Why has graphics 2.0 killed my frame rate?

Solar2D Daily Builds and Public Releases
#1

OK so I spent the weekend modifying an app template to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUmALvV0P7w

It’s doing a lot of scaling, rotating etc. each frame but with a little optimisation it ran just fine on a variety of ios and android hardware.

However on the iPhone 4 and iPod 4S forget it.  I didnt profile it but I reckon the frame rate dropped into the 20’s.  So I started stripping stuff out and it couldn’t seem to handle the bare minimum of scaling up the circles, no rotation or anything other than scaling them up.

I decided as a test to roll it back to graphics 1.0 tonight and the difference in performance is staggering. I’m almost back to having everything up and running again.

Why??  It’s not like I can submit an iPhone 4 version with iOS so the whole project must be downgraded.

(I was using build 2189 then rolled back to 1244 for the comparison)

#2

I assume it’s because Graphics 2.0 makes use of the device’s GPU in ways that wasn’t done before.

From my own testing the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4th generation seem to have underpowered GPU’s. Basically they’re using the same GPU as 3rd generation devices, but have to drive 4 times the number of pixels (retina display) causing them to lag horribly in certain cases.

Why this wasn’t as issue in Graphics 1.0 I can’t explain. I don’t have any knowledge about the internal differences between G1 and G2.

In cases where I’ve seen this, apps run fine on iPhone 3GS / iPod Touch 3rd gen and iPhone 4S/5/5S, but not on iPhone 4 / iPod Touch 4th gen.

#3

Hmm, strange … with Graphics 2.0 I obeserved rather (small) performance improvement then downgrade…

#4

@piotrz55

Overall I’d say the same, however there are certain things that make these 2 devices in particular suffer.

#5

I’ll have to make a video of the same code running on the ipod 4 with the 2 different builds.  I couldn’t believe the difference.  It’s actually disappointing to see the performance drop so much with the new engine.  I mean how many people out there must still be using the older ios hardware?

#6

This should do the talking.  Top version is graphics 2.0.  The code is very slightly less optimised but not that different.  Even if I stripped everything out so it was just the big shapes scaling up I couldn’t get any better performance.  The bottom one is running the optimised version build with Corona 1262 (graphics 1).  I even tried building that version in compatibility mode and that could barely run.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9gg7wR2M38&feature=youtu.be

Thats 2 apps in 2 weeks that I’ve spent countless hours on trying to get running smoothly. :frowning:

#7

“I mean how many people out there must still be using the older ios hardware?”

unity has some pretty good mobile hardware statistics.

iPhone 4: 11.2%

iPod Touch 4th: 4.6%

http://stats.unity3d.com/mobile/device-ios.html

#8

I assume it’s because Graphics 2.0 makes use of the device’s GPU in ways that wasn’t done before.

From my own testing the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4th generation seem to have underpowered GPU’s. Basically they’re using the same GPU as 3rd generation devices, but have to drive 4 times the number of pixels (retina display) causing them to lag horribly in certain cases.

Why this wasn’t as issue in Graphics 1.0 I can’t explain. I don’t have any knowledge about the internal differences between G1 and G2.

In cases where I’ve seen this, apps run fine on iPhone 3GS / iPod Touch 3rd gen and iPhone 4S/5/5S, but not on iPhone 4 / iPod Touch 4th gen.

#9

Hmm, strange … with Graphics 2.0 I obeserved rather (small) performance improvement then downgrade…

#10

@piotrz55

Overall I’d say the same, however there are certain things that make these 2 devices in particular suffer.

#11

I’ll have to make a video of the same code running on the ipod 4 with the 2 different builds.  I couldn’t believe the difference.  It’s actually disappointing to see the performance drop so much with the new engine.  I mean how many people out there must still be using the older ios hardware?

#12

This should do the talking.  Top version is graphics 2.0.  The code is very slightly less optimised but not that different.  Even if I stripped everything out so it was just the big shapes scaling up I couldn’t get any better performance.  The bottom one is running the optimised version build with Corona 1262 (graphics 1).  I even tried building that version in compatibility mode and that could barely run.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9gg7wR2M38&feature=youtu.be

Thats 2 apps in 2 weeks that I’ve spent countless hours on trying to get running smoothly. :frowning:

#13

“I mean how many people out there must still be using the older ios hardware?”

unity has some pretty good mobile hardware statistics.

iPhone 4: 11.2%

iPod Touch 4th: 4.6%

http://stats.unity3d.com/mobile/device-ios.html