No, I am not kidding, after a week of optimizing I just reached almost 3 Mio FPS with our engine. I had to disable Clearing/Present and Input, but this is my log output (thanks to PerformanceCounters this is also pretty accurate):

 

FPS: 2703785

 

With Input enabled I can easily go above 200000 FPS, most time of each frame is in whatever platform Input GetState method does:

 

FPS: 202099

 

With Present (clear is not needed in my test as I draw a fullscreen quad) it goes down to ~13000 FPS, which is not shabby, but almost all time is lost in Present of XNA 4.0 CTP, which hasn't been optimized a lot yet by the XNA Team (the main module I use currently, but we support many different graphic frameworks as well, XNA is just the best for Windows IMO). Might sound crazy, but for performance checking I disable Present because then I immediately see whats slow in the render code.

 

FPS: 12680

 

Other platforms are much worse, but it is always waiting for the graphic card or some external library, so I would say our engine is quite fast as of now. I obviously did not have much enabled in my test (just a test screen drawing a big quad, and Time, Input, Graphic, SceneManager, MaterialManager and Profiling modules enabled), but even doing more stuff does not hurt FPS wise. A more complex 2D screen could still achieve 10000 FPS. Next up is 3D optimization, which is much harder obviously (we are still not fast enough, especially on other platforms).

This post is about Objective-C iPhone stuff!

Just because this took me some time to figure out (and might be useful in the future or for other people): In the iPhone SDK a UIScrollView class will eat up all touch events (touchesBegan, touchesEnded, touchesMove, etc.) and not pass them along to your view controller where all your view logic might be (like in my case). If you know this, you can just create a new class for each ScrollView and then have some of your logic there, but in my case all I want is to pass these events along to the UIViewController (like all the other controls behave like). For this reason I just created a simple class called PassTouchesScrollView, which looks like this:

//  PassTouchesScrollView.m
//  Simple helper class for UIScrollViews that need to pass touchesBegan to the
//  UIViewController above it (see all the Controller classes here).
#import "PassTouchesScrollView.h"

@implementation PassTouchesScrollView

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event
{
	UIView *result = nil;
	for (UIView *child in self.subviews)
		if ([child pointInside:point withEvent:event])
			if ((result = [child hitTest:point withEvent:event]) != nil)
				break;

	return result;
}

- (void)dealloc
{
    [super dealloc];
}

@end

Note: This is only useful if you really do not need any touch events in the UIScrollView because even the scrolling drag touch events will be ignored and send to the UIViewController. If you want to be more selective, e.g. just pass the touchesEnded event on to the parents via:

-(void) touchesEnded: (NSSet *) touches withEvent: (UIEvent *) event
{
	// Pass to parent
	[super touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
	[self.nextResponder touchesEnded:touches withEvent:event];
}

References: Found helpful tips on StackOverflow and other sites (including this apple support forum).

Pretty quick tip because it was a little annoying that the huge background on this site took so long to load sometimes and reading the text was not very easy until all the panel images were loaded too. To make sure that the panel images for all the content are loaded first I just had to add this to the main css file:

#preload img
{
height: 0; width: 0; border-width: 0;
position: absolute;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
z-index: -30;
}

And then just below the html tag (in my case in the master layout file) add the following code:

etc. for each image ..

Found on this good old article from 2006 :)

Yes, first of all ask yourself, wtf are you doing on a mac anyway (well, in my case Objective-C, just implemented this on the iPhone (still work in progress btw), omg).

Well, for testing the new iPad stuff I had to install OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) on that old crappy Mac Mini I use for developing (via VNC of course) since the newest version of XCode (Visual Studio for poor mac guys) 3.2.2 (iPad beta 4) only works on the newest OS X 10.6.2.

Anyway, after updating for over an hour, everything looked the same, but not much worked anymore. My keychain was not working anymore because all my certificates were gone, dunno why, but I needed to renew them anyway. Then in the XCode Organizer I could not connect or see any iPhone or iPod anymore, no matter how many times I reconnected the devices. On other computers everything was still working fine, the iPods, iPhones and cables were all working, the Organizer was not working anymore.

Only after I installed the new XCode version (iPhone SDK 3.2.2 beta 4), everything was working fine again. Maybe this helps someone sometime in the future :)

As usual here is my post about the CeBIT. This year the conversion was big as usual, but not too much interesting stuff for game developers. Anyway, enjoy the pics.


Welcome to the CeBIT 2010.


The weather was pretty cold. Minus 4 degrees and lots of new snow from the night.


That little cute pinguin was trapped in this server rack.


Micrsoft further pushed Windows 7 and showed a little of the new Windows Phone 7 Series.


Water jumping from one side to another, pretty cool.


Walking trough a server room, pretty loud in here.


Lots of signs for faster internet connections. Many halls had conferences and speakers about lots of topics.


In the halls 14-23 it was VERY full, it took forever to get from one side to the other.


This ball was floating in the air supported by coolers from the PC below it.


If there are free tshirts, everyone is going nuts.


This is the Intel Gaming Hall, was pretty full there too.


A big Quake Live match was about to start here.


Thats it for this year. Till next year then :)

I might have blogged about this before, but I could not find my own blog post, so why not blog it again.
Since the recent CodeRush 10 beta, which works in VS2010 RC finally, there is no more Right Margin line that can be enabled under Options->Editors->Painting. I also tried to enable some modules, but I cannot see the margin line anymore (works fine with CodeRush 9).

Well, in Visual Studio you can also enable a margin line with a registry entry at:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\Text Editor]
"Guides"="RGB(64,64,192) 79"

This will produce a blue margin line right before the 80th column. It looks good on white and black backgrounds, but you can of course change it easily to any color and position. If you don't want to go into regedit, just execute this handy RightMarginLineVS2008.reg (280 bytes) file.

The mission of today is just to get back to Germany. Not much exciting stuff in this blog post. The weather is pretty different in Seattle (sunshine) and Hannover (snow and freaking cold).


The weather in Seattle was pretty good, a little colder than the last few days, but blue sky and sunshine all over the place.


Waiting for the Taxi took forever and the relatively short trip (IMO) to the airport cost me 45 dollars (wtf).


The self-checkin only took a few minutes and I passed all security checks in a few minutes too.


At least there were some power plugs and free wifi (slow however) available at the airport in my 2 hour wait time.


At about 13:00 the weather was still good and we were about to take of to Amsterdam.


This is Bellevue from high up.


And the Seattle mountains, Mount Rainer is here somewhere too ^^


Bad weather in Amsterdam.


Security checks in Amsterdam. The x-ray scanner broke in my line just before my bags got in there. So I had to go to the other side and some security personal did not like that and wanted to check all my bags now (wtf?). Nothing happend and even though all this waiting and checking took almost an hour, I still had some time until my delayed plane came anyway.


The book I read after both my netbook and iPhone batteries both pretty much died. Got almost 100 pages done, but was way too tired to finish it.


Weather in Amsterdam is pretty bad as you can see, our flight was delayed 30min.


Over the clouds in Holland.


And some Germany down below, at least some sun is coming through. The sun reflection (specular highlight) of the streets and rivers was pretty cool.


The weather in Germany. Better sky, but very cold.


Quick picture from the train ride home.


Buildings are much smaller around here, I always notice that when I come back, but not so much when living here.


And finally reaching sweet home. Time to sleep now.

This is the last day of the MVP Summit. There will be one more post of tomorrows trip back to Germany, but it will probably be short. Today was not as interesting as the past few days because the Keynotes were pretty general. I wanted to see one of the side sessions, but it was exactly at lunch time when all XNA MVPs met up, which was way more important. Chuck Walbourn from the DirectX team (now called Windows Gaming Experience (WGX), which sounds strange IMO) did a great afternoon talk to any XNA/DirectX MVPs interested in DirectX11. This just made this day a great ending for the whole conference.


Since I was video chatting, blogging, emailing, etc. all morning I left the hotel a little later, the first keynote session was not so important for me. Later keynotes were not much better because I just don't like a presenter talking to serveral hundered guys and speaking slowly about some technology I probably don't have much impact on. I much rather watch those things online where I can skip over the boring parts :)


So instead I walked to the conference (which was at the Hyatt hotel again like in the first day) and took some pictures of Bellevue. As you can see not everything is Microsoft here, there are some other companies like Expedia located here.


But if you turn your head you can spot Microsoft pretty quickly again.


That big long building is the Westin hotel south of the Hyatt. From this angle looks very thin, but from the other side it is pretty large.


I like all these skyscrapers, maybe I should do a game with some buildings like these ^^



There is the Hyatt hotel where all the keynotes and side sessions are today. Pretty good weather today btw, I just had a T-Shirt and my new MVP jacket on.


These so called sky walkways are pretty useful because it takes forever until a light turns green here and you have to push a button at every single trafic light cross road section.


I just saw a little of the second keynote and then met some XNA MVPs, which were easy to spot because of our XNA MVP jackets we got from the XNA team. We then saw the last keynotes about clouds and hardware, software, etc. which was a bit better than the previous keynotes, but still very general (not a programmer session).


After that all the XNA MVPs met at the so called Farewell Lunch again. As usual lots of stories were traded and the food was very good.


After the lunch we took a few quick pictures of the group, which I can probably link up here later (I did not take a group foto except for this one because the other guys cameras are just much better at those things).


There was 45 minutes of free time between the lunch and the DirectX11 talk from Chuck, so I checked out the mall here.


As usual lots of schicki-micki shops here (thats what we say in Germany to way over the top fancy shops). Other than a Game Stop I could not found anything interesting here.


At the other side of the mall you could get back to the hotels via one of those sky walkways.


The directions were pretty confusing, but once I was on the right track I finally found the way back to the hotels for the last MVP session this year.


We had to wait a little because Chuck was hold up in traffic. I shot some extra pictures from the Cinema upstairs.


This are all the movies at this cinema, nothing to overly exciting I have not seen yet.


The last hardcore XNA/DirectX MVPs like Matt, Richard, Roy, Michael and a few others were listening to the DirectX11 presentations Chuck gave us quickly.


Chuck is talking fearlessly about all the cool new stuff and tricks in DirectX11. Most of those presentations and talks will be released publicly after the GDC in a few weeks, so stay tuned and check Chucks blog for that.


Time fly by and it is already late, time to head back and have a last look at Bellevue at night.



Pretty lights everywhere.


This little boy gives me the impression that he is trapped in there. But he is probably just pissing off his mom because in there it is much more amazing then out here.


Okay, thats it for today. I am really tired and will just watch some VODs this evening and read some websites. Tomorrow the long trip back to Germany will happen and I'm not sure that I will catch any sleep on the plane ..

The second deep session day was also very informative, but still very much top secret stuff. All this stuff will be announced on the GDC and MIX in a few weeks anyway, but I guess for a big company timing is everything for press releases.


It was very sunny today, I did not even take a jacket with me. The weather was still kinda cold, but since I will be indoor all day I do not really need a jacket.


While waiting for the bus a few other MVPs came along and asked me if I want to ride with them in their car to the summit. I said yes and we talked a bit about this summit and that it is way better this year that Microsoft actually tells us about new exciting stuff and not already publiced information as last year.


I arrived early and had some time to read emails and surf a little.


I also checked a few new websites and blogs other guys were talking about, like http://lostgarden.com/.


More XNA team members joined us today. These two are from education and website and product management.


In the lunch break we went to the company store. The Socksup guy also had to explain his nickname to everyone and it took longer the more drunk he was ^^


Shuttle cars and busses were taking MVPs back and forth from the hotels and Microsoft campus.


After walking around in circles for a while we finally got the the Company store, which was only a few hundered meters away from where we started ^^ Lots of products here, not much interesting stuff however.


There were a couple of older Xbox 360 games and I bought Ninja Gaiden for a few dollars, which is good as far as others told me. I also got some cheap t-shirts with some Windows logos on them.


The other guys also got some stuff and we quickly went back to our meeting room for more XNA talk.


In the meantime I was downloading StarCraft II beta (the beta started today finally), which took a long time. I could not do much else because the guest wifi was blocking all useful ports for VPN, VNC, IRC, etc. which was a little annoying because some programs I use depend on VPN working for example.


My netbook CPU should be way too slow for StarCraft II, but I installed it anyway. Still do not have a beta-key however, but I registered for the opt-in beta (which is probably bullshit anyway if millions of people trying to opt-in and they only give away a few more keys).


Okay, the long day is over (some of us were a little tired from too much partying yesterday) and we had some time to get back to the hotels, relax a little and then go to the big party this evening at the Garage in Seattle.


Nick (former MVP, now Microsoft employee) and some other XNA team guys are still talking to George Clingermann (XNA MVP).


On the bus ride back Dong-Hoon Kim (XNA MVP from Korea) and me took a few quick pictures from ourselfs. I learned some stuff about Korea and we talked about XNA and cultural differences quite a bit.


A little later we drove over to the Garage party location:



At the party, which was huge, you could play billard and


Bowling of course.


Lots of crazy drinks at the bar.


The XNA MVPs bunched up around Andy, who had lots of stories for us about his former Microsoft days and having meetings with Bill Gates in it and stuff like that.

A little while later you see some other MVPs talking and discussing stuff:



Other people also took quite a lot of pictures, which much better cameras however.


At 23:30 they tried get rid of us with telling us the last busses are leaving now.


The busses back to the hotel.


And finally reaching the hotel at 00:00, time to go to bed early today (relatively to the last few days where it was always between 01:00 and 02:00 am.