Flash 10.1 = bad performance on PC?!?!?!

[Scott Witte]

Friends, I think we have a problem.

I just installed Flash 10.1 final and immediately noticed a performance hit, for instance the Motion Zoom demo page (http://www.tourdeforce360.com/plugins/zoomtrans.html). In Flash 10.0 everything worked smoothly. In 10.1 there are hesitations, erratic and lower frame rates and manual dragging shows a lower frame rate, more stuttering with occasional brief pauses. I have Flash Switcher on FF so I can easily and quickly see the obvious difference. This is most apparent in full screen.

I hoped it was just me, but I got a couple messages from people saying they had noticed the same thing on the demo page. I feared it was just my plugin but checking tours without the plugin the problem still existed, perhaps less obviously but definitely there.

We need to figure this out. Could people please check the site and let me know what they see and please include your configuration such as OS, browser version, video card... and whether you compared in Flash 10.0 and 10.1?

In my case I have WinXP and a Radeon 4850 card.

The problems seem to only happen with the plugin version of Flash. That is, in FF3.6 and Safari 4 and 5, although one user reported it in IE7. My tests with IE8 (active X) saw no problem.

I don't think this will show up on Macs.

Curiously, pano v2.3 works better than v2.3.1, but we dare not use that because of its problems on Macs with Flash 10.0.

Thanks for your help.

[terrycm]

I can confirm the occasional glitch or misplaced frame during the transition. I had not realized this was in connection with 10.1 but rather had assumed it was just an issue on my end.

I am running flash 10.1 Mac OSX 10.6.3.
Happens both in FF and Safari.

[Scott Witte]

I am seeing a 25% performance hit in Flash 10.1 vs 10.0. Please check out

Flash 10.1 Test (http://www.tourdeforce360.com/belcanto/flashTest.html)

to see for yourself... or not see it. Feedback would be most helpful before I take this to Adobe. Of course, to see the difference you need to compare performance using both Flash versions on the same system. Flash Switcher for FF is one way to do that.

View the test pano in full screen. On my system with Flash 10.0.45.2 during autorotation, panning with the left or right arrow keys, and click-dragging the image all get me a frame rate around 45. Switch to Flash 10.1.5364 and the frame rates all drop to about 33 fps. Unless it is only happening to me... that seriously sucks. Can anybody else do the comparison and confirm?

Most of this discussion has taken pace on the Google group. To sum up, I discovered that visual effects I added to hotspots such as glow, saturation, size change, were causing the biggest problem. In particular, while the effect was fading in or out it cased a big performance hit on the panorama. In addition the cursors plugin some of us use caused a hesitation whenever it started moving or changed direction while dragging the pano.

None of this happens in Flash 10.0.

[Aifos]

Same here
With flash 10.1.53.64, FFox 3.6.3, win7 64
in fullscreen i can't get more than 33fps

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

In fullscreen I get 12-14 fps when moving some dropouts at 0-1 fps. Only tested with the latest Flash, FF 3.6.3 xp 32bit

[Scott Witte]

I posted this issue on the Adobe Flash forum yesterday and got this reply:

Hi Scott,

Thanks very much for providing system information and a test case showing this behavior. I've entered bug report #2645017 on Adobe's side, and we'll be using that to track this issue. Thank you!

- Luke
Flash Player Engineering


It is really nice to know that Adobe pays attention to their own forum!

BTW, I also tested with KRPano and got the same proportional decrease in performance under Flash 10.1. By contrast the speed of 2D transforms (moving object, objects changing scale and the like) is dramatically increased in 10.1.

[HansNyberg]

I can confirm the occasional glitch or misplaced frame during the transition. I had not realized this was in connection with 10.1 but rather had assumed it was just an issue on my end.

I am running flash 10.1 Mac OSX 10.6.3.
Happens both in FF and Safari.

Really?

I just tested Scotts testpage on my iMac 27" 10.6.3
In fullscreen 2560x1440

Flash 10.0.45.2
FPS in Firefox is just 19 and there are hesitations and small jumps in the panning both with auto and manual.

FPS with Safari 5.0 is 28 but same jumping.

Flash 10.1 final release
Both Firefox and Safari shows a framerate of 34 and it is very smooth with no jumping.

Remember that the resolution is the largest factor for the framerate.
A change from 2560x1440 to 1920x1200 increases the FPS with 50%.

So if you want to compare framerates tell us the resolution.

Hans

[Scott Witte]

So if you want to compare framerates tell us the resolution.

Hans,

That is certainly true, but the point wasn't so much the absolute frame rate, but the relative comparison between Flash 10.0 and 10.1. In your case I would expect a better rate in 10.1 since it has hardware acceleration whereas on Macs 10.0 didn't, by my understanding.

[HansNyberg]

Hans,

That is certainly true, but the point wasn't so much the absolute frame rate, but the relative comparison between Flash 10.0 and 10.1. In your case I would expect a better rate in 10.1 since it has hardware acceleration whereas on Macs 10.0 didn't, by my understanding.

I have never really checked the difference in FPS with and without hardware acceleration. Its been a setting since Flash 9.
What I seen is that some old computers like my old Powerbook did not work in fullscreen with the Hardware acceleration. Same with Parallels on my MacBook.

I just checked without hardware acceleration with 10.1 and I got only FPS 25.

But remember the 34 FPS is in 2560x1440. I get FPS 48 with 1920x1200.

Hans

[HansNyberg]

I checked with 10.0 and found the same FPS with and without hardware acceleration.

However I now got 32 in fullscreen and Safari.
I then discovered that the zoom level had a large impact.
Fully zoomed out I got 28 and zoomed in I got 40. This is all with the autorotation.

I guess my first test was after having zoomed out accidently. The new mac mouse is extremely sensitive with flash panorama zooming . I had to set the speed to slow and still many sites are very difficult to zoom.

Hans

[vitodivita]

How do you all get the FPS to display?? With KRpano I know but not with FPP..

[Scott Witte]

I checked with 10.0 and found the same FPS with and without hardware acceleration.

Hans,

Right. To me that clearly indicates there was no hardware acceleration helping Flash 10.0, at least for panorama players, on Macs.

I know Adobe talked about how Apple limited or excluded third parties from the hardware acceleration API until recently. 10.1 is suppose to fully implement it although some capabilities still won't be available until later this summer. I bet you will see a performance difference in v10.1 with hardware acceleration on vs. off.

You are certainly right that zooming out slows FPS. I believe it is because more 3D warping is required which creates a greater performance load.

vitodivita,

You can use either of the FPS plugins that come with the FPP package. In my demo (http://www.tourdeforce360.com/belcanto/flashTest.html) I am using a FPS meter that I built for the autoQuality plugin.

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

I then discovered that the zoom level had a large impact.
Fully zoomed out I got 28 and zoomed in I got 40.

That is hardly surprising? There are a lot more pixels to be processed when zoomed out.

That is one of the things that didn't seem to be affected on the TPP tester we had out the other day. For me - with visual confirmation only, since we didn't have fps incorporated - there is no difference between zooming in or out for panning speed and visual appearance.