If W10M doesn't fix BLANK, It's over..

[Krystianpants]

Somehow we're not communicating very well. I'm not saying draw call batching will never lead to notable performance gains. It can, particularly in complicated 3D scenes. I'm saying it can't do so in this particular scenario! How many draw calls do you think it takes to compose this trivial W10M UI with transparency? Very very few! Optimizing something that barely occurs isn't going to make a noticeable difference. That's my point.


Hoping DirectX12 will make a noticeable difference in trivial transparency rendering is like hoping a two-handed sword will make it easier to butter your slice of bread. Sure, it works, but the sword is really only better than a bread knife when used for bigger tasks.


Anyway, I agree with the rest of what you say. I hope that whatever is holding your 520 back is fixed in W10M.

Ok sure, I think the discussion took two separate paths. Transparency requires multiple draws of a pixel, it will require more power than if it's off. We can agree on that. You need to scroll the start screen and live tiles update at the same time. You want to draw a smooth frame rate. Will it make a huge difference? Likely depends on the device. Windows phone 8.1 and 520 it makes a difference to turn it off. Even if it's just scrolling the start screen. But I gave it to my mom and have it bare bones no flare and it runs well with no resuming issues or anything of that kind.

Now the point I made with DirectX 12 making a difference is sort of correct but also as you say not noticeable as the next chip to support DirectX 12 will be super powerful anyways. Even the snapdragon 810 with adreno 430 only supports directX 11.2. 12 could definitely make a difference in gaming on the mobile platform. My guess is that the awaited "surface" phone will be the first of its kind to support it.

 

[a5cent]

Ok sure, I think the discussion took two separate paths. Transparency requires multiple draws of a pixel, it will require more power than if it's off.

Okay, all good
Just to be sure, you do realize that shading the same pixel multiple times (due to transparency) has nothing at all to do with draw call batching, right?
I'm pretty sure you do, but your use of the same terminology (multiple draws of a pixel) makes it seem as though you might think there is a relationship there, when there is none. You can get millions of transparently shaded pixels from a single draw call.

 

[Krystianpants]

Okay, all good ��
Just to be sure, you do realize that shading the same pixel multiple times (due to transparency) has nothing at all to do with draw call batching, right?
I'm pretty sure you do, but your use of the same terminology (multiple draws of a pixel) makes it seem as though you might think there is a relationship there, when there is none. You can get millions of transparently shaded pixels from a single draw call.

Yah but the tiles result in tinting and wouldn't that require 2 draw calls?

 

[a5cent]

Yah but the tiles result in tinting and wouldn't that require 2 draw calls?

I'm not quite sure what you mean with "tinting". If you are referring to the pixels of a transparent yellow tile, which overlap a green background image, being rendered as blue, then no, that doesn't require any extra draw calls.

Technically, there is no reason for the entire start screen (with many differently colored tiles) + background image to be rendered with more than two draw calls per frame, at most.

This is because draw calls have nothing to do with pixels. They deal only with textures and 3D geometry.

 

[Krystianpants]

I'm not quite sure what you mean with "tinting". If you are referring to the pixels of a transparent yellow tile, which overlap a green background image, being rendered as blue, then no, that doesn't require any extra draw calls.

Technically, there is no reason for the entire start screen (with many differently colored tiles) + background image to be rendered with more than two draw calls per frame, at most.

This is because draw calls have nothing to do with pixels. They deal only with textures and 3D geometry.

Yes tinting is applying colour, that's generally what I see it being called when working with sprites or textures. With microsofts pre windows 10 api spritebatch classes were used to create the transparency and this required 2 calls of draw. Tinting would require an update to the spritebatch. Even in unity tinting breaks batching. The term "pixel" is used loosely as no one would be calling a separate draw call for each pixel. C++/sfml you load a texture. You can apply animation sets etc. And each texture is treated uniquely. And more textures = more performance requirements. Now I don't know how MS does it. But if each tile is a unique texture which it has to be since developers submit their tiles for their own app, and they need to be rendered, it can become expensive. That's all i'm saying. It's likely they are optimizing it in some way. I'm not a hardcore programmer I know a bit here and there, but my own experience is that the start screen must cause some strain. Hence why it can lag on some of the lower end units when scrolling. The lag alone is showing that it is sucking up juice.

 

[a5cent]

^ Okay, I see where you're coming from. Spritebatch is an XNA concept. No such thing in DirectX. Both XNA and Unity reside at a higher level than DirectX. They will obviously sacrifice some performance in the name of simplicity and OS independence. I'm an expert in neither, so I can't say how they do things in regard to draw call batching. You'll know more about that.

Tiles will either be composited into a single texture and then blended over the background in the second draw call, or managed and manipulated individually by the GPU using GPU managed textures and vertex shaders. Neither approach requires more than two draw calls.

 

[Paolo Ferrazza]

Going back on topic "Windows Central editor-in-chief Daniel Rubino has heard that Microsoft is working on fixing "loading" issues for apps and performance in the latest builds for Windows 10 Mobile. Hopefully we will see the results of their work in the very near future."

Guess MS trying to solve their part of the problem, the rest is up to app devs.

 

[mariusmuntean]

Hi guys,

I've been messing around with W10M Previews since they came out and I'm losing confidence that my main problem will be resolved.

My main problem is that apps keep resuming, WHY? What is the problem that they can't fix? Even their own apps keep resuming even if we just switch over for a second.

Sure, this is old news since forever but this is a new OS, which means they should've got that fixed FIRST as part of a new OS.

If they don't fix that before the release it's over for them. No one wants to see that screen when iOS and Android don't do that. It will make it seem slow.

What else do they need to fix in order to even compete?

Everything ))