iPhone 6 animation performance cut in half

[1ec5]

To state the obvious, #2922 cuts the maximum framerate down from 60fps to 30fps. Prior to #2922, MGLMapView would pan smoothly at 60fps (as confirmed by Xcode) on my iPhone 6 running iOS 9.1. Now it maxes out at 30fps, causing every animation to be choppy to an extent that’s difficult to ignore. (An MGLTargetFrameInterval of 1 unsurprisingly feels great.) Perhaps 30fps is beneficial for the iPod touch @adam-mapbox was testing on, but that should not come at the cost of performance on more current or more powerful hardware, where there is a greater expectation of smooth animations.

/cc @adam-mapbox @incanus @friedbunny @jfirebaugh

[incanus]

Maybe we can take a naive first cut at dividing devices into two camps — lower-end and higher-end — and choosing 30 or 60 as a result. Lower-end would probably include:

• Both iPod touch generations
• iPad <= 3
• iPad mini <= 2
• iPhone <= 5

Something like that?

[adam-mapbox]

We can also try just making it 60 fps. The essence of the fix is to do
things on a regular basis, not necessarily what exactly that basis is. It
might be "good enough", even on slower devices. I can take a look at this.

A better fix would be to do what Justin suggested.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 3:07 PM, Justin R. Miller notifications@github.com
wrote:

Maybe we can take a naive first cut at dividing devices into two camps
— lower-end and higher-end — and choosing 30 or 60 as a result. Lower-end
would probably include:

• Both iPod touch generations
• iPad <= 3
• iPad mini <= 2
• iPhone <= 5

Something like that?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#3005 (comment)
.

[1ec5]

I’ve been playing around with MGLTargetFrameInterval set to 1 all day on the aforesaid iPhone 6, and it feels great. Let’s treat 60fps as the default, then blacklist devices that are known to perform poorly, such as iPod touch.

[adam-mapbox]

Sure, sounds good. I'd like to do a little bit of testing on my own time
about this, but I think this should work for now.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 3:45 PM, Minh Nguyễn notifications@github.com
wrote:

I’ve been playing around with MGLTargetFrameInterval set to 1 all day on
the aforesaid iPhone 6, and it feels great. Let’s treat 60fps as the
default, then blacklist devices that are known to perform poorly, such as
iPod touch.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#3005 (comment)
.

[adam-mapbox]

@1ec5 I went ahead and did some testing on this on the iPod touch, and it's going to be totally fine on all devices. As I suspected, it's the act of doing things on a regular tick that helps the framerate's visible appearance, not so much when the tick arrives. So even if the device can't quite keep up, it still is visually pleasing.

[1ec5]

🎉