Context3D.clear and Waiting for GPU is killing performance on iOS and Android

[chaky]

Hi Guys,

Can you think of any reason why would Context3D.clear take so much time to complete. It almost takes as much time as whole Box2D physics simulation (with a lot of objects and joints) which is really crazy and definitively should not happen. This is not happening on Desktop only on iOS and Android.

I have tested this on iPhone 7 Plus. I have also tested on iPhone X but it seams that iPhone X is too fast to be affected by this. I have also tested on Samsung Galaxy s9 with exynos processor which should have very similar performance as iPhone 7 plus and it works so much better on Samsung because I can only assume on Samsung Context3D.clear does not take so much time to complete. I do not have Scout profile of Samsung s9 because I have tested it in Samsung store.

Here is the Adobe Scout profile screenshot:

https://ibb.co/gCuJJ8

And here is the Adobe Scout profile file:

http://bit.do/egX24

In Adobe Scout profile select frames 16,804 - 23,489. It is about of 1 minute of game play. During that time no display or physics objects where crated (you can see that in Memory Allocations tab).

This looks like it is Adobe AIR Bug. Should we create ticket for this. What are your thoughts?

This has serious performance implications for iOS and Android and on devices where my game should work perfectly this is destroying it. And it is just a Context3D.clear method which is stupid really.

I am using latest Starling and AIR 30 Beta. This is also happening with AIR 29.

Thanks,

Caslav

[chaky]

This is also affecting Android but it affects iOS way more. Desktop is not affected.

[chaky]

Just for the comparison this is how much Context3D.clear takes on Desktop PC:

https://ibb.co/jyHpbT

And that is for more than 7 minutes of game play. It is barely measurable. Only 101 ms for 7 minutes of game play.

This difference is really HUGE.

[chaky]

But for example take a look at iPhone X Adobe Scout Profile:

http://bit.do/egPRM

Select frames 1751-5563. There you can see Context3D.clear accounts for 58% of all code time which is insane and on other frames it is normal. One thing I have noticed is that this behavior is changing over time but only on iPhone X. On iPhone 7 Plus it is present all the time. I do not know what triggers it.

[chaky]

I there anyone that has iOS game that can test with Adobe Scout to see what time do you get for Context3D.clear method?

I also noticed that this is something that is changing at run time. For example when I tested on iPhone X sometimes Context3D.clear takes too much time then when I die in game and when I run System.gc the Context3D.clear returns to normal.

Adobe can you please look into this?

[chaky]

On Android Context3D.clear() is normal but there is a lot of Waiting For GPU.

[chaky]

Further testing also shows that this is not happening at all on iPad. I can not reproduce this on iPad Air 2.

Context3D.clear is working slow only on iPhones. I have tested on iPhone 6s, iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone 10.

On iPad everything is working normal.

[chaky]

Am I the only one with this issue?

[ozmachine]

Chaky,

Of course, you're not the only one.

My Scout profile looks very similar (and worse when the dimmed brightness issue occurs)... I am also disappointed that whatever I try, I can't get around this intermittent problem.