Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

oolong

Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

in Integration and Hardware • 1 year ago

What might cause an applet to perform really abysmally in the browser - maybe 2fps, on my machine - although it goes at a fair old clip when I run it from the IDE? Here's the applet in question.

I realise this is a very general question - I'm just not sure where else to start with this.

Replies(11)

a__g

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

Is it the same in all browsers?

Jo Wood

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

It's running at a good frame rate on my machine - Safari on MacBookPro Lion.

So must be browser specific. Older version of Java runtime used by your browser? I was going to suggest that hardware acceleration might not be enabled, but since the applet version you supply isn't OpenGL, I doubt that's the problem.

Ale_

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

On the windows partition of my machine it goes fine (w7+ff), have to try it on the ubuntu one, although I suppose results will be the same... The applet is quite nice, btw.

Ale · 60rpm.tv/i

PhiLho

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

Moved the topic from Programming Questions...
Indeed, nice applet. Works fine on Windows 7, Firefox 10, Java 1.6.0_30.

oolong

Re: Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

I'm on a MacBook running Leopard (10.5.8), and it's the same story both in Chrome and Firefox. Java 1.5.0_30 from Apple Inc. apparently. A friend who's running Snow Leopard (10.6) had even worse results apparently, just a static frame with sine waves rendered in it, then nothing.

Other applets look absolutely fine here - Rosaly, which is a variant on one of the visualisations contained in Kenneth, runs perfectly, for instance.

So, I'm going to pretty much repeat my original question - what might cause an applet to perform really abysmally in some browsers, though it's fine in the IDE? It's a relief to know that it's okay in some other browsers, but I'd really like to fix this problem, which is clearly crippling on some system, and which is evidently specific to this applet. It would be really nice if this thing ran acceptably well on all the systems that run my other applets quite happily!

(phi, this still sounds to me like a programming question? no?)

oolong

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

This might well be connected with the fact that if I try to use the P3D renderer, it gives me 'java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Bad version number in .class file' ('A library is using code compiled with an unsupported version of Java' apparently - but I'm not knowingly using any library here, so it seems to be referring to P3D itself).

Hence I'm using the default renderer, and I've just tested and found that exporting Rosaly with the default renderer causes that, too, to run appallingly slowly.

Huh.

PhiLho

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

A question like "Why it is behaving differently on some hardwares or systems" is typical Integration & Hardware question.
As I wrote elsewhere, nearly all questions here are programming question anyway...

Java 1.5 is an old version, newer versions are more optimized toward hardware display acceleration.
And browsers can use less optimal output: a run in the PDE can use OpenGL or DirectX (on Windows, of course) while a browser can just use plain non-accelerated Java2D.

oolong

Re: Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

Heh! Fair enough. So, um, this leaves a few questions. The Mac won't let me update Java; there's nothing about it in Software Updates, which seems to be The One Approved Way to update Java in Mac OS X. Maybe this is because I'm still on 5.8? Why on Earth does this prevent me from using P3D, if that is indeed the problem? Why is the 2D performance apparently SO stunningly bad? How many people out there have this version of Java, and are there any other versions which would run something as simple as Rosaly at about 2fps?

I suppose the immediate solution to my current problem is to boot into Windows and export it from there, anyway...

oolong

Re: Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

I finally managed to get it working adequately! I had to export it from Windows. This all seems unconscionably awkward to me. But maybe I'm just grumbly because I've got a headache.

oolong

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

I've re-done it using P3D, with the help of a Windows box. I'm still a bit troubled by the questions at the root of all this, though.

If anyone wants to see an example of a simple applet which seems to dramatically fail in Java 1.5.0_30 from Apple Inc, try this one.

oolong

Re: Terrible web-browser performance (looks okay when run from Processing)

1 year ago

Oh god, now it's not working AT ALL in any browser. I just get a white square. It still works 100% fine from the IDE. I have NO IDEA what change could have caused this, and I have very little idea how to debug it when the IDE doesn't see any problem, NO modern browsers seem to support Java Console at all, and all appletviewer gives me is this:

run sun.applet.Main "C:\Documents and Settings\Oolong\My Documents\Processing\KennethWebLowMem\applet"
Set uncaught java.lang.Throwable
Set deferred uncaught java.lang.Throwable
>
VM Started: Warning: Can't read AppletViewer properties file: C:\Documents and Settings\Oolong\.hotjava\properties Using defaults.

The application exited

This is giving me a serious headache. I had it all working beautifully for about an hour, but then I uploaded a slightly improved version and it turns out to have destroyed it. Any plans to integrate some kind of version control with Processing? :(

Edit: I finally got to the bottom of it, more-or-less. It turns out that one of the files in my sketch - which I'm not actually using at the moment - was importing OpenGL. I'm not sure why this suddenly became a problem when it doesn't seem to have been before, but whatever. I also tried signing the applet so I *could* use OpenGL, but that didn't do it, for some reason - still getting that white square (though appletviewer is giving me slightly more informative messages than it was when I originally posted this, which I take to be progress...)

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