The Simulator is slower now

Solar2D Daily Builds and Public Releases
#1

I’m working on an update for one of my apps and I’ve noticed that the current simulator on my Mac is slower than normal with a new build.

Is it possible this is a Corona issue or maybe has it to do with the new Yosemite?

I experience the slow effects with transitions of objects and animations. I’m also using a Runtime Listener to catch an objects movement position but in the simulator it isn’t working anymore now because the object is moving slower than before and probably the Listener is not ‘getting’ the correct position in time!?

On the device everything is working fine btw.

Can anyone confirm slow animations and transitions with newer builds and (or) with Yosemite?

  • Daniela

PS: I’m just testing an older build now from the past days 2478 and I still get the slow simulator.

#2

This is very likely Yosemite.  When you load a new Operating system on to older computers (even a year older), you’re going to take a performance hit.  Since it’s happening with a version you know to have run faster on Mavericks, that kind of confirms it’s the OS.

Perhaps you could add some more memory to your computer; make sure you have a minimum of 15% free hard drive space on your computer.  Run Disk Utility and make sure to verify the disk permissions and verify the disk as well. 

You might want to google around and see if you can find some sites that can help speed up Yosemite.  I just put it on about a week ago on m Mid-2012 MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and I can feel some slowdown from before. 

Rob

#3

Excellent, looking forward to my £2,000 iMac slowing down even more. Apple should stop adding more useless bloated features and sit down and rewrite their OS’s from scratch, so that you don’t need a Cray Supercomputer to have a more responsive experience a £200 Windows netbook.

#4

@nick_sherman, when you put Windows 10 on that Window’s netbook, it’s going to slow down too.  This is the nature of OS upgrades.

Rob

#5

Thx for your fast reply. I now have tried everything to speed up my system but it still isn’t enough to get the Corona simulator back to it’s original speed.

I noticed it’s mostly the physics effects which are slow, like something falling using gravity. Is there a possible technical explanation for this with Yosemite?

Daniela

UPDATE: I have figured out how to speed up the simulator now and here is what you can do if things are to slow:

Do not use the "zoomed in’ view of the simulator window because it is much slower in the big size. The smaller version is showing and calculating faster and things are working fine. I don’t know if this is because of the Yosemite update or if the Corona team has some influence to speed up the zoomed in simulator… maybe Rob can check it?

Thx again for all your help!

Daniela

#6

What Mac are you running the Simulator on?

To answer this, the best thing to do is to go to the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen and choose About This Mac.  Post a screenshot of the window that appears as I’m interesting in why things might be slower though it’s almost certainly Yosemite (hopefully future updates will speed things up).  Personally I find Yosemite snappier than 10.8.5

Be sure to obscure your serial number before posting the screenshot!  Alternatively, PM it to me so it’s not out in the open.

#7

Hello, 

I have the same problem since the update to version 10.10. The simulator is much more slower. (I use the last daily build).

I also noticed some display bugs with particles of Particle designer, but only on certain devices (Borderless IPAD1 / IPAD 2, for example).

My Mac: MacBook Pro / 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 / 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 / NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB

I work with 2D/ 3D software (Photoshop, Zbrush, Modo) that works with the same speed as before, no slowdown at all.

Thx for your help ! 

#8

Same problem with me; all apps run normally or even faster with Yosemite; the OS itself runs way smoother; etc., but the Corona simulator lags like anything. I have an older Mac mini, but, like I said, everything else seems to be running fine. Could it be Java? I noticed before I could run the Corona Simulator on Yosemite, it required me to download “Java SE Legacy” or something.

The forum software won’t let me post my image for some reason, so here it is on DropBox:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r3vewfurkgwnmkj/about.png?dl=0

  • Caleb
#9

I am running the new mac pro, 32 gig, d700 (video editing machine) and Corona also runs slower, it actually stutters now sometimes. The screen recordings I did with iShowU were always pretty stable. Now they you can see a performance dip.

#10

Take Corona out of the equation.  Is anything else running slower?

#11

Nope, everything is running fine. But most things, are not as taxing as corona. 

My video editing software is optimized for open cl, My 3d software for open GL. So the d700 cards can handle that without a hitch.

Audio also seems to stutter now sometimes.

#12

I’m having a similar issue, building a prototype a couple of moving images on the screen. When I was using an older build of Corona it ran smooth (after upgrading to Yosemite), now I’m running latest corona build and it’s slow, very slow.

#13

I’m seeing something similar here too. It’s definitely not Yosemite and it’s very simple to check. 

Just try running the same project using build 2511 alongside with a previous build (for example 2398). The older build runs incredibly faster then the last one.

#14

Here’s build 2398 & 2511 running the same project at 60fps

[media]http://youtu.be/U1ULyrn7ecA[/media]

FIY, the code is just something like this

[lua]

local circ=display.newCircle(0,0,50)

function repeatfunc(evt)

circ.x=math.sin(evt.count/10)*100+display.contentWidth/2

circ.y=math.cos(evt.count/10)*100+display.contentHeight/2

end

timer.performWithDelay( 1, repeatfunc,-1)

[/lua]

#15

Ok, so I just did some tests and I’ve noticed that:

A ) 2511 has similar performance to 2398 (or other previous builds) WHEN there are few applications consuming resources 

B ) With multiple apps running/consuming more resources (for example Chrome with a lot of tabs open), 2511 has much worse performance than 2398 (that keep running smoothly)  

#16

Any updates yet on the slow performance of the new 2511 simulator??
Any plans on improving this?

#17

We’ve had some trouble reproducing this but today we made some progress on that and we are looking into it. 

#18

Engineering has addressed this in today’s daily build.  People on OS-X 10.9 do not have this issue, it’s a 10.10 bug.  It has its history in the early bugs that we were seeing in the 10.10 betas and mixing native.* objects with OpenGL.  Anyway, that bug is still somewhat a problem in 10.10. 

If your app does not use native.*, your CPU usage should return to previous levels.  If you use native.* objects, your CPU usage will still be elevated, but not as bad.  We’ve filed a new bug with Apple regarding this.

Rob

#19

This is very likely Yosemite.  When you load a new Operating system on to older computers (even a year older), you’re going to take a performance hit.  Since it’s happening with a version you know to have run faster on Mavericks, that kind of confirms it’s the OS.

Perhaps you could add some more memory to your computer; make sure you have a minimum of 15% free hard drive space on your computer.  Run Disk Utility and make sure to verify the disk permissions and verify the disk as well. 

You might want to google around and see if you can find some sites that can help speed up Yosemite.  I just put it on about a week ago on m Mid-2012 MacBook Pro with 16GB of memory and I can feel some slowdown from before. 

Rob

#20

Excellent, looking forward to my £2,000 iMac slowing down even more. Apple should stop adding more useless bloated features and sit down and rewrite their OS’s from scratch, so that you don’t need a Cray Supercomputer to have a more responsive experience a £200 Windows netbook.