IMHO the Qualcomm S4 is bad.
- Thread starter Coolknight1968
- Start date
This is an interesting point. I just sold a 4s to come BACK to Windows Phone 8 (switched to a 4s for gaming and Siri...gimmick or not, "she" works quite well lol...), and I guess I should take Asphalt 7 as a better example. I had played that game constantly on the 4s, so I definitely THIS game from experience ran way smoother on the 4s. I have 2 guesses as to why this may be:
1. 4s has a WAY smaller screen, with way fewer pixels to push, and thus, runs smoother
2. The 4s has a strong GPU, and the developers only had to target the A5's GPU for iPhone 4s, iPad, etc. at the time (forgot what PowerVR number it was and I'm too lazy to look it up right now lol)....
With that being said, play the game on Windows Phone. Based on the GPU we have, the benchmarking results that have been concluded, and the fact that developers ALSO have to only target one GPU, the game should run AS smooth (or close enough to not really notice) on our Windows Phone devices. I haven't tried playing the game on an 8X, but on my Lumia 920, you definitely notice a FPS dip when compared to the 4s in the overall gameplay in general, especially in little details (the "dirt blur" when driving on a dirt path doesn't render with the same amount of "smoothness" and FPS speeds as it does when playing on a 4s, for example). I do, however, also remember seeing that the A5's GPU STILL came out ahead of the Adreno 225 in on-screen tests (I BELIEVE....don't quote me, and I'm too lazy to check lol), so perhaps that it also why I'm perceiving the drop of FPS...
Based on your experience you say you have, I'm curious to hear your insight as to how this problem can be solved, and how much of it is hardware vs. Gameloft's laziness. I will also say that I have played NOVA 3 and Modern Combat 3 on an American Galaxy S3 (uses the same exact SOC, with the Adreno 225), and both of those games lagged so bad that it was basically unplayable, so I'm expecting the same from Gameloft when the Modern Combat and NOVA ports arrive because all they're doing is porting from iOS....
I love how all of the smart technical members on this forum suddenly came out of no where to have one of the first constructive discussions I've seen so far. We need a nice section on the next "From the forums" article 
Re: IMHO the Qualcomm S4 is crap.
rest will good sir. good night to you, or is it good morning? haha. i suppose good morning
rest will good sir. good night to you, or is it good morning? haha. i suppose good morning
I love how all of the smart technical members on this forum suddenly came out of no where to have one of the first constructive discussions I've seen so far. We need a nice section on the next "From the forums" article
Why was I thinking the same thing lol...?
Discussions about hardware limitations have come up before, but never have I seen it go to, not only 4 pages, but such an in-depth convo.
Back on the subject, I have been watching videos of the Blackberry Z10, which sports the same SOC as Windows Phone 8 devices/some Android devices, and it was playing games extremely smooth....4s smooth. HOWEVER, if you noticed, THE GAMES WERE OPTIMIZED; the graphic optimizations can be seen in games like NOVA 3, where there is much less shine and detail on the guns. On the Blackberry Z10, there is less dynamic lighting and such (the guns are where I noticed this most). I knew optimizations was most important anyway, so it makes me wonder why Gameloft (and Microsoft, for that matter), chose to push ports that have the higher graphics enabled? I also noticed that on The Dark Knight Rises, there is way more detail on our games vs other versions of the game on other platforms, where Batman's suit is way less detailed from the lighting and such.
Here's hoping Gameloft pushes an update to lower the graphics to the games (a crazy wish to have lol).....
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It's an API difference between OpenGL and Direct3D. The way shaders are written and that's where the details come. Believe it or not games are not made on the emulator or the physical device but on PC so the guys that wrote the shaders in the PC version did tune their detail/performance for the device they were testing. For android space(including Z10 here) other shaders were used and most probably they were tuned down more because of android os architecture. The game on android needed to have kill background tasks capability so it can grab more CPU time by killing all background tasks(ugly hack if you ask me, gaming on mobile always connected devices should not kill my productivity apps). In the end it comes down to how many devices you can test on before shipping. And be sure that there are more android like devices available for testing than Microsoft ones(Windows 8 and Windows phone 8).
I believe than in the next generation of windows phone devices we will see the hw capability being raised on the DirectX level with DX10 support or more. For sure DirectCompute from DX11 will(at least CS 3) will be arriving. And so you gain more hardware and more time for middleware companies to sort things out to tune your level of detail based on the available capabilities.
Re: IMHO the Qualcomm S4 is crap.
I don't think Microsoft can do much about the update path. Apple is not tied to oem and their update is sometimes just dust in the eyes. There is no compelling technical argument of why siri cant run on the iphone 4 but can run on iphone 4s+. So apple is not truly updating the os just mimicking doing so. You still have to recompile your apps for newer ios version. So having to do just that in case of windows phone is not that big of a deal. But I'm sure not even nokia would have agreed to update the os on their wp7 devices. The engineering costs and QA costs for such an upgrade would not be suited for any oem. In android landscape you don't see Samsung bringing latest android os version to their old Samsung galaxy s1(custom roms can run just fine) not to speak of htc or sony or other oems that simply don't invest in os updates. So I believe MS was forced to choose this path and make the 7.8 os update(it's what they were able to do without interfering with the oems and carriers) and make newer wp8 phones. And they also had the misfortune of having to make a public explanation because it's their os and no one will care to ask the oems and the oems will not care to answer with the truth.
Steve Jobs was great at manipulating the consumers in believing that whatever apple does its best for them. Microsoft was never so lucky to be able to educate their consumer base. Despite their products being the most secure on the market today they still are viewed by the consumers as buggy and as a security risk. And here the fault relies not with Microsoft but with developers. They should speak about those myths more openly and vocally but simply they don't care and have better things to do with their time
I don't think Microsoft can do much about the update path. Apple is not tied to oem and their update is sometimes just dust in the eyes. There is no compelling technical argument of why siri cant run on the iphone 4 but can run on iphone 4s+. So apple is not truly updating the os just mimicking doing so. You still have to recompile your apps for newer ios version. So having to do just that in case of windows phone is not that big of a deal. But I'm sure not even nokia would have agreed to update the os on their wp7 devices. The engineering costs and QA costs for such an upgrade would not be suited for any oem. In android landscape you don't see Samsung bringing latest android os version to their old Samsung galaxy s1(custom roms can run just fine) not to speak of htc or sony or other oems that simply don't invest in os updates. So I believe MS was forced to choose this path and make the 7.8 os update(it's what they were able to do without interfering with the oems and carriers) and make newer wp8 phones. And they also had the misfortune of having to make a public explanation because it's their os and no one will care to ask the oems and the oems will not care to answer with the truth.
Steve Jobs was great at manipulating the consumers in believing that whatever apple does its best for them. Microsoft was never so lucky to be able to educate their consumer base. Despite their products being the most secure on the market today they still are viewed by the consumers as buggy and as a security risk. And here the fault relies not with Microsoft but with developers. They should speak about those myths more openly and vocally but simply they don't care and have better things to do with their time
Re: IMHO the Qualcomm S4 is crap.
GPUs are completely different than CPUs. More cores means better performance. And with Adreno 330 you get unified shaders so your cores can be assigned to pixel shading, vertex shading or compute shaders based on demand. So this is a step to match what modern GPUs are in other arhitectures. As for finishing faster and powering down more quickly that is never going to happened. The most basic optimization that one can make for games is to render on frame behind. That lag will never be noticed by eye on rendering or in input latency(1 frame is just 15ms as both newer android os and windows 8 based os are vsync forced). So basically I issue OpenGL(or Direct3D does not matter with the new DX11 support in windows 8) command and they are not "immediately" rendered or send to the GPU they are batched in a command buffer by driver or user option and stored there. This is happening on the CPU. So the GPU is not starving anymore while waiting for commands from the CPU(after physics updates and AI updates that must be first made to ensure proper rendering) because there are always commands in the rendering buffer. So now all games are pushing for maximum utilization on the GPU(I mean intensive 3d games not pop the balloon type of games as I doubt any non masochist will make such a game in OpenGL). So you don't get more energy saving by having multi core GPUs but you do get speed and flexibility.
I doubt that in the current app landscape on mobiles we will see apps(not games) to utilize general gpu programming to solve intensive task quicker and better. The app market is mostly a mirror of your business site with apps making web api calls and showing results in a list for brand awareness. The whole idea of innovations through apps was gone the moment companies realized they need mobile apps to get to their costumers.
As for mobile gaming on smartphone beside battery there is another problem. Not a hardware problem but a financial one. You do have gorgeous 1080p 5'' displays and good CPU and GPU specs. But let's look at the quality of graphics in the console market. There a game costs $60 a piece(current gen) and will be $70 a piece in the next-gen. So with those prices you can afford artists to do high poly models and lods for performance and the whole spectrum of textures(diffuse, normal, specular, ambient occlusion maps, light maps, etc). But on mobile landscape a $5 price for a game is perceived as way too much of a price so you won't be able to ever get the same artistic quality. Using the fremium model is not made for graphics rich games because beside mmo games most users will play a game for a month and come back to it very rarely(no in-app purchases and no serving for ads which depends on how much your app is used). So I bet we will see less 3d AAA games and more angry birds one with simple more addictive gameplay without story and need for real-time cinematics or graphics.
I think that lots of games will follow the Galactic Reign path offloading to the cloud so they can provide better graphics for all around hardware and a more efficient battery life. That was the first corner step in my opinion for the evolution of mobile games. Later attempts will utilize streaming for faster and more "instant" cloud rendering and are great for fremium based models.
GPUs are completely different than CPUs. More cores means better performance. And with Adreno 330 you get unified shaders so your cores can be assigned to pixel shading, vertex shading or compute shaders based on demand. So this is a step to match what modern GPUs are in other arhitectures. As for finishing faster and powering down more quickly that is never going to happened
. The most basic optimization that one can make for games is to render on frame behind. That lag will never be noticed by eye on rendering or in input latency(1 frame is just 15ms as both newer android os and windows 8 based os are vsync forced). So basically I issue OpenGL(or Direct3D does not matter with the new DX11 support in windows 8) command and they are not "immediately" rendered or send to the GPU they are batched in a command buffer by driver or user option and stored there. This is happening on the CPU. So the GPU is not starving anymore while waiting for commands from the CPU(after physics updates and AI updates that must be first made to ensure proper rendering) because there are always commands in the rendering buffer. So now all games are pushing for maximum utilization on the GPU(I mean intensive 3d games not pop the balloon type of games as I doubt any non masochist will make such a game in OpenGL). So you don't get more energy saving by having multi core GPUs but you do get speed and flexibility. I doubt that in the current app landscape on mobiles we will see apps(not games) to utilize general gpu programming to solve intensive task quicker and better. The app market is mostly a mirror of your business site with apps making web api calls and showing results in a list for brand awareness. The whole idea of innovations through apps was gone the moment companies realized they need mobile apps to get to their costumers.
As for mobile gaming on smartphone beside battery there is another problem. Not a hardware problem but a financial one. You do have gorgeous 1080p 5'' displays and good CPU and GPU specs. But let's look at the quality of graphics in the console market. There a game costs $60 a piece(current gen) and will be $70 a piece in the next-gen. So with those prices you can afford artists to do high poly models and lods for performance and the whole spectrum of textures(diffuse, normal, specular, ambient occlusion maps, light maps, etc). But on mobile landscape a $5 price for a game is perceived as way too much of a price so you won't be able to ever get the same artistic quality. Using the fremium model is not made for graphics rich games because beside mmo games most users will play a game for a month and come back to it very rarely(no in-app purchases and no serving for ads which depends on how much your app is used). So I bet we will see less 3d AAA games and more angry birds one with simple more addictive gameplay without story and need for real-time cinematics or graphics.
I think that lots of games will follow the Galactic Reign path offloading to the cloud so they can provide better graphics for all around hardware and a more efficient battery life. That was the first corner step in my opinion for the evolution of mobile games. Later attempts will utilize streaming for faster and more "instant" cloud rendering and are great for fremium based models.
Re: IMHO the Qualcomm S4 is crap.
i most say, i do agree with you (because you're more knowledgeable about this matter than i am). i do have to say this point which i would like to mention. even though apple's latest OS doesn't enable all the features for the older devices (which they're capable of running), to make customers get the latest hardware, they do their numbering system the same. example would be ios6. it's called the same on iphone 5 and the 4s and 4 etc etc. i think as soon as you change the number for the older devices, most non-technical people would assume as the company phased out the product. i mean if microsoft called wp7.8 wp8, for windows phone i'm sure most people wouldn't have *****ed as much. of course the limitation of wp8 on windows would come up, but that could be done in more closed doors. explain the difference just for the developers not the general public as to not scare the public into thinking you ditched the os.
another point that would discourage companies from bringing all the features of the latest os to older devices is to maintain the fluidity of the os. i mean imagine trying to run siri on iphone 3, it would be extremely laggy. apple tries to minimize laggyness to give the os a more snappy feel. i think this is smart because most people would rather not have siri but fluid experience versus siri and slow experience.
i most say, i do agree with you (because you're more knowledgeable about this matter than i am). i do have to say this point which i would like to mention. even though apple's latest OS doesn't enable all the features for the older devices (which they're capable of running), to make customers get the latest hardware, they do their numbering system the same. example would be ios6. it's called the same on iphone 5 and the 4s and 4 etc etc. i think as soon as you change the number for the older devices, most non-technical people would assume as the company phased out the product. i mean if microsoft called wp7.8 wp8, for windows phone i'm sure most people wouldn't have *****ed as much. of course the limitation of wp8 on windows would come up, but that could be done in more closed doors. explain the difference just for the developers not the general public as to not scare the public into thinking you ditched the os.
another point that would discourage companies from bringing all the features of the latest os to older devices is to maintain the fluidity of the os. i mean imagine trying to run siri on iphone 3, it would be extremely laggy. apple tries to minimize laggyness to give the os a more snappy feel. i think this is smart because most people would rather not have siri but fluid experience versus siri and slow experience.
Re: IMHO the Qualcomm S4 is crap.
Yes it's a lot better for mainstream consumers. And never did iphone users complain that they are not receiving updates to the os(like wp users or android users which are in the same pot really). But iOS is an already established platform so developers or investors know about those details already. In case of android google and oem policy hides the real price of development by not being forthcoming about developing for the whole spectrum of android devices(investor are the one screwed here).
About siri I'm ont talking about siri on iphone 3G or iphone 3Gs I'm talking about havin siri on iphone 4s and not iphone 4 (even though initially it was available to iphone 4 users). This is pure marketing here and not related to technology. I think it's better not to lie and not having un update to wp8 for wp7 devices it's more honest. Yes you do have to develop for 2 user base but you can gain profit by doing so.
The real deal breaker here is for games. XNA on wp7 and DirectX and C++ support for wp8 means you either use XNA for both platforms(no easy porting of games at all from iOS or Android) or just target wp8 user base. As for the rest of cases GPS apps will be incredibly hard to port from wp8 to wp7(if they are made to run on the background or optimized for maps without data connection).
Yes it's a lot better for mainstream consumers. And never did iphone users complain that they are not receiving updates to the os(like wp users or android users which are in the same pot really). But iOS is an already established platform so developers or investors know about those details already. In case of android google and oem policy hides the real price of development by not being forthcoming about developing for the whole spectrum of android devices(investor are the one screwed here).
About siri I'm ont talking about siri on iphone 3G or iphone 3Gs I'm talking about havin siri on iphone 4s and not iphone 4 (even though initially it was available to iphone 4 users). This is pure marketing here and not related to technology. I think it's better not to lie and not having un update to wp8 for wp7 devices it's more honest. Yes you do have to develop for 2 user base but you can gain profit by doing so.
The real deal breaker here is for games. XNA on wp7 and DirectX and C++ support for wp8 means you either use XNA for both platforms(no easy porting of games at all from iOS or Android) or just target wp8 user base. As for the rest of cases GPS apps will be incredibly hard to port from wp8 to wp7(if they are made to run on the background or optimized for maps without data connection).
a5cent
New member
Hey ChMar. Turning my brain on again for this thread...
A quick recap of how you and I got to where we are (hope nobody minds that we'll continue to hijack this thread):
Although rimlover's comment is what got our discussion started, my area of interest isn't directly related to the "optimization" issues he raised. What I'm really interested in is how game developers judge the value of a standardized platform (hardware & software) in contrast to one that isn't. Particularly from the point of view of smartphone game development.
In terms of platform standardization, I see the gaming console and the PC as polar opposites. IMHO, in this regard, Android is a conceptual copy of the PC. I don't see WP as a conceptual copy of the gaming console, but at this time it's certainly much closer to that side of the spectrum than Android is.
I wonder what benefits you, as a game developer, see in that approach. If you were tasked with developing a game exclusively for WP8:
Basically, how valuable is it to you and your company, in regard to game development, that Microsoft strives to maintain a somewhat standardized platform (thereby reducing both OS and hardware fragmentation)?
I think we can more easily tie up the loose ends in our previous posts, if we can establish some common ground here. Looking forward to any insights you can provide.
When you say "lazy", are you referring to coders which too frequently make blocking instead of asynchronous calls, or are you referring to something else?
A quick recap of how you and I got to where we are (hope nobody minds that we'll continue to hijack this thread):
Although rimlover's comment is what got our discussion started, my area of interest isn't directly related to the "optimization" issues he raised. What I'm really interested in is how game developers judge the value of a standardized platform (hardware & software) in contrast to one that isn't. Particularly from the point of view of smartphone game development.
In terms of platform standardization, I see the gaming console and the PC as polar opposites. IMHO, in this regard, Android is a conceptual copy of the PC. I don't see WP as a conceptual copy of the gaming console, but at this time it's certainly much closer to that side of the spectrum than Android is.
I wonder what benefits you, as a game developer, see in that approach. If you were tasked with developing a game exclusively for WP8:
- in what ways do you imagine that standardized platform changing your approach to game development, as opposed to developing that same game exclusively for Android (if any)?
- to what extent do you factor in the differences between WP8 devices i.e. MSM8277 vs. MSM8960 vs. MSM8960T. How do you deal with those differences? What are the main differences in approach compared to Android (if any)?
- how would you typically proceed after determining that you aren't achieving your goals of maintaining a 30 fps average? Assuming that the game is such that the processing load on the GPU is relatively constant, How would you proceed? Edit: Would you proceed any differently if you encountered that same problem on an Android device (theoretical question, I know, I'm happy with a theoretical answer)?
Basically, how valuable is it to you and your company, in regard to game development, that Microsoft strives to maintain a somewhat standardized platform (thereby reducing both OS and hardware fragmentation)?
I think we can more easily tie up the loose ends in our previous posts, if we can establish some common ground here. Looking forward to any insights you can provide.
When you say "lazy", are you referring to coders which too frequently make blocking instead of asynchronous calls, or are you referring to something else?
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If I may speak on this (even though I'm not ChMar), from a developer standpoint, I would imagine that Gameloft simply didn't put in the effort to optimize these games for the Adreno 225 because there simply aren't even devices out there that would download and purchase the games to make the money back they would have to spend to optimize the games (whether it be by Gameloft's @home developers, or to ship the games somewhere else to be optimized). So, IMO, from Gameloft's perspective, here is what they did:
1. They took either an iOS or Android version of the game for their port (I imagine iOS, since this where they started their hardcore development first, simply porting games over to Android after it got big).
2. They know that Windows Phone hasn't taken off yet (in the sense of Android and iOS "takeoff"), so they simply ported it without optimizing it for good performance. They did this, most likely, figuring that customers wouldn't notice the FPS drop or lack of optimization because the customers would simply be happy that the games are showing up in the first place and not pay attention to detail (hence you see all the good ratings, with only a FEW REVIEWS pointing out the lack of optimization and "choppiness"...).
IMHO, that is what happened here. It would also explain why games that aren't optimization heavy (such as Cut The Rope) run so well on every platform because they don't include things like dynamic lighting, shaders, etc...
/semi-hijack of larger hijack
a5cent
New member
^ Hey jrdatrackstar1223, I can imagine it having happened that way too. Except maybe the part about Gameloft's games not being optimized for WP due to lack of market share. I suspect no such optimization would have occurred one way or another, even if WP had 60% market share. The PC gaming market isn't exactly small, but games aren't optimized specifically for the PC either.
What I'm hoping ChMar can shed some light on is how development might differ on these various platforms, assuming a game is being developed from the ground up (not ported), and exclusively for but a single one of them.
IMHO, what will make or break WP is the availability of exclusive apps, particularly games, which is why I'm interested in how others judge WP's potential in this regard.
What I'm hoping ChMar can shed some light on is how development might differ on these various platforms, assuming a game is being developed from the ground up (not ported), and exclusively for but a single one of them.
IMHO, what will make or break WP is the availability of exclusive apps, particularly games, which is why I'm interested in how others judge WP's potential in this regard.
uselessrobot
New member
I'm sorry, but you're dead wrong on the memory limitations. Android and iOS all have memory limitations. In all cases the limit, like in Windows Phone, is tied to overall system RAM. Do a search and you'll instantly find discussions on this for any of the mobile OSs.
These limits are essential because even if apps aren't running in the background that data has to be stored somewhere. Give free rein to developers and you'll find a delude of apps that crash constantly and potentially lock up the entire OS. There are far too many hacks out there to trust them to handle memory usage wisely.
That said, these limits are often suggestions and there are ways to get around them. But the point is, that developers are faced with similar limits in all the mobile OSs. There are a lot of excuses for why some of these games don't run as well in Windows Phone and it comes down to the fact that developers aren't investing nearly enough effort in optimization. For the bigger budget games they're often outsourcing development. In my own experience with outsourcing, you're often getting code that's of crap quality. You'll have expend resources merely getting the application to a useable state. These companies certainly are not going to spare added expense to get the app to an ideal state.
Apple has the benefit of being the first tier platform so it gets the most effort. Second, Apple was wise enough to stick great GPUs in their mobile devices. Instead of trying to wow everyone with largely irrelevant quad-core CPUs, they understood what aspect of the SoC that mattered most.
Nope I'm not wrong in windows phone and android you raise memory requirements through capabilities. In iphone you don't need. And on iphone you have no limitations. If you ask for too much memory your app gets killed but you do not have a hard limit. They are not faced with similar limits on all platforms. And android is scaling what the memory permissions means based on your available ram. So you will get higher memory limits on android (1GB+). I don't have to read posts on internet I know this from the sdk documentations.
GPU matter the least in a smartphone. You are too limited by battery and lack of proper controls for games to be GPU bounded. I'm a game programmer and I know how game optimizations are done and they are not done in code most of the time even though outsourcing in software development is unbelievable high. It's done by tuning assets(levels, models, textures). I still believe that here is a case of missing lod models compared to iphone. I won't compare to android at all since there the game just kills everything to make room for memory and increase performance(I buy a smartphone to stay always connected and a crappy games kills that for me) so I'm not even trying to play it on my S3. I don't care to clean the phone and run it in ideal conditions to compare it how it runs against other platforms.
peacefulberry
New member
Sorry, it's you who are wrong here. The memory used by a WP8 app is directly limited by its app manifest E.g.
Code:
<App>
[INDENT]...
<Requirements>
[INDENT]<Requirement Name="ID_REQ_MEMORY_300"/>[/INDENT]
</Requirements>
<FunctionalCapabilities>
[INDENT]<FunctionalCapability Name="ID_FUNCCAP_EXTEND_MEM"/>[/INDENT]
</FunctionalCapabilities>
[/INDENT]
</App>Without ID_FUNCCAP_EXTEND_MEM an app is limited to 150MB.
With ID_FUNCCAP_EXTEND_MEM an app is limited to either 180MB (512MB device) or 380MB (1GB+ device).
ID_REQ_MEMORY_300 prevents the app from being used on devices with less than 1GB of RAM.
So no matter what other apps are using on the phone the app is restricted to the above by the OS, this is not the case for Android or iOS.
Regarding memory usage/leaks, most run of the mill apps are running under managed code which is generally going to prevent problems with memory leaks. With true native code all bets are off and the developer must be competent enough to manage memory themselves. It's so easy for an inexperienced developer to create a memory leak in a native code app, I'd be surprised if the majority of stability problems seen in phone games weren't down to poor memory management.
I'm of the same opinion as others on this thread that while Gameloft's games have done a reasonably good job of showing what DirectX and WP8 can do, they haven't been optimised as well as they could have both in terms of models and textures and the underlying engine (this may change if/when they rework their games to support lower spec devices). I am quite confident however that decent middleware such as the Unity engine (when it does make an appearance), will have received the necessary care and attention.
Villain
New member
nope not one reboot at all... and I'm on bell mobility so I didn't get the update for a few months.
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