Forums » Impact Engine » How fast should it run? (fps)

Hi

I am investigating some really weird speed/fps differences I am getting, which depend on the computer/platform.

My 2 Ghz dual core, 3Gb, windows vista machine normally runs at 30 to 40 fps (chrome), but just recently it has started running at 15 fps, and I am totally confused at to why.

I rolled back to an older version that was fast, but the problem still exists.
Even after a reboot and cleaning all non relevant processes.

What is worse, is my 1Ghz android phone runs the same app at 30 to 40 fps.

So now I am really confused.
Worse still, I have no reference point for the speed I should be expecting...

I thought this would be a good idea for the community.

so... can you tell me (and everyone else)
What sort of speeds are you getting, and on what platform?
and have you found anything that will really break, or make the speed?
How heavy/intensive is you game? (map size, number of entities etc)

Mh, that's odd. Even the 30-40fps sounds a bit too low for your machine. I read some weeks ago that Google disabled the hardware acceleration in Chrome for some graphics cards/drivers that caused problems. So maybe even a driver update for your graphics card could solve this!?

I have constant 60fps in Biolab hqx with Chrome 12 on Windows 7 - albeit with a 2.66ghz Core 2 Duo and GeForce 8800.

Also, try this simple benchmark: http://www.phoboslab.org/crap/notjsgamebench/

For me, it goes up to 1200 Sprites in Chrome, 980 in Firefox 4, 900 in Opera, 1900 in IE9 (all on Windows 7) and 600 in Safari on my first gen Macbook Air.


If you can, you should always try to limit the number of "draw calls" for your games - primarily this means to enable the pre-rendering of BackgroundMaps. Although typical Desktop PCs "should" be fast enough without pre-rendering.

Thanks domanic,

I updated all my browsers and the graphic driver.
This did the trick. I now have 60 fps again.

I also tried your benchmark.
But my results were a lot lower...
Chrome(11):225
ie(9): 850
opera(11):300

I think I can see an OS reinstall coming very soon.

Anyway, thanks for you suggestions, and your support.
I am really impressed by how quickly you and the community in general are responding to problems and coming up with new features.

FYI: I get problems running the HQX versions of biolab in both chrome and IE9.

It is interesting to see the wild variation between browsers and operating systems in terms of what kind of FPS they can handle when you have different entities created doing different things. In my latest game, I watch the FPS and if it drops below 5 or 10 I think for a bit, I lower the overall number of effects and particles that can be generated in an attempt to keep it playable. I turned it into a 'High, Medium, and Low' FX kind of thing.

Not to get off-topic, but I've had a lot of reports about my two games crashing at loading screen when Chrome (10 stable and 11 beta) is used in Linux or on a Mac. I've managed to repeat it a few times from a virtual machine, no JS errors are reported and the page just turns into the 'Aw Snap' error graphic. I haven't been able to reproduce it in the last few weeks though, wonder if it has anything to do with Chrome's hardware acceleration?