent in this morning. Engineering will have to take the sample app, look at what’s going on and then decide the correct course of action to fix it. I don’t want to speculate on what that fix may be or how fast it can be remedied. We understand the importance of this issue.
Rob
There is a similar post on Stack Overflow from a native developer:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9366365/android-admob-admob-ad-refresh-destroys-frame-rate
This seems to be related to the animated ads and apparently there is a setting in the AdMob portal that controls if your app gets these or static banners. You should see if changing that settings addresses the problem.
Thanks for the link Rob. I’ve stumbled across that before as well. Unfortunately, that thread is dated back to 2012 back when everyone was still using the old admob portal interface that did indeed have a control setting that turned Google Ads on/off (though from what I’ve read, it was still mixed bag whether it actually worked like it should). For anyone that’s using the new admob portal interface, that setting just plain doesn’t exist. Even if it did, it would only be a partial fix as it takes care of the most horrendously offending frame drops (text cycling every few seconds), but still wouldn’t address when the actual ad banner content changes, image or text (every 60, 120 seconds, or whatever you have it set to in admob’s portal).
I honestly think it might just be android’s underlying webview flaw. From what I’ve experienced over the years developing for Android natively, the webview they expose to developers just plain sucks.
It was explained to me like this: When you are doing animation based on enterFrame (which transitions do), you’re not using a precise system. The enterFrame event’s are a best case firing and can be delayed by other things going on in the app, like long blocking loops, other plugins, stuff going on in the OS etc. Since Corona depends on things not blocking, we are at the hands of the OS or the whims of the native side of the app.
Rob
Does this mean that there isn’t likely to be a fix? It would be good to know now so that I can work around it, by replacing admob or removing those ads altogether…
Isn’t it possible to create some kind of function that pushes an action, such as ads.show to another thread / background allowing enterFrame to work unhindered? Perhaps for things like ads it should be automatic.I mean, what’s the point of having 4 core phones if we can’t?
There isn’t likely going to be a fix unless Google changes something. You might be able to do something with Enterprise and multi-threading.
Thanks for the quick reply. Is Corona Labs able to communicate with Google (along with other SDK’s which must surely be experiencing the same issues) to resolve this? I imagine this is going to break a lot of games and anger a lot of people, especially if they are paying. Also, if something could be done with Enterprise, then I’m sure it can be implemented into the normal Corona versions. It would surely bring in a lot of users if Corona was the first to be able to deal with this Google screw up.
Hi Rob,
This sounds nothing like what’s going on with my app. And if my problem is related to the banner cycles which is likely then an educated guess is it’s not the problem for others either.
Here’s what happens for me:
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Show an interstitial ad
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ad is seen and closed
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fps subsequently drops, for a seemingly random period of time. Sometimes it’s only a few seconds, sometimes I have to close and open the app because it has dropped for a couple of minutes or more and doesn’t seem like it’s going to pick up again.
I’ve recently been playing a game made from cocos2d and it is littered with the same admob interstitial ads that i use in my game. I’ve never experienced an fps drop in this game. Don’t know if it means anything… but …