Ouya Game Console Performance Is Disappointing

[peppercats]

@DanLamb

You posted throughput benchmarks, when the topic was latency.

To use a game analogy, it does not matter if the average fps is 200 when it dips to 10 once per second.

this is the worst part of using a GC language for making games, you get a lot of FPS spikes from garbage collection.

[DanLamb]

this [latency] is the worst part of using a GC language for making games, you get a lot of FPS spikes from garbage collection.

Do you have any evidence of this at all?

Have you played the JDK version of Quake 2? http://bytonic.de/html/jake2.html

I have any I don't see FPS spikes. Also, clearly people who have benchmarked this see that the Java version actually achieves slightly higher FPS rates than the official C version. I find it hard to believe that the Java version has significant FPS spikes and still manages to average a much larger average FPS speed.

I've played other GC language games like Wakfu (Java) and Bastion (C#) and I didn't subjectively notice FPS problems.

[johnc]

this is the worst part of using a GC language for making games, you get a lot of FPS spikes from garbage collection.

How much garbage collection would there be during a game? I'm assuming objects won't be created and thrown away on a regular basis.

[peppercats]

Have you played the JDK version of Quake 2? http://bytonic.de/html/jake2.html

I'm sorry, but a port of a 16 year old game is not a good representation of how strong something is, I guarantee you that the game is going to be entirely graphics-card limited.

[DanLamb]

I'm sorry, but a port of a 16 year old game is not a good representation of how strong something is, I guarantee you that the game is going to be entirely graphics-card limited.

Your bad attitude with a complete lack of evidence or anything even close to evidence is a much weaker case. I also cited two much more recent games which you just ignored.

[johnc]

Lulz. Obviously not real-world test scenarios then. But keep clinging to those benchmarks all you want - they were specifically intended for the non-developer type to gush over.



Honestly son, I don't care who you trust - I am the guy in the trenches who has to make this stuff work. And Android has no hope whatsoever (EVER) of ever matching the same performance in RetroArch that I get on other platforms like -

* Wii
* PlayStation3
* Gamecube
* Xbox 360
* Xbox 1
* iOS
* Blackberry
* PC

I would like to put you on notice and remind you that you are talking to a guy who has ported to all those platforms and more - you are not dealing with some purported 'developer' that 'just' made some kind of low-key game, got it working on Android, got 6fps and then patted himself on the back and told himself 'OK, this is going to run just swell over two iterative generations or so. So honestly, I think I know a thing or two about how these platforms stack up - far better in fact than your 'pie in the sky' benchmarks would ever indicate to you.

Honestly, your 'pie in the sky' benchmarks traverse you down one optimal render path and that is it. They don't tell you jack all about CPU performance, driver issues, shitty blitting (another Android trait), shitty garbage collector stalls, and on and on.



Thanks Captain Obvious for pointing out stuff to me that I already know. However, it seems you don't even read the stuff that you are selectively quoting and Googling - notice the caveat there that says 'THIS RELIES ON HARDWARE SUPPORT'.

And guess how 'swell' that hardware support is up to now? Exactly one Google Nexus device and as for the rest - shit all - that is what.

And guess what? Even the '40ms' figure they are now holding up as an 'ideal target' is pretty crappy compared to the kind of audio latency you can get with CoreAudio on iOS. So even on that one special phone where the 'fast SL mixer path' goes into effect - it is still shit compared to iOS.



Like hell. Dianne Hackborn quite honestly doesn't give a shit about performance, or anything that gets in the way of her precious 'framework' and the way it ought to be 'properly used' (note - some ideological claptrap and 'good design' principles according to a couple of demented Java ideologues).



At this point you pretty much sound like an end user. 'Project Butter 60fps locked interface' - here is the deal son - most of the time your precious Android devices don't even have screens capable of a 60Hz refreshrate - as in the case of the Galaxy SIII - as in the case of the Galaxy Note 2 - as in the case of the JXD S7300 - and we can go on and on. Now, surely, those first two devices I mentioned there represents a pretty big slice of the overall market, does it not?

Also - the fact that those devices 'lie' about their refreshrates means that you can not even rely on the SDK-supplied 'GetRefreshRate' function - in 75% of all cases it reports a bogus number (because '60Hz' looks better on some techsheet than '58Hz' or '50Hz' now does it?

Now it gets even worse when you want to heuristically detect the refresh rate and time your game/emulator correctly according to it - good luck doing that with a garbage-collecting OS.






Thanks for that Captain Obvious.

However, you might just want to get yourself clued up a bit more - it isn't just that it can't compete with a PS3/360 -

IT CAN'T COMPETE WITH AN XBOX 1/WII.

How do I know? I develop for the aforementioned boxes, and I can also test the same software across all these devices.

And guess what?

Yoshi's Island running with SNES9x Next runs at fullspeed on a Nintendo Wii?

An 1.5/1.6GHz ARMv9 dual core Cortex A9 Android phone however? 56-55fps and lovely audio crackling - and the GC stalls add some more lag ontop of that.

Now you go and rationalize that all you want to yourself while an iPad 2 plays that same game just fine. Seriously, stop drinking the Java/Google koolaid and admit that the entire platform sucks. I have the facts, I have the ultimate benchmark (RetroArch) that proves that this platform sucks because I can run the very same software with the very same frontend codebase on all these platforms - if a platform doesn't deliver on relatively tight syncing, it is reflected in its runtime performance. And guess where Android stands in all of that? Right at the bottom of the foodchain - a Cortex A8 Android tablet performs even worse than a Nintendo Gamecube, thank you very much.

Now please - next time you try to 'correct' somebody, make sure you aren't talking to somebody who already went there, done that, and has gotten the T-shirt.

Maybe you're just a shitty developer?

[nightmarex]

Uh, I guess a little respect is out of the question in a pissing match... My 2 nickles.

Programming on a limited number of platforms, I still have dealt with hardware limitations. I learned how to program in a scalable way decades before most companies gave two turtle shits about it. Now that people are going cross platform they're finally learning.... only took them like a couple of decades to get to that point. So what the point?

Work with what you have and make it 733t on whatever it's running. I was forced to work on Windows shitty crap for years, I was spoiled before that. Back in the days before 3d we had some fun I tell ya we had fun!

Oh and I hope the ouya gets better hardware those specs are lower than my phone at this point.

[DanLamb]

But keep clinging to those benchmarks all you want - they were specifically intended for the non-developer type to gush over.

Benchmarks are intended for non-developers? I am a full time developer. You don't think the guys at AnandTech or the guys at shootout.alioth.debian.org are techies catering to other techies? Of course they are!

I realize that benchmarks can be biased and manipulated and you need to take them with a grain of salt. However, benchmarks still have more weight than emotional rants. Particularly, when it's multiple benchmarks written by different groups that seem to be roughly neutral and are administered by seemingly neutral sites.

Thanks Captain Obvious for pointing out stuff to me that I already know. However, it seems you don't even read the stuff that you are selectively quoting and Googling - notice the caveat there that says 'THIS RELIES ON HARDWARE SUPPORT'.

I definitely read that. If latency can be fixed with hardware changes that would suggest that Android/Dalvik/Java isn't an insurmountable problem.

you are talking to a guy who has ported to all those platforms and more

You may be an extremely accomplished individual, but I'd prefer we judge arguments based on their own merit rather than the credentials of the author.

And guess what? Even the '40ms' figure they are now holding up as an 'ideal target' is pretty crappy compared to the kind of audio latency you can get with CoreAudio on iOS.

Link? I don't see the Android team mention a specific latency target.

Seriously, stop drinking the Java/Google koolaid and admit that the entire platform sucks.

This kind of emotional language undermines your credibility as one who makes calm arguments of reason and logic.

Sometimes Java/C#/Scala are too high level and sometimes C/C++ is too low level. In other cases, I prefer other languages entirely.

I have done a *lot* of high performance, mostly server-side work in C++, Java, and C#. Of course, Android's Dalvik is very different from desktop Java, but I really like Java as a developer and I feel it does what I need it to do for many projects.

It is extremely common for me to hear people bash Java who are completely uninformed. A lot of people had some bad experience with a Java browser applet, or read bad things about Java in the news, and just make completely uninformed negative comments about Java, even in cases where Java works really well.

C/C++ is way behind Java/C# in language design and Java/C# are also way behind Scala in language design as well.

I'm not convinced that Java or something Java-like is completely inappropriate on a client device like Android. I do like that Android supports C/C++/Renderscript development as well.

[johnc]

Thanks for that one-line response johnc - that sure is an adequate response to a guy who went into detail on why Android as a platform sucks.

So good to see that when the Android koolaid cultists can't respond adequately to the facts, they resort to ad-hominems. You already lost the debate Son.

If you program as well as you post, then I stand by my assessment. Your entire diatribe was a condescending ad-hominem.

You probably think you're a know-it-all writer too.

[curaga]

I failed to find any references to Ouya and GC stalls. Perhaps my google-fu is weak; please post a link or two.