System Puzzles

These puzzles may be used to perform various system functions such as printing to console, measuring performance, getting/setting rendered pixel ratio and retrieving the GPU information.

Contents

• Puzzles Reference
  • print to console
  • print performance info
  • check performance
  • feature available
  • get GPU
  • set screen scale
  • native screen scale
  • detect gamepad device
  • gamepad index
  • get gamepad property
  • storage set
  • storage get
  • storage remove
  • storage check
  • close app

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Puzzles Reference

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print to console

Prints data of any type (an output from some puzzle, a variable, or just a text) to the browser console. Printing to console is the most universal and easy-to-use method to debug your scripts.

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print performance info

Records a performance profile during 1 second and prints it to the browser console. Use this profile to find performance bottlenecks and improve application rendering and loading speed. See more here.

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check performance

Measure rendering capabilities of the user’s computer or device. Under the hood, it uses the open source library Detect GPU to quickly run a benchmark and classify the user’s GPU as “good” or “poor”.

You can use this puzzle’s slots to load a simpler scene, or to disable some graphically intensive features (such as post-processing effects) for poor GPUs. On the other hand – if the user’s GPU appears to be powerful – you can boost the quality up.

We also added this benchmark to the WebGL Report page so that you can quickly check your GPU by simply opening this page in the browser.

If the user's GPU reported as "good" it does not mean you can overload it by heavy graphics. You still need to do as much as possible to optimize your app!

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feature available

Check if a feature selected from the drop-down is available in the user's browser. If the feature is available, the puzzle returns true, otherwise it returns false.

Features which can be checked with this puzzle include:

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get GPU

Outputs the user's GPU info - vendor, for example: NVIDIA Corporation, Apple Inc., Qualcomm, and GPU model, for example: GeForce GTX 1060 3GB/PCIe/SSE2, Apple A9 GPU, Adreno (TM) 330.

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set screen scale

Set screen resolution factor for the rendered canvas. Set > 1 to improve quality, < 1 to improve performance. 1 is the default screen scale on both retina (aka HiDPI) and non-retina displays.

To prevent rendering of too much pixels on retina displays, Verge3D uses 1 as default scale factor. If performance is not a concern, enable retina rendering by setting screen scale to native screen scale.

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native screen scale

Native (depends on hardware or browser zooming) canvas resolution factor. If you don't zoom in or zoom out your page, this value equals to 1 for non-retina displays, > 1 for HiDPI displays, modern smartphones and tablets.

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detect gamepad device

Detect gamepad devices connected to or disconnected from your system. When a new gamepad device found, the puzzles specified in the "once connected do" slot are triggered. When the device disconnected, the puzzles specified in the "once disconnected do" slot are triggered. In any case the value "gamepad index" is set and returns the device index.

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gamepad index

Returns connected/disconnected gamepad device index.

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get gamepad property

Returns a gamepad property for the device with the given index.

Properties:

• connection status — whether the device is connected (returns true) or disconnected (returns false).
• axis — device axis position in the range -1.0–1.0. For example, an analog thumb stick found on all recent gamepads is represented by two axes: left–right and up–down.
• button — device button state. Returns true when the button is pressed and false otherwise.
• analog button — analog button state. Similar to button but can detect the amount which the button has been pressed. Returns value in the range 0–1.
• id — device ID string. Identifies the brand and model of the connected device.
• timestamp — last time the axes/buttons for the gamepad were updated. You can store this value in a variable and compare with the current timestamp each frame to detect that some axis/angle was changed.
• mapping — device mapping: "standard" for the gamepad that has standard layout, "xr-standard" for the gamepad that has layout of a standard AR/VR controler, "" (empty string) for unknown device.
• debug info — output string with debugging information. Print this info with print to console puzzle to learn what buttons or sticks are available on the connected gamepad device.

To assign axes buttons in your application use the Gamepad Diagnostics tool, debug info property or follow the Standard Gamepad layout (may not work properly for all kinds of devices):

In case of standard AR/VR controllers, the layout is different:

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storage set

Stores key-value pairs in the web browser's local storage with no expiration time. This means that data stored in the browser will persist even after the browser window is closed. Note: the local storage of web browser in a "private browsing" or "incognito" session is cleared when the last "private" tab is closed.

The key must be a text. The following data types are supported as an assigned value: number, text, list, dictionary.

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storage get

Returns an value associated with a specified key in the web browser's local storage.

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storage remove

Removes an value associated with a specified key in the web browser's local storage.

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storage check

Checks if a specified key is present in the web browser's local storage. Returns the Boolean-typed result true or false.

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close app

Closes the Verge3D application. Due to security limitations imposed by web browsers, this puzzle only works for Electron, Cordova, or programmatically opened pages.

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