Page Zoom = Performance Gain

If you run a GPU intensive game, different page zoom levels will give different performance like this:

100% = 31 fps

150% = 45 fps

200% = 60 fps (max)

So page-zoom in the browser can be used to gain more speed on systems with low-end gfx, like the onboard Intel HD 2500,3000,4000. The only catch is that the quality goes a little bit down of course.

I would love Ashley to include zoom control in the browser API so we could add this feature to our game settings.

Cheers!

That's very odd - are you sure it's not just because when you're zoomed in less of the game is showing actually on-screen? Anything offscreen generally isn't drawn.

That's very odd - are you sure it's not just because when you're zoomed in less of the game is showing actually on-screen? Anything offscreen generally isn't drawn.

No - this is legitimate enough.

Try it yourself, it just has to be in full screen of course. Set the browser to 100% and full screen, then try setting it to 200% and try again. The rendering quality is lower, but performance GPU wise is almost doubled.

This is the perfect way to scale quality vs. performance.

So I would love the Browser plugin to have a zoom setting. I am very surprised this is new to you :D

Well, could this be added to the browser plug-in?

It's a little bit unprofessional to ask users to go to 200% page zoom...

We won't support this - zooming is an accessibility feature to make text on the page more readable, it shouldn't be used to hack the performance/quality tradeoff. Besides, 30 FPS for a low end machine is still a good result. A better way to approach this would be to design your game with low/high quality settings in options.

Ashley - but isn't that basically what many developers do for commercial games, allow you to run at a lower resolution while still full screen if the computer can't handle it? Even if it isn't the zoom feature's originally intended purpose, if it gets a useful result, I guess I don't understand why you don't want to implement it? It could be particularly useful for those making exe games.

Arima - well, I don't think the feature is actually needed at all. Even low-end machines can generally handle 2D games just fine, and in-game options to adjust things like effects are usually better than just rendering everything smaller then doing an ugly stretch to fill up the screen. Usually it's only 3D games that provide such options since they're far more GPU intensive.

I don't think you're right Ashley - people with low-end GPU's should also have the ability to run their games smoothly.

But it doesn't matter, I'll just write it on my FAQ page instead.

I still think it's a little strange to dismiss the idea when it's totally valid and works perfectly. It's exactly the same "real" games does with their quality setting.

However - there is the possibility that Chrome changes how the page-zoom works and then renders the page-zoom unusable for games already created - and this is the main reason for this not being a good idea to use in the browser plug-in.

lokesen : you can't activate HTML5 fullscreen API and browser zoom at the same time. So it's going to break one basic functionnality of C2.

First of all you have to know why something is happening before you make changes.

Then secondly I'm inclined to agree with Ashley's assessment that the increase is from less assets on the screen.

It would make more sense to just design the game that way.