iOS8 webGL poor performance.

[spencerTL]

As detailed in another thread I am testing iOS8 out.  Having solved the problem of washed out graphics (use a black background), I've now discovered that performance when I create a phaser game using AUTO (so the iPad uses webGL) is significantly worse than if I create it using CANVAS, or how it was on iOS7 when webGL was not an option.  One game is smoother on PhoneGap using canvas than it is on Safari with webGL.

 

Now, I've tested things like BunnyMark and they seem awesome and everything is fine on desktop so I wonder if there are certain use cases where webGL is just not to be used.

 

This link is a simple educational game that I used to learn Phaser with, it is set up using AUTO and works fine on iPad2 (iOS7) and desktop but is unplayably jerky on iOS8:

(use cursor keys on desktop, lame on screen joystick for iOS, and note the scrolling):

http://www.teacherled.com/iresources/addition/astromath/

 

This link uses identical resources/code but creates the game using CANVAS and runs fine on iOS8, iOS7 and desktop (although webGL is slightly smoother than this on desktop).  

 

http://www.teacherled.com/iresources/addition/astromath/canvasOnly.html

 

Sadly I realise that not everyone will be able to try iOS8 yet so for anybody that can what is your experience/ideas?:

 

Is it because this uses a moving tile based background where as things like bunnymark just throw things around on a static screen? The game is 1024 by 768, does this exceed safe limits for webGL?  The assets are not particularly well optimised but as they worked well enough on everything, until now, I saw no need to spend more time on them.

 

The problem I foresee is that if webGL only works in certain situations on iOS8 then I need to go back to everything and detect iOS 8 and force CANVAS on anything it doesn't run well on.  

 

I thought webGL was going to be awesome, and everything would just switch over to it flawlessly, but its all going wrong for me (and maybe everybody else next week?!)

[JUL]

Experience:

 

On galaxy SII android 4.1.2 webgl works smoother than canvas, however some feature, at least with 2.0.7 don't show up with webgl, such as scrolling background http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/3218-continuously-scrolling-background/ and filters http://examples.phaser.io/_site/view_full.html?d=filters&f=fire.js&t=fire (which don't seem to work anymore for some odd reason, at least here on my config, but I swear I saw flames once).

[joannesalfa]

Apple really doesn't care about webGL anymore, they could tell us to use Metal and Swift :S

[spencerTL]

Does anyone have any Phaser games that are playable on mobile AND will switch to webGL where available. It'd be a useful comparison for me to see if it just sloppy optimisation on my part and I can let you know what to expect when iOS8 goes live in case you need to modify it.

[alex_h]

If you have a look at the PIXI.Detector class it already has a method 'PIXI.autoDetectRecommendedRenderer' which does something similar in that it checks whether running on Android and if so returns the canvas renderer rather than WebGL. By the sound of it it might be a good idea to modify this to also return a canvas renderer when running on iOS for the time being.

[spencerTL]

Yes it could be, although what confuses me is that I seem to be the only one not seeing great things from webGL on iOS8. Right from the first betas of iOS8 people were describing how much it sped things up. And this wasn't just hot air it was based on their tests. So if it is just my stuff I must be doing something wrong I just can't work out what.

If it isn't just me, everyone who put AUTO for the canvas creation is facing some extra work next week.

[eran]

I also had performance issues on iPhone 5 after upgrading to iOS 8. when I disabled a TileSprite that I used a moving background the performance improved - measuring fps increase from 40+ to 55+.

has anyone experienced similar behavior?