Launching GVRDemo scene using Unity5.4.2f2-GVR13 installation package I'm experiencing unsteady tracking on my Samsung Galaxy S7. As you can see on an attached video it's not caused by low frame rate nor any of my code since the only thing I've changed in the scene is switching the cubeRoom object with a textured sphere object which better visualises the issue:
https://youtu.be/_NRQNbtdpuI
It doesn't matter if I change the quality setting from Fantastic to Fastest.
As you can see the frame rate doesn't drop around the stuttering moments, so it's not about the CPU/GPU performance
As I test the Google Street View app for example, there's no such issue – is it because it's been written natively for Android?
On the other hand I've noticed games like VR Fantasy with tracking system behaving differently – more smoothly due to the delay in the reaction time regarding the device's movement (looks nice, but causes nausea after 5 seconds). This makes me believe there is an issue with Google VR tracking.
Is anyone experiencing the same thing? What might be the reason for it?
I am also testing a simple VR app made with Unity (5.6b9), and i'm finding that Android performance is rather poor. This is the case on cheap phones (Moto G, $150) as well as fancy phones (Nexus 5X, Asus ZenFone 3) and even expensive phones (Samsung S6).
I'm particularly puzzled by how poor the performance of a VERY simple VR app made with unity is (empty scene, a cube and a sphere, no special lighting, single pass rendering...). The Samsung S6 performes very well with native GearVR apps, or photos/videos. All the phones perform very well with things like street view or youtube.
The same unity app running on iOS outperformer all the androids by a wide margin.
Are there some tricks we're not aware of for getting performance out of android?
I'm using Unity5.4.2f2-GVR13 too, and I think it's just random.
Charging up your phone and controller, and rebooting the phone seems to help a lot.
Related
I'm intermittently observing strange graphics artefacts in my app, as shown below. This is a screengrab from a Samsung Galaxy S3. I have only observed it on this particular phone. I have run the app on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 and an HTC One, and never observed this issue on either - although admittedly I do mainly use the S3 for development.
I considered that the issue might be some sort of concurrency clash in drawing to the Canvas (I'm using the basic Android rendering methods, no OpenGL or anything), since I can clearly recognise the repeating units of other UI elements, so I synchronized all the code which draws to or interacts with the Canvas and I'm still observing it happen.
It does clear itself up after around 30-90 seconds, which may be due to a regular scheduled memory cleanup operation it performs - so perhaps this is a manifestation of low available mem?
If I had enough rep I would stick a pretty big bounty on this. Any help appreciated. Hopefully someone recognises this particular problem.
Apply hardware layers:
setLayerType(View.LAYER_TYPE_HARDWARE, null);
my first android game it's almost done, and I'm on the way to publish it on the play store.
Today I tested it on some friends phone and it worked on all except for a samung a5. On this phone the meshes flicker, apper and disapper and look deformed. This when playing game where I use a lot of frame buffer, in the main menu where there is a simpler animation everything look right.
The game is developed with libGdx and use some custom shader. I've tested it on 8 other different device without no issue (excepect for low frame rate on samsung galaxy tab s4).
I ask yours advise:
1) what should I start to check to find the problem with a5?
2) do you think I should delay the publication until the bug it's solved ora I should publish it excluding A5 ( or maybe all devices with similar GPU) from compatibility list?
My big problem is that at the moment I don't have the device with me (it's the personal phone of a friend of mine...) and probably I will have it for only a limited amount of time, so I want to be preparated to avoid to lock the device for too much time to my friend.
Thanks to all!
First, I'd make sure you don't have any OpenGL errors - add calls to glGetError and validate frame buffers and shader programs, you can do this without the device and adding extra asserts like this is always worthwhile (assuming you don't already have them). Next, try using the tools provided by the GPU manufacturer. In your case the snapdragon profiler. To minimize the time you'll be using your friends device, get the tools installed ahead of time and if you have access to another Qualcomm device, then use that to familiarize yourself with the software. With luck the cause of problem might become immediately obvious. If not, then it's just a binary search of disabling parts of your code until you narrow it down to a particular shader/draw call, then examine/tweak that to figure out what bit is going wrong.
That's a tough call. If it's a driver bug, then it might only occur on particular revisions. Some A5 devices might work if they're on different versions of Android from your friends device. That said, the A5 is relatively recent and Samsung/Qualcomm drivers tend to be pretty solid IME, so it's more likely an error in your code that happens to only be exposed on certain devices. Personally I would delay release unless your release strategy is timing sensitive, from the limited data you have, your game doesn't work on >10% of devices.
I have an OpenGL ES 2 app running on Android. I have tested on a few devices:
Samsung Galaxy S2
LG Optimus G
HTC One X
Kindle Fire
Kindle Fire HD
And the app runs as expected. However, there is a lingering issue on my Samsung Galaxy S3. In my demo, I render a bunch of spheres. I can also pan the camera around by touching and dragging my finger on the screen.
What I notice is "ghosting" when I move the camera. It's difficult to describe, but I can see the previous outlines of the sphere as I move the camera. And, I can continue to see the previous outlines as the camera moves. I don't see all the previous outlines -- only the last few (it's difficult to quantify things here). And, I only see the outlines within the sphere -- as far as I can tell, the previous outlines cease to exist outside of the sphere.
However, once the camera stops, the outlines catch up and disappear within ~1s. Simply put, when things are stationary, everything renders correctly.
I recently had some texturing issues (related to mipmapping) and I solved them the other day. The problem and solution are outlined here:
Black Artifacts on Android in OpenGL ES 2
Could my texturing fix be related to this? I realize that I'm leaving out A LOT of details, but I'm wondering if the symptoms are enough to go on? Any ideas?
Thanks.
Additional details:
The ghosting does not show up when taking a screenshot using the NDK.
A photo of the problem:
A temporary solution is on your phone, under Developer options, check the box to "Disable hardware overlays."
I'm not yet sure if there's a way to force this behavior when running your app.
So I recently created a game with several activities. On my HTC Thunderbolt, all parts of the game seem to be running very fast; however, on my Galaxy 10.1, two of my five activities are running extremely slow (i.e. screen fading is slow, enemies and cursor are moving slow as well). I don't know what is wrong. The other activities are running at or at least near the speed my thunderbolt was running at. Can someone please help me?
Try enabling hardware accelerated graphics, which is available on Android 3.0+.
Or, if you are serious about game performance, use OpenGL instead.
First to thank you all for your great help, I have finally published my game puzzle, both full and free version. Not sure how would I do it without Stackoverflow.
I also learned a lot by helping others.
The issue I am having is that when I start applications I have developed, on Samsung Galaxy Tab, animations are jerky at first 10 seconds or so, then they become smooth. This is not the case on HTC desire or Samsung Europe mobile.
It does not matter whether the animation is a frame by frame canvas drawing or built in android view animations.
I wonder if there is something I can do to prevent this slow down; is it something to do the way Galaxy Tab buffers when loading an application and optimising the resources? Or is this to do with the fact that it has a higher resolution screen… or both.
One way to deal with this could be to create some kind of animated intro in the same activity which would preload/optimise Galaxy Tab for the game.
EDIT after few months of development:
When testing an app on Galaxy Tab it starts slow and the animation is jerky, but if I restart the app and/or unplug the USB link, then it run fast as it should.
It's hard to say without seeing any of you're code. I couldn't say if it's a general problem with your code that only becomes apparent on slower devices, or if it is actually an issue with the Tab.
When testing my applications on the Galaxy Tab the general user interface is slower than on a Galaxy S (2.2), Nexus S or HTC Hero (2.1) but there are reasons for this:
Nexus S has a better GPU and Android version
Samsung have enabled some hardware-acceleration wizardry in their later Galaxy S builds
The resolution of the Galaxy Tab is higher
My main experience has been that the effect of the garbage collector (GC) is much more prominent on the Tab, therefore it could be something to do with your memory management -- are you creating objects in your onDraw method?