Graphics Optimization for the Adobe iPhone Packager
Fri Dec 24 05:33:13 2010
I have been doing some looking around and to be honest there isn't much that I have found useful in regard to graphics optimization for the iPhone Packager. To be quite frank, I may even be as bold as to say that it appears quite useless compared to a lot of other solutions available. That of course does not go for Adobe's efforts for Android. I'm sure that with the increase in great mobile devices that offer Android OS, the performance will just keep getting better. However, what do we do in the meantime for ActionScript on the iPhone? Well, here's something that may not be very practical but I have found that it boost performance of graphics on the device.
Most will know by now that using cacheAsBitmap = true; and cacheAsBitmapMatrix = new Matrix() along with setting the renderingMode to gpu helps performance considerably and I can vouch for that.
However, I have been hearing a lot of talk about how using Bitmaps also helps performance. This I have found not to be so true, as when I compile an .ipa file using -renderingdiagnostics, every bitmap that I have every tested lights up a bright red (not good). All vector graphics, including FXG graphics display in a nice green. The frame rate is always much higher for vector graphics and FXG too, provided that nothing too strenuous is being done to them.
Now this is what I find interesting about all this. When I create an FXG file containing one of the .png files that display in red under -renderingdiagnostics, and then import said FXG file and use cacheAsBitmap = true; and cacheAsBitmapMatrix = new Matrix() with gpu set as the renderingMode, I get much better performance than just using a Bitmap by itself.
I don't really know why this occurs and I nothing I have read gives any indication of this, but through my own experiments, that is what I found. Please let me know if anyone finds a way to use bitmaps that display in green under -renderingdiagnostics. Or have I got it all wrong, and there is no way to cache an actual Bitmap? If so, then that is just silly!
Come on Adobe, I know you are working hard but throw us a bone!
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