Develop Reference

Android OpenGL previous frame re-appear for split moment when calling update

I have just started using the OpenGL ES 2 for android for my little game and have encountered a problem on redrawing the screen on each frame.
I have setup a loop on my Renderer's onDrawFrame, just a simple [ updateGameLogic() -> drawGame() ] or Thread.sleep() loop based on the time lapsed from last drawGame call.
Currently the updateGameLogic() method simply translate the camera to the +ve X direction (the game is 2d).
In the drawGame() call, I first clear my screen with GLES20.glClear(GLES20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GLES20.GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT). Then I have 3 glBindTexture and glDrawElements calls for drawing 3 categories of objects with different texture atlas.
Here comes the problem, in between each frame drawn on screen, there is a blink of the previous frame appearing which is undesired and makes the game look dizzy. Precisely, say the game is just about to draw frame 3 from frame 2, right before frame 2 vanish and frame 3 appearing, there is a split moment where frame 1 is displayed.
I thought this may be due to the way the GLSurfaceView is buffered by the system so I experimented with calling multiple glClear before drawing but everything stays the same. Would be grateful if someone can provide some explanation / solution to the problem, and what I have done wrong, thanks. (basically paragraph 2 to 4 is all my code so I have not posted it, unless requested)

From the clarification in the comment, it sounds like you have something like this in your code:
public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) {
long currentTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();
long deltaTime = currentTime - mLastFrameTime;
if (deltaTime < 33) {
Thread.sleep(33 - deltaTime);
return;
}
mLastFrameTime = currentTime;
updateGameLogic(deltaTime);
drawGame();
}
This will indeed cause problems. When onDrawFrame() is called, you have to render a frame. You can't just return without drawing anything. The caller will assume that you rendered a frame in any case, and it will end up being presented on the screen. If you decide not to render anything, whatever happened to be in the surface you were supposed to draw to will be presented. There's no telling what this will be, but it's quite likely that it's an old frame from 2-3 frames earlier.
If you want to artificially throttle the frame rate, e.g. to save power, unfortunately there's no very good way to do this in Android. Using sleeps in onDrawFrame() is kind of dirty (and inherently unreliable, IMHO), but it might be necessary in this case. The key is that either before or after you sleep, you still need to render a frame. As a first attempt, I would try tweaking the above to something like this:
public void onDrawFrame(GL10 gl) {
long currentTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();
long deltaTime = currentTime - mLastFrameTime;
if (deltaTime < 33) {
Thread.sleep(33 - deltaTime);
currentTime = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();
deltaTime = currentTime - mLastFrameTime;
}
mLastFrameTime = currentTime;
updateGameLogic(deltaTime);
drawGame();
}
Note that while there is still an artificial delay, there is no early return in the code anymore.
There are probably more robust variations of this idea for throttling the redraws to 30 fps. Some searching on SO or the rest of the internet should reveal previous discussions.

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

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.

Faster Paint on Flex Mobile

I am trying to build an app that tracks touchpoints and draws circles at those points using Flash Builder. The following works perfectly, but after a while, it begins to lag and the touch will be well ahead of the drawn circles. Is there a way of drawing the circles that does not produce lag as more and more of them are added?
In declarations, I have:
<fx:Component className="Circle">
<s:Ellipse>
<s:stroke>
<s:SolidColorStroke alpha="0"/>
</s:stroke>
</s:Ellipse>
</fx:Component>
And this is the drawing function:
var c:Circle = new Circle();
c.x = somex;
c.y = somey;
c.fill = new SolidColor(somecolorint);
c.height = somesize;
c.width = somesize;
c.alpha = 1;
addElement(c);
c = null;

Try taking a look at doing a fullscreen Bitmap created with a BitmapData class. As the touch points are moved, update the bitmap data at the coordinates where the touch occured. Modifying and blitting a screen-sized bitmap is extremely fast and will probably work great for what you're trying to do.
Another performance trade off often done is to make a series of lines instead of continuous circles. You create a new line segment only when a certain distance has been traveled, this lets you limit the number of nodes in the segment thereby keeping performance high.

Preventing "flickering" when calling Drawable.draw()

I have a little experimentation app (essentially a very cut-down version of the LunarLander demo in the Android SDK), with a single SurfaceView. I have a Drawable "sprite" which I periodically draw into the SurfaceView's Canvas object in different locations, without attempting to erase the previous image. Thus:
private class MyThread extends Thread {
SurfaceHolder holder; // Initialised in ctor (acquired via getHolder())
Drawable sprite; // Initialised in ctor
Rect bounds; // Initialised in ctor
...
#Override
public void run() {
while (true) {
Canvas c = holder.lockCanvas();
synchronized (bounds) {
sprite.setBounds(bounds);
}
sprite.draw(c);
holder.unlockCanvasAndPost(c);
}
}
/**
* Periodically called from activity thread
*/
public void updatePos(int dx, int dy) {
synchronized (bounds) {
bounds.offset(dx, dy);
}
}
}
Running in the emulator, what I'm seeing is that after a few updates have occurred, several old "copies" of the image begin to flicker, i.e. appearing and disappearing. I initially assumed that perhaps I was misunderstanding the semantics of a Canvas, and that it somehow maintains "layers", and that I was thrashing it to death. However, I then discovered that I only get this effect if I try to update faster than roughly every 200 ms. So my next best theory is that this is perhaps an artifact of the emulator not being able to keep up, and tearing the display. (I don't have a physical device to test on, yet.)
Is either of these theories correct?
Note: I don't actually want to do this in practice (i.e. draw hundreds of overlaid copies of the same thing). However, I would like to understand why this is happening.
Environment:
Eclipse 3.6.1 (Helios) on Windows 7
JDK 6
Android SDK Tools r9
App is targetting Android 2.3.1
Tangential question:
My run() method is essentially a stripped-down version of how the LunarLander example works (with all the excess logic removed). I don't quite understand why this isn't going to saturate the CPU, as there seems to be nothing to prevent it running at full pelt. Can anyone clarify this?

Ok, I've butchered Lunar Lander in a similar way to you, and having seen the flickering I can tell you that what you are seeing is a simple artefact of the double-buffering mechanism that every Surface has.
When you draw anything on a Canvas attached to a Surface, you are drawing to the 'back' buffer (the invisible one). And when you unlockCanvasAndPost() you are swapping the buffers over... what you drew suddenly becomes visible as the "back" buffer becomes the "front", and vice versa. And so your next frame of drawing is done to the old "front" buffer...
The point is that you always draw to seperate buffers on alternate frames. I guess there's an implicit assumption in graphics architecture that you're always going to be writing every pixel.
Having understood this, I think the real question is why doesn't it flicker on hardware? Having worked on graphics drivers in years gone by, I can guess at the reasons but hesitate to speculate too far. Hopefully the above will be sufficient to satisfy your curiousity about this rendering artefact. :-)

You need to clear the previous position of the sprite, as well as the new position. This is what the View system does automatically. However, if you use a Surface directly and do not redraw every pixel (either with an opaque color or using a SRC blending mode) you must clear the content of the buffer yourself. Note that you can pass a dirty rectangle to lockCanvas() and it will do the union for you of the previous dirty rectangle and the one you are passing (this is the mechanism used by the UI toolkit.) It will also set the clip rect of the Canvas to be the union of these two rectangles.
As for your second question, unlockAndPost() will do a vsync, so you will never draw at more than ~60fps (most devices that I've seen have a display refresh rate set around 55Hz.)