I have a flex app which loads at a point a stage3D (starling) game.
All works nice until this point, I am able to hide the app and display only the game layer, but the issue arrives when the game is finished and I want to return to the flex app and remove the game from the stage.
I did tried to stop the game and remove all children from stage3d but this does not work ok, and next time I try to re-display the game it does not show.
Here is some code I am using
Adding the game and starting it (all works fine)
starlingGame = new Starling(Game, this.systemManager.stage);
starlingGame.antiAliasing = 0;
starlingGame.start();
starlingGame.showStats = true;
// this event is dispatched when stage3D is set up
starlingGame.stage3D.addEventListener(Event.CONTEXT3D_CREATE, onContextCreated);
Here is how I try to remove/unload the game
- for some reasons this works the first time, but afterwords the code above does not make the game display for the second time :(
starlingGame.stop();
starlingGame.removeEventListener(Event.CONTEXT3D_CREATE, onContextCreated);
starlingGame.stage.removeChildren();
starlingGame = null;
Related
I have a Qt application, where, among other things, there is a function render which goes through a list of objects and creates for each an according (subclassed) QGraphicsPathItem which it then puts as a child in a (subclassed) QGraphicsScene. (It is done in the code below through a visitor GGObjConstructor which gets initialized with the variable scene which is the scene where the items are to be added to).
XTimer timer;
timer.start();
gobjlist gobjlis = ogc._gobjectlis;
GGObjConstructor ggoc(scene, z_value, bkground_color);
for(auto obj: gobjlis) {
obj->exec( &ggoc );
}
timer.stop();
My class XTimer is used in an obvious way to measure the time for this proceeding.
Now the problem is: Only the time spent in the loop where all the items are prepared and inserted into the scene is measured by timer. For a typical example with ~165000 items this gives about 7.5 sec as timer-value at reaching timer.stop(). But the application is after these 7.5 sec still frozen, with the screen-window where the scene is to by displayed yet invisible and only after about 25 sec (hand-stopped) suddenly the display window appears with all the items to be displayed.
Now of course I would like to measure these "freeze time" (or time till the application becomes responsive again, or maybe time till display window appears). But I found no way to do this although I looked some time through stackoverflow or the net in general. The best hint I found was
stackoverflow question
The answer there seemed to imply, that it would be not really simple to achieve (overriding paintEvent method and such things).
Question: Is this true? Or is there a simple way to measure the time till the application becomes responsive again/the image is really displayed?
I had a similar problem with an application once, where I wanted to measure the time the app freezes to figure out with logging what was causing these freezes. What I came up was to measure how long the Eventloop of the mainthread was not responding, because this directly corresponds to a frozen app.
The basic idea is to not run a QApplication but inherit from QApplication and override the notify() function. Some apps do this anyway to catch exceptions which would otherwise break the eventloop. Here is some pseudo-code which should bring the idea across:
bool MyApplication::notify( QObject * receiver, QEvent * event )
{
// something like storing current time like:
// auto start = std::chrono::system_clock::now();
// auto elapsed = std::chrono::duration_cast<std::chrono::milliseconds>(start - end );
// if( elapsed.count() > 1000 ){
// log something like: Mainthread responds again after <elapsed> seconds
// }
// Note that end must be a member variable
// end = start;
return QApplication::notify(receiver, event);
}
Note 1: If your app does not continuesly run through notify() you can for testing purposes introduce a dummy QTimer which triggers faster than the logging time threshold.
Note 2: if you use multiple threads, esp. QThreads it could be necessary to filter the receiver object and perform that code only if the reciever is in the mainthread.
With this code you can log every freeze of the main-thread (frozen GUI) and determine the length of the freeze. With proper logging you can figure out whats causing the freezes.
Keep in mind that this will only log after the freeze has resolved!
Addition:
It is more complicated and slow, but for debugging/investigation purposes you can store the last event and Object-Tree of the reciever and log that as well. Than you even know which was the last event which triggered the freeze and the recieving Object.
I am completely new to Java and I am learning it while developing an app for a school project.
Image Link
I want to code the above program. In it ,
The user will click Ready button in screen 1.
Then screen two will appear and an image of a butterfly will be shown in a order given by me[Preset using a CSV file] Like shown in screen 2 and 3.
Finally, a button set will appear in the grid and user has to select the buttons in the order of the butterfly appearance.
I am stuck in finding a way to start screen 2 and automatically play the butterfly sequence.
I tried putting the image.setimage() on the initialize() block in my screen 2 controller with a delay in-between each setimage() . but it dosent work.
Anyone can suggest me a way to handle this kind of task? Thank a lot in advance.
The issues often seen with this kind of code for beginners are doing sleep or some other long-running operation on the application thread to do some animation. However blocking the javafx application thread results in the scene not being updated resulting in a freeze of the gui.
You either need to move the long-running parts of this animation to a background thread and use Platform.runLater for any GUI updates or use something designed for this exact purpose. There are multiple classes that could be useful in the javafx.animation package, but the most convenient of them seems to be Timeline:
Store the sequence of movements in a suitable data structure and use the Timeline to trigger an event handler in regular intervals to update the gui:
List<FieldIndices> fieldIndices = ...
final Iterator<FieldIndices> iterator = fieldIndices.iterator();
final Timeline timeline = new Timeline();
timeline.getKeyFrames().add(new KeyFrame(Duration.seconds(1), evt -> {
if (iterator.hasNext()) {
moveButterfly(iterator.next());
} else {
removeButterfly();
timeline.stop();
}
}));
timeline.setCycleCount(Animation.INDEFINITE); // repeat until stop is called
timeline.play();
Now all that's left for you to implement is reading the data to a list and implementing the logic of moving the butterfly to a new position.
Note that I do not actually recommend using more than 2 scenes: The user will expect the same position for the buttons and the "fields" showing the butterfly. If you design 2 fxmls any adjustment to one of the scene would require you to do the same adjustments to the other scene. This makes the layout hard to maintain. The alternative requires you to create the scene in java code, but the repetitive nature of the scenes makes this a good idea anyways. (The alternative is injecting 16 fields to the controller and collecting them into a suitable data structure; This is error prone and any change of one of the buttons would probably require 16 changes in the fxml. Use a nested for loop and you need to write the logic for creating a button only once storing the buttons in e.g. a nested array can be done at the same time...)
As I understand, you wanna play butterfly sequence once 2nd stage is shown...To achieve that, you could try something like:
List positions = new ArrayList(); //places to show butterfly (e.g. table cells)
secondStage.setOnShown(windowEvent -> {
// update UI with Pltform.runLater()
// moveButerflyTo() is your method to place butterfly on given place
positions.forEach(position -> Platform.runLater(() -> moveButerflyTo(position)));
});
I didn't try this but it do the job...
I have a function that when called takes about 10 seconds to run. I’d like to add a simple progress bar to show the user something is happening but the progressBar doesn’t run until the function is finished
btn.addEventListener("click",bigFunction);
private function bigFunction(event:Event):void{
var progress:ProgressBar = new ProgressBar();
progress.indeterminate = true;
progress.validateNow();
mainPanel.addChild(progress)
// do massive loop
}
Is there a way to force the progress bar to run before the rest of the function is completed. Cheers
The execution model for Flex/Actionscript is single threaded. You have to take some tricky approach to handle this.
http://blogs.infosupport.com/flex-4-a-multi-threading-solution/
Take a look at this example.
I doubt this is possible. Why? because Flash (Flex does nothing) is single-threaded, a 10 second function will just cause the display (and hence the browser, if you are displaying it in a browser) to freeze. Even so, you can try the following:
Force a refresh on the progressbar using
progress.invalidateDisplayList();
after the addChild
This will add the progressbar to the redraw list
In Flash, to repaint anything, you need a new frame to be processed by swf (Event.ENTER_FRAME). Your 10-second function should be split to shorter calls, or it indeed just hangs the Flash player. If you're processing something large, do it in limited portions. You can use getTimer() function to control portion size.
I have a component I created that works like a Viewstack but the next index component slides in from one of the four sides. I've got it working well enough that it's acceptable to use, but I want to make it more efficient.
Right now I'm using a Canvas as the base component, I create a snapshot of the current view using an ImageSnapshot (new Bitmap( ImageSnapshot.captureBitmapData( this ) )), and I slide the new index on top of that image on index change.
I'm basically looking for suggestions on how to do this a better way. By taking the Image after the component loads, and after the slide happens, I've gotten the initial jaded moves down to a minimum, but we normally use this for transitioning grids so it's almost always slow on the first or first couple slides.
Here's what some of it looks like so far:
private function creationComplete(e:Event):void
{
tmpImage.source = new Bitmap( ImageSnapshot.captureBitmapData( this ) );
}
public function set selectedIndex(value:int):void
{
if(_selectedIndex == value + 1)
return;
_selectedIndex = value+1;
var obj:UIComponent;
tmpImage.height = height;
tmpImage.width = width;
tmpImage.visible = true;
tmpImage.x = 0;
//tmpImage.includeInLayout = true;
for (var i:int = 1; i < numChildren; i++)
{
obj = UIComponent(getChildAt(i));
//obj.x = width;
if(i == _selectedIndex){
obj.visible = true;
objDisplay = obj;
}
else
obj.visible = false;
}
mv1.target = tmpImage;
mv2.target = objDisplay;
switch ( direction )
{
// X/Y sliding logic
}
parEfect.play();
tmpImage.source = new Bitmap( ImageSnapshot.captureBitmapData( this ) );
}
If you're wondering, I'm using index 0 of the canvas for the image, and offset my custom selectedIndex by 1.
I'll post more of it if need be, but I want to keep the question down to a minimum and this pretty much sums it up.
Any help is greatly appreciated! I really want to get this component to perform better. Also, this has to be done using Flex 3
What are mv1 and mv2? Are they Flex Effects? If so they are notoriously slow, I recommend using TweenLite. If you absolutely need to use them set suspendBackgroundProcessing = true on them. Last but not least, make sure you do not have a layout set on them. If you do you are causing a re-layout every frame which can easily bog down animation.
You are probably getting some memory hits from all the components being created and then immediately being converted to an image. I would definitely try adding some intelligence at creation time. Try checking the memory usage and test against maximum mem load before creating the image:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/system/System.html
However, I would need to look at what is being created in the object. I suspect that you are loading some pretty heavy objects in each of the views. And if you are loading data from the server for each object, there will be a lag, possibly.
Set up a priority queue for creating objects within the class that is being created . . . e.g., if you have a menu system that is hidden by default, load the front-end, then load the menu drop-down only when a user clicks on it, or after all other immediately visible objects have been created. You will also have the advantage of being able to take a snapshot when all the immediately visible objects are in place, and before the hidden objects are created.
Finally, add event listeners after object creation, if you can, and remember to remove listeners asap.
Do you use Flex 3 or Flex 4?
Because if you use Flex 4, I would recommand to use Animate Filter with Shader Filter.
Shader Filters use Pixel Bender so you can build a shader in Pixel Bender that will do the transition between your 2 images.
See these 2 videos for more info :
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/codedependent/pixel-bender-shaders-and-flex-4/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/codedependent/shader-transitions-in-flex-4
It would be helpful to see how you're creating your Move effects, mv1 and mv2. It is possible to set combinations of the *From, *To, and/or *By attributes--or various manipulations of the properties that control the tween's speed/duration--that together can cause "jitter" or "jerkiness" in the resulting animation.
of course, it's also possible that you're hitting against a performance barrier of some sort, but I suspect it's something more insidious. Simple translation ("x/y sliding") of any clip should perform relatively well, as long as the clip hasn't been rotated, skewed, or scaled; and as long as the processor isn't completely maxed out with some other operation that's going on at the same time.
In most cases, when defining a Move effect, you want to set as little information as possible, and let Flex compute the optimum values for the other things. Usually, this means setting only xTo and yTo.
Also, be sure to call end() on your tweens before you start setting up the new values (just in case any previous sequence is still running).
Finally - make sure that you're not competing with the component's layout manager during the tween. While the tween is running, you should disable the layout completely (by setting autoLayout=false on your container component)--or you can change the layout (temporarily) to an absolute layout. Either way, the tween must be allowed to move things around while it's running, and the moving of stuff must not cause the layout manager to recompute things until after it's all over. Once it's finished, you can re-enable whatever layout manager you had originally.
This may be a bit of a beginners question, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.
I'm using flex to develop a GUI for a large project, specifically a status bar along the bottom. Within my StatusBar class is a ProgressBar, which other classes doing work can tell to update(change bar completion and label) as they progress. The problem I'm encountering is that flex won't update whats shown on the screen until it's too late, for example
ProgressBar initialized, 0% done
some class sets the ProgressBar to be 12% done
some class does some work
some class sets the ProgressBar to be 56% done
Whats happening is the 12% done is never displaying, it just hangs at 0% during the work, then skips right to 56% done. I've tried to understand the lifecycle of a flex component (invalidation and validation), and I think I understand it and am applying it correctly, but it's not working at all. I need to tell flex to redraw my StatusBar (or at least the ProgressBar within) after some class sets it to be 12% done, but before some class starts doing its work. How do I do this?
As mentioned in other answers, the flash player is single threaded, if you don't break up your work into discrete chunks that can be executed in separate "frames", you're going to see jumps and stutters in the ui, which is effectively what you're seeing.
If you really must see that 12% message, then it's not enough to invalidate the display list, as the display list isn't getting a chance to update until after the 56% work has completed, you must explicitly interrupt the natural event cycle with a call to validateNow() after your message has been set.
This however is not the best way to do things if performance is of concern. You might get by with judicial usage of callLater() to schedule each chunk of work in turn, as this will allow the player to potentially complete a frame cycle (and update the display list) before attempting the next step in your process.
Glenn,
That is not at all how the threading in Flex works whatsoever. Like many UIs it has a message pump on the main UI thread (they do it in frames). When you call callLater() it places the passed in function pointer at the end of the message pump queue (on the next frame) and returns immediately. The function then gets called when the message pump has finished processing all of the messages prior (like mouse clicks).
The issue is that as the property change causes UI events to be triggered, they then place their own messages on the pump which now comes after your method call that you placed there from callLater().
Flex does have multiple threads but they are there for Adobe's own reasons and therefore are not user accessible. I don't know if there is a way to guarantee that a UI update will occur at a specific point, but an option is to call callLater a number of times until the operation occurs. Start off with a small number and increase until the number of iterations produces the result you want. Example:
// Change this to a number that works... it will probably be over 1, depending on what you're doing.
private const TOTAL_CALL_COUNT:int = 5;
private var _timesCalled:int = 0;
//----------------------------------------------------------------
private function set Progress( progress:int ):void
{
progressBar.value = progress;
DoNextFunction();
}
//----------------------------------------------------------------
private function DoNextFunction():void
{
if( _timesCalled >= TOTAL_CALL_COUNT )
{
_timesCalled = 0;
Function();
}
else
{
_timesCalled++;
callLater( DoNextFunction );
}
}
Try calling invalidateDisplayList() after each changes to your progress bar. Something like :
Class StatusBar
{
public function set progress(value:uint):void
{
progressBar.value = value;
progressBar.invalidateDisplayList();
}
}
Flex has an invalidation cycle that avoid screen redrawing everytime a property changes. As an example, if a property's value changes 3 times in a single frame, it will render only with the last value set. You can force a component to be redrawn by calling invidateDisplayList() which means updateDisplayList will be immediatly executed instead of waiting the next frame.
Actionscript in Flash player, like Javascript in the browser, is pseudo-multithreaded. That is, they're single threaded, but they have multiple execution stacks. This means you can't "sleep" in a particular thread, but you can spawn a new execution stack that gets deferred until a later time. The flex way of doing this is the "callLater" function. You can also use the setTimeout/setInterval functions. Or you can use a timer object built into the flash player. Or even "ENTER_FRAME" event listener. All of these will essentially allow you to do what you need, if I'm correct about the cause of your problems.
It sounds like you have one "thread" doing most of your work, never stopping to allow other execution stacks (threads*) to run.
The problem could be what PeZ is saying, but if that doesn't help, you might want to try some deferred calls for worker classes. So your process might look like this now:
Progress initialized.
Do some work.
Update progress bar to 12. (invalidate display list)
setTimeout(doMoreWork, 100);
Update progress bar to 52.
(if your worker is a UIcomponent, you can use uicomp.callLater(...), otherwise, you need to use setTimeout/timers/enter_frame for pure AS3 classes).
Sometimes its necessary set to zero before assign another value.
progressBar.setProgress(0, progressBar.maximum);
progressBar.setProgress(newValue, progressBar.maximum);
I'm using Flash Builder 4.6 and I also have a problem for the display of my progress bar. I open a new window where I start a new multiloader class (39 Mo of content). The new window is opened in background and the main window display a progress bar until the multiloader class has finished his work. However the opening window is blocking the animation of my main window. I know it's not the multiloader class cause I saw it running correctly.
But I will try to find some new ways of doing it.
The main purpose of my post is the complexity adobe has build around flash.
When you seek ressources for your own application or answers for your questions, it's a real pain to find the good ressource. There is a total mix up (at adobe side and at user side) between AS3, Flex, Flash CS, Flash Builder, AiR, ... If you try to develop in AS3, you will find that some examples won't work for you because it is not implemented in your SDK. You have more and more forums giving you the "best practice" or ironic answers based on experiences on different developping platform.
By example, just here above, I see progressBar.value = value; With my experience, I can say that in Flash Builder 4.6, this property is read-only. But It might be a custom class made by the user but who can tell.