Accelerate swing graphics

Question

Hi All
I'm currently working on a project that includes graphical representation using swing. I got some foreground-objects that move over a background. Unfortunately the performance is not as well as I expected. Perhaps there is a better approach for solving this problem:
general idea:
o) I use 3 images/grahics2d-objects of these images:
one image contains the background picture
one image contains the foreground picture
one image is used as a offscreen buffer
o) I draw the background picture over the offscreen buffer
o) I draw the foreground picture also over the offscreen buffer
o) Finally the offscreen buffer is written to the graphics-object
the graphics are full-screen (1024x768). Is there a better way to do this?
I would greatly appreciate any kind of help,
exxion

Answer 1

If its animation we talking about here. Use threads to do the animation calculation. But dont use too many threads, not wise to over use the power of threads.
Try the code. Save it as japp.java. Fix the errors. Like image filenames. As i was rushing coding this.
import java.awt.Graphics;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.Image;
class ImageBackgroundDraw extends Thread {
  JFrame app;
  int x;
  int y;
  public void setXY(int a, int b) {
    x = a;
    y = b;
  public drawImage(JFrame a, Image i) {
    this.app = a;
    x = 0;
    y = 0;
    start();
  public void run() {
    while (true) {
      // Update coordinates of image.
      // I dont know maybe x++;
      // Give it a little sleep we dont want it too fast
      if (x < app.w) x++
      try { sleep(app.sleep_duration); } catch (Exception e) { }
  public void paint(Graphics g) {
     Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)g; 
     g2.drawImage(Image,x,y,app);
public class japp extends javax.swing.JFrame implements Runnable {
    boolean initG = true;// Allow first Init of buffImgSurface
    private BufferedImage buffImg = null;
    private Graphics2D buffImgSurface;   
    private Thread appThread;
    public int w; // App height;
    public int h; // App width;
    ImageBackgroundDraw[] ibd = new ImageBackgroundDraw[2];
    Image back = new Image("back.gif");
    Image fore= new Image("fore.gif");
    long start = 0;             // Frame start time
    long tick_end_time;         // End frame time
    long tick_duration;         // Time taken to display the frame
    public long sleep_duration; // How long to sleep     
    static final int MIN_SLEEP_TIME = 10, // Min time to sleep for
                     MAX_FPS = 20,        // Max frame rate.  
                     MAX_MS_PER_FRAME=1000/MAX_FPS;// MS per frame
    float fps=0;  // Current frame rate
    public japp() {
      init();
      start();
    public void setWH(int a, int b) {
        w = a;
        h = b;
    public void init() {
      ibd[0] = new ImageBackgroundDraw(this,backgroundImage);
      ibd[1] = new ImageBackgroundDraw(this,ForgroundImage);
      ibd[3] = new ImageBackgroundDraw(this,ForgroundImage);
      ibd[0].setXY(0,0);
      ibd[1].setXY(0,0);
      ibd[1].setXY(0,0);
    public void update(Graphics g) {
      Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D)g; 
      // Erase graphics
      buffImgSurface.setBackground(Color.black);
      buffImgSurface.clearRect(0,0,w, h);
      for (int i=0; i < ibd.length; i++) {
        ibd.paint(buffImgSurface);
      g2.drawImage(buffImg,0,0,this);
    public void paint(Graphics g) {
      if (initG == true) {           
            buffImg = (BufferedImage)createImage(w,h);
            buffImgSurface = buffImg.createGraphics();   
            initG = false;
    public void start() {
        if (appThread == null) {
            appThread = new Thread(this, "app");
            appThread.start();
    public void run() {
      // While this thread is active and running keep repeating
      while (true) {
        start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        repaint();
        tick_end_time=System.currentTimeMillis();
        tick_duration=tick_end_time - start;
        if (sleep_duration < MIN_SLEEP_TIME) {
          sleep_duration=MIN_SLEEP_TIME;
        fps = 1000 / (sleep_duration + tick_duration);
}If you like g.drawString("FPS"+fps,1,10); to show FPS to see if there is any improvement. Otherwise try JNI!(Java Native Interface) Coding and make up your own graphic routines for your applications. You can program your Java API in Assembly with JNI!.