How is this program on Performance

[vackillers]

FINALLY we got a program that will ACTUALLY do live animated wallpapers for desktop other than stardocks resourceful hungry and often buggy "Deskscapes".

But how is this thing on performance? Deskscapes eats CPU usage like no tommorrow, especially when linked with MP4 videos.

[Biohazard]

Hey,

It depends on the type of wallpaper and the graphics hardware you have. If your GPU supports hardware decoding for video wallpapers, it will use that instead of the CPU.

For example, some wallpapers on Workshop have a resolution of 4k and I had some users report that their graphics hardware does not support this and they will take a lot of CPU as well in that case. As long as your GPU is not too old you should be good for most wallpapers though, which GPU do you have?

There are also HTML and 3D types of wallpapers that will use less resources than a CPU decoded video.

[vackillers]

Originally posted by Biohazard:

Hey,

It depends on the type of wallpaper and the graphics hardware you have. If your GPU supports hardware decoding for video wallpapers, it will use that instead of the CPU.

For example, some wallpapers on Workshop have a resolution of 4k and I had some users report that their graphics hardware does not support this and they will take a lot of CPU as well in that case. As long as your GPU is not too old you should be good for most wallpapers though, which GPU do you have?

There are also HTML and 3D types of wallpapers that will use less resources than a CPU decoded video.

Thanks for the reply, my specs are:

AMD FX 8320 @4.2ghz
16GB DDR3 1866 RAM
MSI GTX 980 OC
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

The problem I've always had was that Deskscapes would use around 30-35% of my CPU just sitting at my desktop, depending on the wallpaper, which are all videos, some would bug out and not play at all, even though their all of the same encoded format lol..

[Biohazard]

That is curious, I would have expected DeskScapes to work better on your hardware.

Since there is no demo version at this time, could you check how this movie runs in Windows Media Player for you https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7340612/wallpaperengine/shimmering_particles.zip it is a default video based wallpaper. This test is probably not very reliable though, maybe another user with similar hardware could comment on the actual CPU usage of video wallpapers, preferably this official one.

[Rhy]

takes up 0.2% here on the dna scene on a laptop o.0

[Biohazard]

Yeah that's a 3D one ;D those should run well.

[vackillers]

Originally posted by Biohazard:

That is curious, I would have expected DeskScapes to work better on your hardware.

Since there is no demo version at this time, could you check how this movie runs in Windows Media Player for you https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7340612/wallpaperengine/shimmering_particles.zip it is a default video based wallpaper. This test is probably not very reliable though, maybe another user with similar hardware could comment on the actual CPU usage of video wallpapers, preferably this official one.

okay well I just ran the video with nothing else open other than steam, CPU flucturated between 12-20% usage at fullscreen using VLC player.

Edit: In Media Player it ran between 0.2 - 10%

[Biohazard]

VLC player does not support hardware decoding and will use a lot of CPU. The video wallpapers in Wallpaper Engine should be similar to how Windows Media Player behaves.

And like Ass Pancakes |||||Team Instinct said, the other types will use only very little CPU.

[vackillers]

Originally posted by Biohazard:

VLC player does not support hardware decoding and will use a lot of CPU. The video wallpapers in Wallpaper Engine should be similar to how Windows Media Player behaves.

And like Ass Pancakes |||||Team Instinct said, the other types will use only very little CPU.

yeah sorry I forgot you mentioned to test it in media player.. so i edited the post heh..

[Squee]

I would add that watch out with web based wallpapers. My own still uses about 8-10% on average for 2 screens (on my old AMD Phenom II T-1090, as indication ) and thats with a bunch of adjustments ( like frame limiting ) to attempt to keep cpu usage low. But while working on it I noticed how easy it was to write bad code or just end up with wanting more than is possible while having it cpu usage. And there are more people like me uploading stuff to workshop ;) Always best to check per wallpaper.

Also the framerate of the webrenderer does not seem to be bound by the selected limit so if they havent limited themselves they will still try to render at 60fps.

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Squee:

I would add that watch out with web based wallpapers. My own still uses about 8-10% on average for 2 screens (on my old AMD Phenom II T-1090, as indication ) and thats with a bunch of adjustments ( like frame limiting ) to attempt to keep cpu usage low. But while working on it I noticed how easy it was to write bad code or just end up with wanting more than is possible while having it cpu usage. And there are more people like me uploading stuff to workshop ;) Always best to check per wallpaper.

Also the framerate of the webrenderer does not seem to be bound by the selected limit so if they havent limited themselves they will still try to render at 60fps.

Yeah there is no proper FPS limit for web based ones yet, I think I will have to dive deep into chromium to add that, so I had to hold off for now. Btw, are you using setInterval or requestAnimationFrame or something else? I noticed yours don't pause and keep using CPU right now, but some others are pausing better, I think depending on how you redraw this could also behave differently.

[Squee]

Originally posted by Biohazard:

Yeah there is no proper FPS limit for web based ones yet, I think I will have to dive deep into chromium to add that, so I had to hold off for now. Btw, are you using setInterval or requestAnimationFrame or something else? I noticed yours don't pause and keep using CPU right now, but some others are pausing better, I think depending on how you redraw this could also behave differently.

I am using setInterval as I couldn't find a way to limit requestAnimationFrame, though i could try to skip frame technique if i were to use the latter to still end up with the desired framerate. The math is pretty basic and on a fairly limited data set, so that shouldnt be it ( though there is certainly some optimisation possible there ).

But ( someone in depth bit here ) from what I remember last night what really makes it heavy is the bezier curve . The line thickness is just over 1 which results in a much higher cpu usage. The problem though is with a line thickness of 1.0 or lower as I wanted originally causes a visual glitch with the bezier curve ( canvas renders spikes ). It seems the line thickness has some effect on the bezier rendering. or maybe they have an alternate code to render lines above 1.0 thickness, sounds strange but the visual glitch is gone is i put it to 1.001)

Just double checked, and its related to the line thickness and i think it triggers a different rendering method, which could explain why the glitch disappears.

[vackillers]

From what I've used so far, this program has "Excellent" performance and happy I have it. Considering this is still work in progress its come quite far and superiorly cheaper then deskscapes. The only 2 issues I get is sometimes the wallpapers might actually free and need to restart the program and crashing when creating a new wallpaper with an uncommon character in it.

Feature Request: If i may, I use two screens, and it would be nice to be able to select one them that goes across both screens, instead of having to do them both individually for the same theme. (not talking about the stretched theme screen option you have here)

[Biohazard]

Cheers, thanks for checking it out.

Regarding your freeze issue, do you know if this happens only to specific types of wallpapers? For example only video ones? I would be interested to know if it happens to scene wallpapers too. Also, do all wallpapers on all monitors freeze at the same time if this happens?

I think you are talking about a 'mirror' mode? Having the same image applied to all screens? I have experimented with that before but didn't have luck implementing a proper way of mirroring yet, I still have some ideas though so I'll be definitely trying it again in the future. If all else fails, having two instances of the same wallpaper is easy enough to code for me, but it'd be great to have an efficient mirror option of course.

[vackillers]

yeah when the freeze happens it happens to both monitors. Yeah what im talking about is when I'm applying a wallpaper to the left screen, it'll also apply it to the right by default. I don't mind applying them individually, just a lot of extra steps. Think what you said is right, a mirror, as apposed the one other option is having it stretched across both.

As far as the other issue I've only ever used Video wallpapers so far so i'll make a better note of what I'm doing when it happens, what wallpaper I used etc. as I was in the middle of creating and uploading wallpapers all night last night so was hard to tell what exactly was the cause haha

[Midnight]

Originally posted by =VAC=Killers:

FINALLY we got a program that will ACTUALLY do live animated wallpapers for desktop other than stardocks resourceful hungry and often buggy "Deskscapes".

But how is this thing on performance? Deskscapes eats CPU usage like no tommorrow, especially when linked with MP4 videos.

Eats RAM like no tomorrow, even on low settings - My average RAM usage is around 50-60% with a 1080p 15FPS wallpaper - be warned