The real performance of HTML5 from Construct 2

I just started making game with Construct 2, it ran great (constant 60FPS) on my computer (Athlon 7750 3GHz [dual core], mid end gpu), but then i tried it runing at my old computer (Celeron 2GHz [singe core], extincted gpu) but the FPS was ridiculously low, 2-4FPS. I updated the web browser, tried Firefox but the same result. To note, on this computer i can play most of the flash games that are far more complex. Ok, i gave up on my old one, so i tried it on another one (Celeron 3GHz [singe core],low end gpu), not playable at all, some of the events are not triggered since all the conditions are not met (like On Collision), hardly any 10FPS. The next computer (Celeron 3GHz [single core], low end gpu) that i have tested it had NComputing Desktop Virtualization (split one PC to more user stations, this one had 7 in total). Running flash game on all of them is not possible, but on one station is very playable. But when i tried any html5 game, same result as my old computer, 2-4FPS.

I give it to some friends, the ones with faster computers, didn't report any problems and smooth gameplay, but the ones with little less powerful reported same problems that i had.

*All of the above computers had up to date browser, and all run at least playable flash.

I read "Construct 2 vs GameMaker vs GameSalad vs Stencyl", and i think that i am missing something. That much performance difference and i can't play simple HTML5 game? I tried other html5 games from scirra arcade, but same thing, very low FPS.

Here is my game, in the top right corner you will see the FPS.

*this game is still in development, and the things you will see will not please your eyes.

Constant 60fps, but i have a decent computer as well.

There is a tool floating around here that Ashley made to check if your video card has up to date graphics drivers (sorry I dont have the link at hand).

Your game doesnt look very demanding, so im inclined to think its a driver issue, especially if they are older computers. (Still thats just a guess).

Using iPod 4 touch, it was constant 30 fps

There is a tool floating around here that Ashley made to check if your video card has up to date graphics drivers (sorry I dont have the link at hand).

Your game doesnt look very demanding, so im inclined to think its a driver issue, especially if they are older computers. (Still thats just a guess).

Doesn't HTML5 use mostly the CPU for rendering? I forgot to mention that the two computers with 3GHz CPUs are at school, one of them is running XP the drivers from the CD, and the other one (the one with 7 stations) is running edubuntu, i don't know if even GPU drivers there have been installed.

Tomorrow I am going to uninstall the gpu driver from my computer to check if the drivers cause this problem on other not that slower computers.

Toteto, download this tool on the slow computers and see what it says:

http://www.scirra.com/blog/73/introducing-the-graphics-driver-updater-utility

If the graphics card is really old and/or out of date then HTML5 might not be able to make use of the gfx card and uses CPU instead which is a LOT slower.

What graphics card do the PC's have it runs slow on? And what does the utility say when you run it on those PC's?

Keep in mind modern browsers use more memory, so if you're lacking in ram there's not much you can do.

So far Firefox uses the most, with Chrome a close second.

Ie runs fairly well, but you will need Chrome Frame to run webgl.

I get 17-18 fps on one of my PCs.

Specs:

cpu: intel celeron 1.5 (single core)

gpu: intel 915gm with latest driver (from 2007)

os: Windows XP sp3

web browser: Firefox 11.0

Because of my gpu webgl isn't used in Firefox.

The bottleneck is the rendering. On new computers webgl and canvas rendering both use hardware acceleration. On older computers where the graphics driver is not new enough to provide acceleration you will get a very poor framerate. There are two solutions: upgrage to a newer graphics driver (if one is available) or buy a new pc.

Regardless, the performance should become better with new web browser releases. For one Chrome has a solution in the works that should allow the use of webgl on older systems: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2012/03/faster-and-fancier-graphics.html

EDIT:

Note some acceleration technologies such as "directCanvas" which is used to accelerate the canvas in IE and FF is unavailable in winxp so you'll lose some performance there. Also in linux the graphics drivers generally perform worse than than windows drivers.

i got between 45 - 50 fps with:

celeron 900 2.2 ghz

2 gb ram

compaq netbook

worked with out a problem! By the way i love that game on facebook! :)

I got constant 59-60 FPS through out.

But yes, it is a high spec PC. (i7 / 6GB RAM)

The problem is *only* to do with graphics card drivers. See this blog post and this followup. It is literally not affected by anything else, it doesn't matter what CPU or how much RAM you have, if your graphics card driver is blacklisted it won't use the graphics card to render and the game will be slow. (All modern browsers support rendering on the GPU.)

If you read the blog post you'll see it's out of our hands really - many graphics card drivers are crap, so users need to update to get good performance.

I just checked the gpu drivers on all computer, on my old i have Radeon 9200 with drivers from 2006, and when i run the test the render is construct2d. On the other computer at school it is installed from the CD that the GPU came, and i think it is from 2007, also not supporting webgl, and using construct2d.

So the conclusion is there is nothing wrong on the Construct 2 end, the main problem is the GPU drivers, and maybe html5 software optimization, i say this because at least my html5 game is not that demanding so shouldn't be that much problem with only the CPU rendering.

btw i uninstalled my GPU drivers and with Athlon 7750 3GHz i got maximum 20 fps.