Lag in online games using flash player

[thehoey]

Hey guys
I have a computer with vista home premium on it. I won't bother you with
specs, but what I do know is that it is able to handle a simple game of tetris!
However, if i play an online game of tetris (or something else - just using
the classic as the example), there is a delay on my keystrokes or clicks of the
mouse, and there is actual lag with the movements as well. I have the latest
version of flash player, and it does all the other things well. Can anyone
help?

Thanks for your time,
thehoey

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

thehoey, can you give us a link to a game we can test to see what happens on
our end? This is the second or third time I've heard this but so far we
haven't been able to recreate in-house (so we're not sure what to advise yet)

[thehoey]

well sticking with the classic tetris theme.
[url]http://emuse.ebaumsworld.com/games/play/1106[/url] lags for me. The same version
lags on other sites as well, along with other games.

Thanks for your help and I hope we can get to the bottom of this.

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

I had several people test this internally and we're unable to recreate so far..


So we need to start looking for elements common to each of you having this
problem. CPU, video cards & drivers, etc..

[sunocox]

This game lags for me. I have reported this same problem in another thread too.
My specs are:

Rating 5.1
AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ 2.81GHz
Memory 2046MB
System Type: 32-bit OS

Graphics: ATI X1950 Pro (256Mb)
Driver Version: 8.351.0.0
ATI Catalyst 7.3

Let me know if you need any other information.

[sunocox]

I forgot to mention that I have Vista Home Premium.

I also have Flash CS3 Professional installed on Vista and I had to switch back
to XP to develop because the hesitation/lag effect was so bad in my
applications that it was un-usable.

[sunocox]

I had another thought. I tried turning off Aero but it doesn't make any difference. It still hesitates/lags the same.

[Darren McNally - Adobe]

Hi sunocox,

Can you verify the driver date for your Graphics: ATI X1950 Pro Driver
Version: 8.351.0.0?

1. Select Start > Run
2. Type in dxdiag
3. Select the Display tab
4. Verify that the date of the driver is the latest.

[sunocox]

I just installed the very latest ATI drivers from their website but it doesn't
make any difference. The hesitation/lag problem still persists. Graphics-wise,
Aero-desktop, games, and video all work very nicely without any noticable
problems.

[Darren McNally - Adobe]

I have been testing this Tetris game on with Vista on an older machine with
Flash Player 9.0.45.0

[url]http://emuse.ebaumsworld.com/games/play/1106[/url]

The performance is good, actually great, I do not notice any lag. If anyone
else able to replicate this issue, please reply with your system stats. It
would be nice to find the common denominator that is causing this performance
issue.

Test machine stats:

? IBM ThinkPad
? Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz, ~1.7GHz
? Memory: 510MB RAM
? ATI MOBILITY RADEON 7500

[sunocox]

I also have 9.0.45.0 installed, but it's not related to the version of Flash
because the I see the same hesitation/lag problem if I use Flashplayer 7 or 8
under Vista.

Do you have some test applications on the web somewhere that I can run to
provide feedback. This might help to narrow down what particular functionality
is causing the problems.

I would certainly like to resolve this problem so I can use this computer to
develop my Flash applications.

[sunocox]

After a little investigation (not exhaustive), I found that setInterval()
timers (and I don't know why) don't seem to be triggering consistently.

I downloaded some game code and put some traces into it. I found that in one
instance a 20 msec timer was triggering consistently every 20-25 milliseconds
and then randomly it would only trigger after a 800-1000 millisecond pause. The
pause always seemed to be related to another interval on a ~300 millisecond
timer. At the time that the second interval should have triggered is when the
pause occurred, affecting both intervals. When the second interval finally
triggered (~500 milliseconds late), then the 2 intervals would return to normal.

After that, it would trigger consistently until another pause would occur.

I hope this helps track down the problem.

[Darren McNally - Adobe]

Hi sunocox,

Thanks for the info. What puzzles me is that I don?t see this lag on any
machine that I test, even older slower machines. I don?t see why setInterval()
timers would only lag on some systems, that does not make sense to me. I will
help investigate this further and try to supply you with some test applications
that also make use of setInterval().

[sunocox]

Problem SOLVED!!

I went through a methodical approach adding lines of code to my flash
application until the problem appeared. It turned out to be "sound" related. I
updated my drivers to the latest for my motherboard and the problem is gone.

Thanks for your help.

P.S. For others with this problem, if you have USB Audio installed under vista
(with drivers from Microsoft), replace them with the real drivers for your
audio chip which you can usually get from the motherboard and integrator sites.

[Darren McNally - Adobe]

Awesome! I am happy to hear you resolved this. Thanks for sharing this with everyone.