Why is an animation in a simple FLEX applicaiton so slow compared to pure ActionScript? Using MXML for games?

1
votes

I created a quick rendering speed test targeting AIR on Android and made 2 projects; Mobile AS3 only and FLEX. They use a common class which embeds an animation and has some frame counting logic in it. I explicitly set the scaleMode to NO_SCALE, frameRate to 24, and and quality to StageQuality.HIGH. As far as I know the compiler options are the same except that the FLEX project has more references to framework SWCs.

The results are about 6-8 FPS in FLEX vs 12-14 in AS3 only. While it makes sense that it FLEX would be slower, the difference is greater than I expected, any ideas?

I am working on a project which uses MXML to make a mobile game. Personally I think it is greatly impacting performance which is why I created the simple test above. Any thoughts on using MXML to make mobile games?

Thanks!

1
apache-flexmobileactionscriptmxml
Without seeing your code; it is impossible to guess why one approach may perform better (or worse) than the other. Flex will have overhead than an AS3 only project because the framework is running in the background. For my own mobile game; i created the gameboard / gameplay using AS3-only code; but the menus and sort are where I use Flex. How did you measure FPS? – JeffryHouser
Hard to say without looking at MXML you are using, but dont use MXML to create mobile games. Use actionscript - and - Avoid Inheriting from UIComponent as much as you can. Inherit further up the hierarchy. – flexicious.com

1 Answers

0
votes

Flex is not suitable for mobile development where performance is important. There is a lot of unnecessary stuff that it does in the background which impacts performance. If you must, AS3-only code will give you the best results.