Full screen drawImage performance

Question

Hi, I've wanted for sometime to do large animations in Java and have always had performance problems. I've been playing with the new full-screen modes and drawing direct to screen, in this case simply scrolling a .gif image down the screen. I've managed to get a beautifully smooth and consistant scroll, however I'm very disapointed with the speed of the animation - the culprit seems to be the slow execution of the drawImage function? If anyone out there have a look at the code below and significantly improve it, I'd be very grateful...
Out of interest, according to 'winmsd' I'm using a PIII @860Mhz with a RIVA TNT2 64. Many Thanks.
//package anim;
import java.awt.image.BufferStrategy;
import java.awt.image.*;
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class FullScreenAnimTest implements Runnable{
Frame mainFrame;
ImageIcon image=new ImageIcon("H:/dilbert/dilbert2609320011203.gif"); //any image
BufferStrategy bufferStrategy;
GraphicsDevice device;
public FullScreenAnimTest() {
GraphicsEnvironment env=GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
device=env.getDefaultScreenDevice();
GraphicsConfiguration gc = device.getDefaultConfiguration();
mainFrame = new Frame(gc);
mainFrame.setUndecorated(true);
mainFrame.setIgnoreRepaint(true);
device.setFullScreenWindow(mainFrame);
DisplayMode best = new DisplayMode(800 , 600, 32, 0);
device.setDisplayMode(best);
int numBuffers=2;
BufferCapabilities bC=new BufferCapabilities(new ImageCapabilities(true),
new ImageCapabilities(true),
BufferCapabilities.FlipContents.BACKGROUND);
try{
mainFrame.createBufferStrategy(numBuffers,bC);
}catch(AWTException e){}
bufferStrategy = mainFrame.getBufferStrategy();
Thread thread=new Thread(this);
thread.start();
public void run(){
int counter=0;
while(counter<2000){
long t1=System.currentTimeMillis();
myRenderingLoop(counter++);
long t2=System.currentTimeMillis();
try{
Thread.sleep(Math.max(5-(int)(t2-t1),0));
catch(InterruptedException e){}
device.setFullScreenWindow(null);
public void myRenderingLoop(int yPos) {
Graphics g = bufferStrategy.getDrawGraphics();
g.setClip(0,10+yPos,image.getIconWidth(),image.getIconWidth());
g.drawImage(image.getImage(),0,(10+yPos)%800,null);
g.dispose();
bufferStrategy.show();
public static void main(String[] s){
FullScreenAnimTest t=new FullScreenAnimTest();

Answer 1

Just looked over the code briefly. Dunno if any of these tips will have any visible effect, since as you point out, the problem is probably with slow drawImage execution:
* Use an Image object instead of an ImageIcon. Load the image with:
Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage("H:/dilbert/dilbert2609320011203.gif");
This way you get rid of the getImage() method call that is done every time you loop.
* If it works to get a "permanent" g (Graphics) object, instead of retrieving it from the bufferStrategy every time, that would save time.
* the setClip method call has no effect here and could be removed complete if i understand the Graphics class correctly.
good luck!
audun