Gaming Tricks for Phones or Tablets - Pro Android Games - page 43

So you can have an idea of the difference in performance for these rendering techniques
Figure 2-19 shows the number of frames per second (FPS) rendered by the Doom engine
running in a Motorola Droid 1 for each renderer.
Figure 2-19. Renderer performance for the Doom engine
As you can see from Figure 2-19 , the hardware renderer is many times faster than the
software or hybrid; but, it is much harder to program, plus you will have to deal with all the
GPU types out there. The mixed renderer is slower than the hardware one (because it draws
using the CPU), but it offers less GPU fragmentation as the GLES rendering is really simple
and should work in any GPU. The software renderer is awfully slow, but it offers the highest
degree of compatibility (it will run anywhere, from the oldest Android version to the most
obscure phone/device you can find). It is up to you to decide. You must weigh performance
versus. version compatibility.
Next, let's look at key events.