Blog

• Statistics

  published on 5/11/2011 8:57 PM
  Previously I had to use the steam hardware survey to try to get an idea of what users actually have for machines. But their survey is from gamers that play games. To help in dealing with this lack of screensaver/music visualizer oriented information the anonymous usage statistics was added to the visualizer.
  
  I though I share some of these findings for others to use. So if you want to create a demo, music visualizer or screensaver this information should hopefully match your intended target audience better than the steam hardware survey does.
  
  The statistics are updated once a day and shown on the plane9 statistics page.
  
  Statistics is also gathered on what scenes are most viewed and this did really have a few surprises for me.
  
  The top 10 scenes are as follows
  

  Scene name	Run count	Run time	Average FPS	Number of installations
  things\android.p9s	200702	237 days	15	22.93 %
  misc\matrixtrails.p9s	493544	179 days	24	24.47 %
  particle\starfield.p9s	470176	126 days	28	28.56 %
  nature\galaxy.p9s	463027	125 days	22	28.64 %
  text\crimescene.p9s	242669	122 days	29	23.68 %
  demoscene\metaice.p9s	215094	118 days	20	24.85 %
  abstract\colorstorm.p9s	288543	114 days	25	24.22 %
  particle\particlespray.p9s	339066	113 days	29	25.10 %
  demoscene\totheroadofribbon.p9s	229125	112 days	20	24.74 %
  demoscene\chasingthedream.p9s	229974	109 days	20	24.78 %

  
  Run count is counted as anytime the scene is viewed.
  Average fps is the average frames per second.
  Number of installations is the amount of installations that have viewed the specific scene.
  
  Seems like there is a lot of android users out there since it tops the list. I have to thank Simon green again for allowing me to use his shader for that scene. 15 fps for average fps on a realtime raytraced scene is rather good. It's interesting to see starfield in the top 3. I guess nothing beats the old classics. But what surprised me is that the crimescene scene is in the top 5. Its a scene I was very close to removing since I though it to be quite pointless. But I'm happy to have been proven wrong on that.
  We also have 3 demoscene related scenes that got their shaders from various intros. This is exactly what I hoped for. That great intros that would have been viewed once or twice and then forgotten now are running on monitors across the world for all to see. Totheroadofribbon & metaice are created by XT95/FRequency. Chasingthedream is just a slight modification I did on totheroadofribbon.
  
  Now all I need to do is to figure out how to create a scene featuring a android in a crimescene in the matrix while flying though a starfield... then again. Maybe not.
  
  Lastly we have the run count for the various applications
  

  Application name	Run count	Run time	Average FPS
  Config	5140	17 days	-
  Editor	1863	30 days	-
  Screensaver	4912640	11 years 318 days	23
  Winamp	18585	409 days	57
  WMP	5986	112 days	17

  
  
  The screensaver is by far the most used with a bit low average fps of 23. The screensaver is locked to run at a maximum of 30 fps since it is a screensaver and should use a low amount of resources. The reason is probably that the complex android scene is the most viewed that has a average fps of 15.
  Winamp comes next but with a much higher average fps of 57. Winamp is locked to 60 fps and is usually run in a smaller window so that can explain the comparatively high fps. The lower fps in windows media player is because windows media player handles the frame locking and only calls the visualizer ever so often.
  I'm happy to see that the editor is run quite a lot. I had plans on removing it since no one seemed to use it but with this data in hand it will stay.