Statistics on directCanvas HTML5 Acceleration
directCanvas technology includes rendering acceleration, multiSound multichannel sound playback and directBox2D physics acceleration. appMobi created these technologies to eliminate performance and capability barriers that have hampered the growth of HTML5 and the open Web as the ultimate platform for mobile games.
This technology is available now as open source for iOS, and the Android version is in beta testing. To accurately characterize directCanvas acceleration on iOS-based devices, appMobi ran a comprehensive battery of tests on a variety of devices and OS versions. Preliminary tests on Android show comparable performance increases there as well.
Details On Testing of directCanvas vs. Unaccelerated HTML5
Using ImpactJS and Box2D, appMobi created two identical test apps that use HTML5 and JavaScript to simulate an animated game with selectable numbers of physics-based on-screen entities. One test app uses standard HTML5 Canvas drawing and calculation functions, and the other uses directCanvas for drawing and calculation. The apps track the game's “frame rate” by drawing as fast as possible, and then counting the number of redraws that occur per second. There are many ways to try to determine true game frame rate, but this test is only intended to show the performance difference that directCanvas delivers. In other words, the results are relative, not absolute.
Notes on the test conditions:
- In each test, the apps were started and tested 4 times, with 10, 30, 50, and 70 animated entities on screen.
- Each time the entities were changed, the app was allowed to settle for 5 seconds and then the FPS reading was taken.
- The test apps limit the maximum frame rate to 40 FPS, even though directCanvas can deliver higher frame rates. The reason for this is that “retina” displays on the iPhone 4 and 4S cannot be redrawn faster than 40 FPS by WebGL and if the JavaScript library attempts to redraw faster the app appears to be redrawing at half speed.
- The test devices were running the OS version described in the grid, with no background tasks or other apps running.
- It is important to note that standard HTML5 can only play one sound at a time, and directCanvas sound support plays as many sounds as the game creates, simultaneously. That means that in addition to the speed improvement shown in the charts, each device is playing many times more audio tracks during the tests.
Read the complete test report.
directCanvas solves the two most important issues facing mobile HTML5 game development
appMobi has solved two very important problems that face developers who want to create animated mobile games using HTML5.
Issue #1: Poor Game Frame Rate
The first and most vexing problem is poor overall game performance due to slow graphic rendering in the HTML5 browser. There are many contributing factors to this problem, and with directCanvas and directBox2D, appMobi has created elegant solutions that allow HTML5 games to truly match the user experience of native games.
How fast is fast enough?
It is generally accepted within the game development community that 25 frames per second is an optimal frame rate, and this is the number that appMobi sought to enable during the development of directCanvas. Frame rates below 15 FPS are considered too slow. As you can see from the graphs, even the latest version of iOS (version 5.0) cannot deliver 25 fps performance using our test game on any Apple device, even a 4S.
Issue #2: Single Channel Sound with Poor Response Time
The second problem is HTML5's inability to play multiple sounds, and its inability to reliably play sound in sync with game events. appMobi's multiSound technology eliminates these limitations, allowing games to play unlimited sounds simulataneously, and with no latency or lag time. Read more about multiSound's HTML5 sound improvement.
