Finally fixed! Node-Webkit WebGL issue on Win7/8 laptops

I just found out something very weird a few days ago about that Laptop performance issue...

I was still getting a pretty bad framerate while playing the game on Node-Webkit directly on the laptop, but I plugged a bigger external monitor (tried both DVI and HDMI outputs) and switched display on that external screen (24") and no more lag at all.

All smooth... It's like the small screen of the laptop has things condensed too much with the scaling and it somehow messes with the engine but it runs perfectly fine on a large screen... Does anyone have another explanation?

Telyko, that sounds a bit weird - I don't know why the monitor size should make any difference, but perhaps the required driver for the external monitor is is newer and better? Also, just out of interest, on the back of the jerky performance threads, was there a resolution change that went with running on the new monitor?

Colludium, you think it's not the same driver that is used wether the active display is on the laptop screen or on an external screen??

It sounds weird indeed.

Yes, there is a change in the resolution between the laptop (1600x900) and the external screen (I actually tried two different monitors with both different native resolutions, one at 1680 x 1050 and the other at 1920 x 1080).

And, the performance difference between laptop screen/external screen is just night and day, I can't understand why.

I've had a laptop with Windows 7 and Intel HD 3000, my game worked just fine with the DXinstaller that is bundled with Node-Webkit when you export it... weird. And I use a few WebGL effects. The only part that was slower in the game was a big area that had like 3 or 4 WebGL effects running at the same time. I fixed it by downscaling the game and changing the quality.

On the other hand, I just can't get the OSX version of Node-Webkit to use the WebGL effects on the Intel HD 3000. I thought that the drivers OSX was using were old, so I was hoping that with Yosemite it would be fixed. Haven't tested yet.

Telyko, ha! Yes, I was not clear at all. It certainly appears that the driver could be optimised to run external, and perhaps more modern, hardware. Have you tried turning webgl off in the editor and seeing if that makes a difference to the laptop performance? On my older laptop I found even just having webgl on made a huge difference, even with no shader effects.

That would still not explain why the driver is not running each screen the same. Perhaps it self-allocates more memory to running another monitor and that just happens to be what node requires. If you can manually set how much memory the driver uses then, perhaps, increasing that might also help.

Lots of laptops have dual GPUs: often a weak low-power Intel HD graphics chip for use on battery, and a higher-power gaming type card like an AMD or nVidia desktop class card. I think by default you always get the low-power GPU unless you specifically change it e.g. in the nVidia control panel. I'd guess an external monitor socket would be driven by the more powerful GPU, so connecting an external monitor might also have the effect of switching to the more powerful GPU as well.

Ashley, are those DLL files included in "DirectX 9.0c (Jun 10)"? Because when you make a Steam game you can choose from common redistributables to include with the game's installer and one of them is "Direct X June 2010".

— - I'm not sure - I think you should choose whichever the latest DirectX redistributable is, AFAIK the newer ones also include all the older ones too (they're cumulative).