Chronoscope responsiveness increased

Yesterday, we received reports of slowness in Chronoscope on low end PCs. Admittedly, we didn't do testing on any PCs from yesteryear, but we will do so in the future.

In any case, we made some changes to Chronoscope that should make it feel faster on low end PCs:

• Animation was uninterruptible and fixed at 8 frames. On a slower PC that takes longer than 300ms or so to render these frames, there is a distinct feeling of lag when you press a key. Animations in progress are now interruptible.
  
• Key frame interpolation was frame count based instead of wall clock based. Interpolation frames are now parameterized based on time, and maximum animation time is capped at 300ms. Faster computers just generate a higher framerate for smoother, less jumpy, rendering.
  
• Lowered the resolution of the dataset further when animating. Future versions will auto-adapt this to platform speed.
  
• The final 'full resolution' dataset used to be displayed, no matter what, after an animation sequence finished (between keypresses). Now, it is delayed a short time until the user stops navigating.
  

The changed version has been deployed to timepedia.org for testing, but not committed to the source code repository yet. Check it out and let us know if you still have performance problems.

The only known issue at the moment is that mouse dragging on some platforms is jerky and laggy. We are looking into fixing this next.

-Timepedia Team