Very slow tables on ipad 2

[blonder]

Ipad 2, ios 6.1.3

Hi!

I've registered myself to this forum because I bought the Pinball Arcade, along with all the season one tables, some days ago.

At the beginning everything was nice, indeed I bought the whole pack, but now some table are starting to slow down to an almost unplayable speed. I already tried to delete and reinstall the app, reboot the device, kill every other task.

Twilight Zone is way worse than other ones, followed by Monster Bash and Ripley, but at the very beginning they were as smooth as silk. Sadly, I've almost bought this game just for them and Mars Attack.

I used a system status application and I discovered that, while the game is slow and stutter (even the sound, in the case of twilight zone) the CPU never tops over the 50% so, I guess, my trusted ipad is not to blame. Here below the screenshot of the System resources while playing.

Any advice from you, older costumer or developer? If not, I'm going to open a support case whit the Farsight company.

 

[night]

Excellent post, and good luck with setting up a support case with FarSight. I don't want to be sarcastic but I give you 0% chance FarSight will ever fix these issues. I have been reporting framerate/stuttering issues like yours for over a year with not even 1 single reply back from their team ( or support email address). They look the other way pretending it's not there. My absolute worst tables are Black Hole and Genie. Mind you, none of these issues where present when I was still on iOS5, everything changed when updating to iOS6, and iOS7 things will not be any different. They should warn iPad2 users that some tables are incompatible. But even other iPad versions seem to suffer from these issues.

All negativity aside, still a lot of tables work excellent. Welcome to the forum!

 

[DopedToInfinity]

I have an iPad 2 on iOS 7.0.2 and don't suffer from any slowdown on said tables.

I'm sure you have done this and I don't mean to treat you like an idiot but I have to check, are all your background apps closed?

 

[blonder]

Sure they were. I:
1) Closed all applications;
2) Rebooted ipad;
3) Wait a while for the eventual boot post-processing to settle down;
4) Launched the app and went straight towards to Twilight Zone pinball to avoid spoiling ram with other tables.

Each time I deleted the app I restored purchases and data from remote site, then rebooted the ipad with no other applications running.

Playing without resyncing data before does not affect performance, which remains sluggish.

I've noted that performances become worse if the device warm up (I guess that firmware throttle a little the processor but I don't know for sure), so i've waited for it to cool down before launching the system status application to take device's statistic.

 

[Nightwing]

I have an iPad 2 on iOS 7.0.2 and don't suffer from any slowdown on said tables.

I'm sure you have done this and I don't mean to treat you like an idiot but I have to check, are all your background apps closed?

I'm also running the same iPad with the same OS and played a few games of TZ last night with no issues. Are you sure that your iPad isn't malfunctioning in some way?

 

[netizen]

It could be storage space. How much do you have remaining? There is an app to clear out cookies and tempfiles, check it out and try at your own risk, I can't find any claims that it is malignant.

Disable background refreshing of apps?

Turn off automatic updates?

Turn off the iOS Parallax effect? What do they call it, reduce motion.


These seem to be the general tips for keeping an older iPad running quick(er) under iOS 7

 

[blonder]

It could be storage space. How much do you have remaining? There is an app to clear out cookies and tempfiles, check it out and try at your own risk, I can't find any claims that it is malignant.

Disable background refreshing of apps?

Turn off automatic updates?

Turn off the iOS Parallax effect? What do they call it, reduce motion.


These seem to be the general tips for keeping an older iPad running quick(er) under iOS 7

My ipad is running on ios 6.1.3 (parallax is from ios 7 and newer) and auto-stuff is normally shut down because I don't want to waste battery.
Free space is about 40GB because I bought the 64GB version, but never used all that space.

 

[blonder]

I'm also running the same iPad with the same OS and played a few games of TZ last night with no issues. Are you sure that your iPad isn't malfunctioning in some way?

Hum... I'm quite sure it is working well. Although I don't have any benchmarking application I use it a lot, so I would note performance degradation.

 

[night]

Hum... I'm quite sure it is working well. Although I don't have any benchmarking application I use it a lot, so I would note performance degradation.

I tried all the tech. suggestions and options long ago and nothing changes, and knowing we are not alone with these issues it's time for FarSight to start acting. They know how to make tables that run smooth and flawless, so they need to take a good look at the ones that give users problems. And not hide in silence.

 

[Chris Dunman]

Running ipad2 64gb with latest IOS, minimal strorage space left, 2gb but TPA runs great. MB is a tiny bit juddery but hardly noticeable.

Hate to ask, as you probably have, but tried a complete restore and refresh?

 

[blonder]

Hate to ask, as you probably have, but tried a complete restore and refresh?

Speaking about the game, I did it several times.

The ipad has been upgraded to ios 6.1.3 (I'm very conservative about upgrades) and, after every succesfull upgrade, I completely wipe it out, then install firmware, then restore user datasets. I do it this way because I don't want new versions spoiled by old configuration files or datas.

I can't do it right now because I would be compelled to install ios 7 and it is too young for my taste.

 

[MadScience2006]

I can't do it right now because I would be compelled to install ios 7 and it is too young for my taste.

You can restore the device as new and keep it on iOS 6.x.x. If you reset the device on the device itself under Settings>General>Reset>Erase All Content and Settings, the iOS version will remain at the device's current iOS version.

If however you restore the device under iTunes, it *will* be updated to the iOS version that your device is qualified for, which is of course iOS 7.x.x.

I am also staying at iOS 6.1.3 on my iPads & iOS 6.1.0 on my iPhones...at least for the time being. I'm waiting for iOS 7 to mature some more before taking my chances with it.

 

[haj]

TZ has become definitely much much slower than before (iOS6) on my iPad2 as well. It's not yet I call it stutter but the framerate is very clearly lower than before. I made a comment on the other thread TPA has generally become slower since upgrading to iOS7. While I personally like the slower speed for some crazy fast tables like WWind and F2K, the main field of BH is too slow that it needs to be improved. And TZ is as slow as almost BH which is a tad before I call it stutter.. I wonder why iPad3 doesn't suffer much since it's got ratina display with not really fast processor. I turn off background things and bluetooth, only Wifi is turned on, free stroage for about 1.5GB and this slowness. I'm likely to get an iPad5 when it's available and I'm kinda worrying if TPA on it will run TOO FAST given framerate is affected in this manner. Hope FS will do some optimization. BTW I tried TPA on Kindle fire (1st gen) and it stutters too much I wouldn't play again.

Do people hear some clicking noise when iPad goes into sleep (in TPA)?

 

[MadScience2006]

I'm likely to get an iPad5 when it's available and I'm kinda worrying if TPA on it will run TOO FAST given framerate is affected in this manner. Hope FS will do some optimization.

I really doubt it would run too fast on an iPad 5...one table in particular (Whirlwind) actually runs worse with a faster processor (go figure). Running Whirlwind on an iPad 3 is smooth as butter while running the same table on the iPad 4, the performance is actually worse, to the point of me not wanting to even play it on the 4. The iOS version is the same on both (6.1.3) and testing has been done on a freshly restored (no other apps installed and all settings being equal) iPad 4. Others are also seeing the same degraded performance on the iPad 4 so this is not an isolated incident.

 

[TripleT]

I see the same thing on my iPad 2 blonder. Makes those tables unplayable.

TOM as well, which I swear used to run better a year ago. I assumed they modified the physics engine in ways that make it perform worse on older hardware.

Since my iPad 2's battery is showing its age, and I'm overdue for a retina display, I'm hoping TPA runs silky smooth on the upcoming iPad 5.

 

[blonder]

I wrote to Farsight and they told there are some similar issues for some Android user. Maybe their employees should check this forum sometimes.

Anyway, as you can see from the picture I've attached in the first post, the CPU is only at 50% which, I guess, it means that only one processor is used at top while the other one is left idle. Maybe this application is compiled without the required optimization, if is there is such an option for the ios.

I have also Pinball HD from Gameprom and all the tables run smooth.

 

[blonder]

Just for the record. The following screenshot is the resource consumption while playing Pinball HD.
CPU is far below 50%, so it behaves like Pinball Arcade, but every table is smooth in every moment, from special animations to multiballs.

Came on: this are just pinballs, not first person shooters or top graphic resources demanding games.
VPINMAME used to run on computers which, more than ten years ago, where way below actual iPad performances.

 

[MadScience2006]

I used a system status application and I discovered that, while the game is slow and stutter (even the sound, in the case of twilight zone) the CPU never tops over the 50% so, I guess, my trusted ipad is not to blame. Here below the screenshot of the System resources while playing.

@blonder: What's the specific name of the "system status application" you used? Thanks

 

[blonder]

@blonder: What's the specific name of the "system status application" you used? Thanks

The application is "System Status" from Technet guys. This is the link in the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/system-status-activity-monitor/id401457165?mt=8

 

[MadScience2006]

Thank you!