Pixi/Webgl particles performance?

[peq42_]

Yesterday I was watching warframe dev stream, taking a look at the new particle system they made to their engine: According to devs in the stream, the game can handle like, 50.000 to 500.000(half a million, yes) particles at the same time, in a weak PC(GPU is Nvidia 9800 GT, 4x slower than my r7 260x, and 10 year old), using directx 10, at 60 fps(And they have physics in it)


Out of curiosity, I tried doing something similar in pixi particles, just to see how it would go to have a comparison between WebGL and DirectX performance, and when running 50.000 particles at the same time, FPS would go down to 1 or 0,5(it was stable at 60 until ~5k).

Since the difference was really big, I would like to ask: How does pixi particles(and particles in general/on webgl) work? I heard that this new particle system of warframe will spawn particles using GPU, instead of making it with CPU and uploading to GPU(which consumes a lot more resources), what about pixi(I expected it to be really fast, since pixi claims to be "the fastest there is")?

 

[Jonforum]

@elpeleq42
here a good performance test.
https://pixijs.io/bunny-mark/
I can hold easily 20 000 sprite particle here 60fps
gtx 1070

with 50000 i get 27 fps

Edit:and this one from the branch /r/gamedev
https://www.goodboydigital.com/pixijs/bunnymark/
it look i can hold hover 100 000 bunny !!! at 60fps.
but need to confirm they no cheating.
But it look legit if we take a look in
this.maxCount = 200000;

 

[peq42_]

@elpeleq42
here a good performance test.
https://pixijs.io/bunny-mark/
I can hold easily 20 000 sprite particle here 60fps
gtx 1070

with 50000 i get 27 fps

Edit:and this one from the branch /r/gamedev
https://www.goodboydigital.com/pixijs/bunnymark/
it look i can hold hover 100 000 bunny !!! at 60fps.
but need to confirm they no cheating.
But it look legit if we take a look in
this.maxCount = 200000;

This second one must be cheating, because I spawned up to 100k bunnies at 60fps too(It went to 30 while spawning, and then back to 60), while the first would go down to 12fps
(My gpu is a lot slower than yours)

About the first one: Weird... I got 20fps using it(50k), but when trying to build a particle in the online editor, it was reaching 1fps or even less(webgl)


By the way, my main question is: How particles work in Pixi? Does CPU spawn then? Is it possible to make it have physics?
Also: I saw that UE4 has 2 types of particles: CPU and GPU particles, and that one particle can spawn another, they can mix both types,etc. Is there a difference between those 2 types?

 

[Jonforum]

for physic it here (easy with pixi )
https://github.com/schteppe/p2.js#demos
you can also look the demo by Mat Groves.

for particule you just need use a special container (container are very fast rendering but less option)
http://pixijs.download/dev/docs/PIXI.particles.ParticleContainer.html
But am not very pro with, because i prefer render my animation inside AfterEffect and use pixi spriteSheetAniamtion
It more powerFul for me to use after effect.