Investigate render-artefacts that are visible in browser

[alecmce]

When I built and deployed to Firefox I saw some really nasty render artefacts. Not sure why. I think it's worth investigating.

[mnem]

Interesting. Are you using FP 11, or 11.1 from the next Flex SDK beta?

[alecmce]

I was using 4.5.1.21328 with the latest playerglobal.swc from http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html. Are you using something different and unable to recreate?

[mnem]

I wasn't near a computer to test, it was just a thought :) I've heard FP11.1 had some issues with the 3D stuff (although I'm not sure if that was mobile only).

[mnem]

A couple of observations from playing around:

• I was running 1 less than the latest version of FireFox 8 and flash had horrible stuttering update problems. This is easily evident from running http://files.jacksondunstan.com/articles/1451/SimpleStage3DBenchmark1280.html in chrome or safari, and then comparing to firefox (make sure only 1 browser is using the 3D at any time). 60FPS in chrome and safari for me, 20-40 in firefox.
• Updated to the latest firefox, everything runs at 60FPS now, but there's horrible v-sync tearing everywhere. This manifests itself as a sort of ripple moving through bits of the screen (not always the same bits). Is that what you were seeing?

Overall, I'm pretty disappointed with the Stage3D stuff from this. The point of Flash was to not care about crossplatform and cross browser issues.

It may be worth moving back to standard 2D stuff.

[alecmce]

Well the renderer doesn't make the game, just how much pretty juice it can hold. I don't think we need to worry about it until later.

[mnem]

True, but it foils other plans of mine write something that was the same across desktop and mobile as a test :)

I was chatting to Chris Caleb about it, and it sounds as though a few people have had problems in FireFox when mixing Stage3D with normal display list stuff. I may prod a little more later.