Odd things with Chrome vs FireFox

[chicagobob123]

I have been running some long term tests on my project. Seems that Chrome has some serious issues when it comes to GPU utilization. 

I have seen it peg my GPU at 90% while FireFox only hits 30 to 40%. Whats more Chrome has been leaking memory while FireFox has stayed reasonably stable. 

In my overnight test of Chrome it blue screened my PC. ( I have yet to test FireFox overnight) 

Just thought I would share that if you are doing some heavy webgl stuff you might want to check the memory usage if you are using Chrome. 

 

 

 

[LTNGames]

Surprisingly I get the opposite effects, with anything WebGL firefox gets a bad memory leak and most WebGL is unplayable but in chrome I get a steady FPS and no leakage. I've tried all firefox browsers, the normal build, dev editions and even light version and all produce a very laggy WebGL experience.

[chicagobob123]

Now thats real odd. I have Firefox running like silk (now for about 3 hours) and Chrome would have been pegging my gpu.  Are you running the latest version 47 of firefox? Maybe there is a difference there. 

 

[jerome]

With my linux, Chrome is always far more faster than FF regarding WegGL or even pure JS.

[LTNGames]

I just uninstalled all browsers except chrome and am now defragging my drive, then will re-download and try again. I'll let you know the results but I'm pretty sure I had the latest version. Before I uninstalled browsers I downloaded the Avant browser which allows you to switch between 3 rendering engines, FF, Chrome & IE, I tested a phaser game on it using the FF rendering engine and I had the same results, it's mind boggling. I have a feeling FF has issues with my crappy laptop GFX Card (Nvidia 310m).

[dbawel]

These posts specific to browsers are always valuable; however I hear the frustration and personally experience it when I try and wrap my head around the current state of any browser. And many devlopers including myself have been down this hole many times in the past. Unfortunately, it's like a game of ping-pong, where the state of the ball (in this case, browsers) is always in play and constantly moving from side to side. This means that as soon as I find one issue with one browser, it is often fixed the same or the next day - especially if someone files a bug report.

Also, I and others have tried to get a handle on specific browser support, but have found this is not possible as there are so many factors involved - especially in memory management. For me, I generally recommend Chrome simply because of the resources behind it's development, as well as it's greater compatability on average with most media as well as frameworks such as WebGL. So your personal choice is relevant only for some browsers which have legacy issues and limited resources and development personnel. Otherwise, it's generally apples and oranges - with Chrome almost always coming in the top three for performance, and more often #1.

But it is always good to write posts such as this when someone identifies a specific issue which generally provides the info for developers to know that it's not their scene which is necessarily the problem when they find a bug, and this can save hours and even days of work when someone posts these specifics on the forum.

In addition, there is great value when someone recognizes a specific browser which has a compatability others do not - such as using the Samsung browser to render scenes on the GearVR without the need to plug the device into the headset. So again, these posts are valuable, but I hope you can avoid any frustrations as I used to have, as the technical and functional aspects of browsers change daily, and there is very little we can document which won't be completely different in a day or week at most.

The biggest issue I still deal with and monitor is memory management, and specifically GC - however the babylon.js team and contributors are working on optimizations with every release, and contributors such as @JCPalmer are constantly optimizing every zero and decimal point to improve every aspect of file handling and memory. So as long as you have the latest version of your preferred browser, you're doing everything you can to maintain top performance. So keep these posts coming, as they are invaluable, but it's a tough world to become engolfed inside, and was definately all consuming for me until I realized we're all working on the edge of new technologies, and that's all part of the fun, isn't it?

Cheers,

DB

[Gravity_Melee]

Try Entering "chrome://flags" in the chrome url bar and change the setting for Override software rendering list, Accelerated 2D canvas.  

for firefox try "about:config" in url bar, then try changing layers.acceleration.force-enabled, layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled.

should have a positive effect.