Develop Reference

How to avoid sluggish d3 force layout on Android?

We're using a d3.layout.force on a web app, and I've been investigating a bug report that it is sluggish on Android: it feels like the nodes are in oil, compared to how it works on desktop browsers, or iOS.
(By the way, we only ever have between 4 and 9 nodes, and the sluggishness does not feel different between 4 and 9.)
We set size(), linkDistance() and charge(); so we're using the defaults for friction, theta, alpha, gravity, etc. I experimented with these to try and reproduce the effect on desktop, but couldn't. (friction(0.67), instead of default of 0.9, was closest, but still felt different, somehow.)
I then set up an FPS meter (based on calls to the tick() function). We get 60fps on desktop, and it seems in the 40s and 50s on an ipad. But on Android Chrome (on a Nexus 7) it seems capped at 30fps, and is often half that. Android Firefox was in the 20s normally, but sometimes into the 30s.
So, is it a reasonable hypothesis that are Android devices are just slower? Could there be a cap of 30fps in Android Chrome?
Then how can I fix this? I believe d3.js uses requestAnimationFrame(). Often animation libraries take the time between calls to requestAnimationFrame() to decide how far to move objects (so when the CPU gets overloaded the animation becomes jerkier, but takes the same amount of time to complete). But it appears that d3.js does not do this, and moves everything the same amount by tick, not by elapsed time. What can I do about this?
(Ideally I'd like a solution based on how slow/fast the machine is, rather than having to sniff the browser.)

Curiously, adding more calls to force.tick() in my own requestAnimationFrame() handler (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/26189110/841830), does increase the FPS. That suggests it is not CPU bound, but instead a limit that Android is enforcing (perhaps to save battery?).
Here is the code I'm using, that tries to adapt dynamically to the current fps; it ain't beautiful but seems to be getting the job done in my test android devices, without changing the behaviour in iOS or desktop.
First, where you set up the force layout:
var ticksPerRender = 0;
var animStartTime,animFrameCount;
force.on('start',function start(){
animStartTime = new Date();animFrameCount=0;
});
requestAnimationFrame(function render() {
for(var i = 0;i < ticksPerRender;i++)force.tick();
if(force.alpha() > 0)requestAnimationFrame(render);
});
The above does two things:
sets up the fps counter
sets up our own animation callback, which does nothing by default (ticksPerRender starts off as zero).
Then at the end of your tick handler:
++animFrameCount;
if(animFrameCount>=15){ //Wait for 15, to get an accurate count
var now = new Date();
var fps = (animFrameCount / (now - animStartTime))*1000;
if(fps < 30){
ticksPerRender++;
animStartTime = now;animFrameCount = 0; //Reset the fps counter
}
if(fps > 60 && ticksPerRender >= 1){
ticksPerRender--;
animStartTime = now;animFrameCount = 0; //Reset the fps counter
}
}
This says that if the FPS is low (below 30), do an extra call to tick() on each animation frame. And if it goes high (over 60), remove that extra call.
Each time ticksPerRender is changed, we measure the FPS from scratch.

How to collide objects with high speed in Unity

I try to create game for Android and I have problem with high speed objects, they don't wanna to collide.
I have Sphere with Sphere Collider and Bouncy material, and RigidBody with this param (Gravity=false, Interpolate=Interpolate, Collision Detection = Continuous Dynamic)
Also I have 3 walls with Box Collider and Bouncy material.
This is my code for Sphere
function IncreaseBallVelocity() {
rigidbody.velocity *= 1.05;
}
function Awake () {
rigidbody.AddForce(4, 4, 0, ForceMode.Impulse);
InvokeRepeating("IncreaseBallVelocity", 2, 2);
}
In project Settings I set: "Min Penetration For Penalty Force"=0.001, "Solver Interation Count"=50
When I play on the start it work fine (it bounces) but when speed go to high, Sphere just passes the wall.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks.
Edited
var hit : RaycastHit;
var mainGameScript : MainGame;
var particles_splash : GameObject;
function Awake () {
rigidbody.AddForce(4, 4, 0, ForceMode.Impulse);
InvokeRepeating("IncreaseBallVelocity", 2, 2);
}
function Update() {
if (rigidbody.SweepTest(transform.forward, hit, 0.5))
Debug.Log(hit.distance + "mts distance to obstacle");
if(transform.position.y < -3) {
mainGameScript.GameOver();
//Application.LoadLevel("Menu");
}
}
function IncreaseBallVelocity() {
rigidbody.velocity *= 1.05;
}
function OnCollisionEnter(collision : Collision) {
Instantiate(particles_splash, transform.position, transform.rotation);
}
EDITED added more info
Fixed Timestep = 0.02 Maximum Allowed Tir = 0.333
There is no difference between running the game in editor player and on Android
No. It looks OK when I set 0.01
My Paddle is Box Collider without Rigidbody, walls are the same
There are all in same layer (when speed is normal it all works) value in PhysicsManager are the default (same like in image) exept "Solver Interation Co..." = 50
No. When I change speed it pass other wall
I am using standard cube but I expand/shrink it to fit my screen and other objects, when I expand wall more then it's OK it bouncing
No. It's simple project simple example from Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edfd1HJmKPY
I don't use gravity

See:
Similar SO Question
A community script that uses ray tracing to help manage fast objects
UnityAnswers post leading to the script in (2)
You could also try changing the fixed time step for physics. The smaller this value, the more times Unity calculates the physics of a scene. But be warned, making this value too small, say <= 0.005, will likely result in an unstable game, especially on a portable device.
The script above is best for bullets or small objects. You can manually force rigid body collisions tests:
public class example : MonoBehaviour {
public RaycastHit hit;
void Update() {
if (rigidbody.SweepTest(transform.forward, out hit, 10))
Debug.Log(hit.distance + "mts distance to obstacle");
}
}

I think the main problem is the manipulation of Rigidbody's velocity. I would try the following to solve the problem.
Redesign your code to ensure that IncreaseBallVelocity and every other manipulation of Rigidbody is called within FixedUpdate. Check that there are no other manipulations to Transform.position.
Try to replace setting velocity directly by using AddForce or similar methods so the physics engine has a higher chance to calculate all dependencies.
If there are more items (main player character, ...) involved related to the physics calculation, ensure that their code runs in FixedUpdate too.
Another point I stumbled upon were meshes that are scaled very much. Having a GameObject with scale <= 0.01 or >= 100 has definitely a negative impact on physics calculation. According to the docs and this Unity forum entry from one of the gurus you should avoid Transform.scale values != 1
Still not happy? OK then the next test is starting with high velocities but no acceleration. At this phase we want to know, if the high velocity itself or the acceleration is to blame for the problem. It would be interesting to know the velocities' values at which the physics engine starts to fail - please post them so that we can compare them.
EDIT: Some more things to investigate
6.7 m/sec does not sound that much so that I guess there is a special reason or a combination of reasons why things go wrong.
Is your Maximum Allowed Timestep high enough? For testing I suggest 5 to 10x Fixed Timestep. Note that this might kill the frame rate but that can be dfixed later.
Is there any difference between running the game in editor player and on Android?
Did you notice any drops in frame rate because of the 0.01 FixedTimestep? This would indicate that the physics engine might be in trouble.
Could it be that there are static colliders (objects having a collider but no Rigidbody) that are moved around or manipulated otherwise? This would cause heavy recalculations within PhysX.
What about the layers: Are all walls on the same layer resp. are the involved layers are configured appropriately in collision detection matrix?
Does the no-bounce effect always happen at the same wall? If so, can you just copy the 1st wall and put it in place of the second one to see if there is something wrong with this specific wall.
If not to much effort, I would try to set up some standard cubes as walls just to be sure that transform.scale is not to blame for it (I made really bad experience with this).
Do you manipulate gravity or TimeManager.timeScale from within a script?
BTW: are you using gravity? (Should be no problem just

How to calculate sound frequency in android?

I want to develop app to calculate Sound frequency in Android. Android Device will take
Sound from microphone (i.e. out side sound) and I have one color background screen in app.
on sound frequency changes i have to change background color of screen .
So my question is "How can i get sound frequency"?
is there any android API available?
Please help me out of this problem.

Your problem was solved here EDIT: archived here. Also you can analyze the frequency by using FFT.
EDIT: FFTBasedSpectrumAnalyzer (example code, the link from the comment)

Thanks for Reply I have done this by using sample on
http://som-itsolutions.blogspot.in/2012/01/fft-based-simple-spectrum-analyzer.html
Just modify your code for to calculate sound frequency by using below method
// sampleRate = 44100
public static int calculate(int sampleRate, short [] audioData){
int numSamples = audioData.length;
int numCrossing = 0;
for (int p = 0; p < numSamples-1; p++)
{
if ((audioData[p] > 0 && audioData[p + 1] <= 0) ||
(audioData[p] < 0 && audioData[p + 1] >= 0))
{
numCrossing++;
}
}
float numSecondsRecorded = (float)numSamples/(float)sampleRate;
float numCycles = numCrossing/2;
float frequency = numCycles/numSecondsRecorded;
return (int)frequency;
}

The other answers show how to display a spectrogram. I think the question is how to detect a change in fundamental frequency. This is asked so often on Stack Exchange I wrote a blog entry (with code!) about it:
http://blog.bjornroche.com/2012/07/frequency-detection-using-fft-aka-pitch.html
Admittedly, the code is in C, but I think you'll find it easy to port.
In short, you must:
low-pass the input signal so that higher frequency overtones are not mistaken for the fundamental frequency (this may not appear to be an issue in your application, since you are just looking for a change in pitch, but I recommend doing it anyway for reasons that are too complex to go into here).
window the signal, using a proper windowing function. To get the most responsive output, you should overlap the windows, which I don't do in my sample code.
Perform an FFT on the data in each window, and calculate the frequency using the index of maximum absolute peak value.
Keep in mind for your application where you probably want to detect the change in pitch accurately and quickly, the FFT method I describe may not be sufficient. You have two options:
There are techniques for increasing the specificity of the pitch tracking using phase information, not just the absolute peak.
Use a time-domain method based on autocorrelation. Yin is an excellent choice. (google for "yin pitch tracking")

Here is a link to the code mentioned. There's also some other useful code there.
https://github.com/gast-lib/gast-lib/blob/master/library/src/root/gast/audio/processing/ZeroCrossing.java
Here's the deal with ZeroCrossings:
It is inaccurate at determining frequency precisely based on recorded audio on an Android. That said, it is still useful for giving your app a general sense that the sound it is hearing is a constant singing tone, versus just noise.
The code here seems to work quite well for determining frequency, (if you can translate it from C# to java)
http://code.google.com/p/yaalp/

Android Game Development: Collision Detection Failing

I am currently developing a game for Android, and I would like your expertise on an issue that I have been having.
Background:
My game incorporates frame rate independent motion, which takes into
account the delta time value before performing necessary Velocity
calculations.
The game is a traditional 2D platformer.
The Issue:
Here's my issue (simplified). Let's pretend that my character is a square standing on top of a platform (with "gravity" being a constant downward velocity of characterVelocityDown).
I have defined the collision detection as follows (assuming Y axis points downwards):
Given characterFootY is the y-coordinate of the base of my square character, platformSurfaceY is the upper y-coordinate of my platform, and platformBaseY is the lower y-coordinate of my platform:
if (characterFootY + characterVelocityDown > platformSurfaceY && characterFootY + characterDy < platformBaseY) {
//Collision Is True
characterFootY = platformSurfaceY;
characterVelocityDown = 0;
} else{
characterVelocityDown = deltaTime * 6;
This approach works perfectly fine when the game is running at regular speed; however, if the game slows down, the deltaTime (which is the elapsed time between the previous frame and the current frame) becomes large, and characterFootY + characterVelocityDown exceed the boundaries that define collision detection and the character just falls straight through (as if teleporting).
How should I approach this issue to prevent this?
Thanks in advance for your help and I am looking forward to learning from you!

What you need to do is to run your physics loop with constant delta time and iterate it as many time as it need with current tick.
const float PHYSICS_TICK = 1/60.f; // 60 FPS
void Update( float dt )
{
m_dt += dt;
while( m_dt > PHYSICS_TICK )
{
UpdatePhysics( PHYSICS_TICK );
m_dt -= PHYSICS_TICK;
}
}
There are various technics used to handle the tick left ( m_dt )
Caps for miniumum tick and maximum tick are also a must.

I guess the issue here is that slowdowns are inevitable. You can try and optimize the code but you'll always have users with slow devices or busy sections of your game where it takes a little longer than usual to process it all. Instead of assuming a consistent delta, assume the opposite. Code under the realization that someone could try installing it on an abacus.
So basically, as SeveN says, make your game loop handle slowdowns. The only real way to do this (in my admittedly limited experience) would be to place a cap on how large delta can be. This will result in your clock not running on time exactly, but when you think about it, that's how most games handle slowdown. You don't fire up StarCraft on your pentium 66 and have it run at 5 FPS but full speed, it slow down and processes it as normal, albeit at a slideshow.
If you did such a thing, during periods of slowdown in your game, it'd visibly slow down... but the calculations should still all be spot on.
edit: just realised you're SeveN. Well done.

Android: How to find the frame rate of a device?

Frame rate: I'm referring to the rate at which display changes. i.e. Ondraw() is called and the canvas is redrawn.
Is there a default rate for all android devices ? As this rate depends on the processing power of the device , How to find out the frame rate of a device , before starting to program for that mobile device ?

This may be a follow-up to this question, where I suggested that having a redraw loop that just kept drawing over and over again might be a bit excessive. There may be an api to find out the capabilities of the devices display, but if there is I'm not aware of it. When you're writing your own event loop / thread function you can control the framerate by how often you call your 'draw' method. Typically, I think for most purposes, you would be ok with a refresh rate of 30 or so. If you're writing a fast action game, that needs rapid animation then you may want to run as fast as you can, the more fps, the smoother it will be.
A typical event loop (thread run function) might look something like this:
// define the target fps
private static final int UPDATE_RATE = 30; // Frames per second (fps)
public void run() {
while(running) { // volatile flag, set somewhere else to shutdown
long beginTimeMillis, timeTakenMillis, timeLeftMillis;
// get the time before updates/draw
beginTimeMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
// do the thread processing / draw
performUpdates(); // move things if required
draw(); // draw them on the screen
// get the time after processing and calculate the difference
timeTakenMillis = System.currentTimeMillis() - beginTimeMillis;
// check how long there is until we reach the desired refresh rate
timeLeftMillis = (1000L / UPDATE_RATE) - timeTakenMillis;
// set some kind of minimum to prevent spinning
if (timeLeftMillis < 5) {
timeLeftMillis = 5; // Set a minimum
}
// sleep until the end of the current frame
try {
TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.sleep(timeLeftMillis);
} catch (InterruptedException ie) {
}
}
}

You can use the dumpsys tool provided by Android. To obtain information about the display of the device execute the command:
adb shell dumpsys display
The information about the frame rate of the device is provided in the attribute "mPhys".
You will find something like:
mPhys=PhysicalDisplayInfo{1080x1920, 60.000004 fps, densitiy 3.0,
480.0x480.0 dpi, secure true}
The frame rate of the device is in the second field, in my case is 60.000004 fps

You can't rely on a certain framerate. Android is a using multitasking operating system. If there are some threads running in the background that do some heavy lifting, you might not be able to reach the framerate you want. Even if you're the only active process, the framerate depends on your GPU and CPU, and the clock of each. Maybe the user has a hacked ROM that changes the clock to a custom value.
Some phones might be locked to a certain framerate. The HTC EVO was locked to 30fps for the longest time, until custom ROMs came out that removed that limitation. Newer EVO ROMs also removed that limitation.
I don't know what you're trying to do, but your best bet is to measure the time after each frame and use that delta for your animations. If you're trying to display the FPS, then use a smoothed average.

There is a simple tricky way to find device FPS during runtime.
Just call the following method:
long oneSecondLater=0;
int FPS=0;
int counter=0;
ValueAnimator v_animator;
private void logFPS()
{
oneSecondLater = System.currentTimeMillis()+1000;
v_animator = ValueAnimator.ofFloat(0.0f, 1.0f);
v_animator.setRepeatCount(ValueAnimator.INFINITE);
v_animator.addUpdateListener(new ValueAnimator.AnimatorUpdateListener() {
#Override
public void onAnimationUpdate(ValueAnimator animation) {
FPS++;
if(System.currentTimeMillis() > oneSecondLater)
{
counter++;
if(counter>1)//ignore the first onAnimationUpdate call (it is not correct)
Log.i("checkFPS","FPS:" + FPS);
FPS=0;
oneSecondLater = System.currentTimeMillis()+1000;
}
}
});
v_animator.start();
}
I log FPS every second, The output of my Logcat was as follows
It works because for ValueAnimator, onAnimationUpdate() method will call according to device FPS;

This might be an old question, but for future reference, I found this library named Takt
https://github.com/wasabeef/Takt.
Takt is Android library for measuring the FPS using Choreographer.