onClientRender cpu usage

[John Smith]

hello

i got my own nametag system and it works similiar to the wiki example of nametag above ped's bone position

however when calculating lots of variables 60 times per second it causes lots of cpu usage

using alternative(timers) to update ped bone positions and element positions is not my choice because it would look laggy

is there alternative how i could do these things(e.g calculate somethings position) to make it as smooth as onClientRender?

[John Smith]

please help me

[Mr_Moose]

You can't use any other technique than onClientRender and still make it smooth, however you can do a lot to optimize, for example, passing the root element to onClientRender could increase the CPU usage a lot, using bone position might not be the most optimal solution either, you could try getElementPosition and just use it's z value to determine at which height the nametag should be drawn.

You could try this and see if there's any difference:

local x, y = guiGetScreenSize() 
function PlayerNameTags() 
    local players = getElementsByType("player") 
    for k,v in ipairs(players) do 
        if v ~= localPlayer and getPlayerTeam(v) then 
            local r,g,b = getTeamColor(getPlayerTeam(v)) 
            local x1,y1,z1 = getElementPosition(localPlayer) 
            local x2,y2,z2 = getElementPosition(v) 
            local visibleto = getDistanceBetweenPoints3D(x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2) 
            if visibleto < 14 then 
                local sx,sy = getScreenFromWorldPosition ( x2,y2,z2+0.3 ) 
                if sx and sy and not getElementData( v, "anon" ) and getElementInterior(v) == getElementInterior(localPlayer) and  
                    getElementDimension(v) == getElementDimension(localPlayer) then 
                    local nWidth = string.len(getPlayerName(v)) or 20 
                    dxDrawRectangle( sx-((nWidth*14)/2),sy-7,(nWidth*14),30, tocolor(0,0,0,100)) 
                    dxDrawText( string.gsub( getPlayerName(v), "#%x%x%x%x%x%x", "" ).."", sx,sy,sx,sy,  
                        tocolor(r,g,b,255), 0.5, "bankgothic", "center","top",false,false,false ) 
                end 
            end 
        end 
    end 
end 
addEventHandler("onClientRender",root,PlayerNameTags) 

It's a modified version of the nametag system in the race resource which doesn't seems to use much CPU at all, also have you tried performance browser? http://yourseverip:yourserverhttpport/performancebrowser, that's a great tool to detect "CPU leaks".

[botder]

When talking about optimization, then don't use ipairs (it's even slower than pairs) and don't use (i)pairs at all - google that please. You could also avoid grabbing every player (getElementsByType) on each frame render and do that with a table and events.