(2013-07-05, 22:02)Martijn Wrote: I believe as.xml allows you to
Looking at tthe Confluence skin and also GUIDialogBusy.cpp code there's nothing that controls the visibility of the spinner shown by the busy indicator.
It appears that the skin defines the behaviour of the busy indicator, in particular animation of the "spinner" graphic.
In Confluence (and Confluence Modified) it's possible to disable the spinner by editing 720p/DialogBusy.xml and commenting out or removing the following control:
Code:
<!--
<control type="image">
<description>Busy animation</description>
<posx>20</posx>
<posy>20</posy>
<width>32</width>
<height>32</height>
<texture>busy.png</texture>
<aspectratio>keep</aspectratio>
<animation effect="rotate" start="0" end="360" center="36,36" time="1200" loop="true" condition="true">conditional</animation>
</control>
-->
I ran some tests, modifying the SportsDevil add-on so that it left the busy indicator visible even when the addon is idle, and with the busy animation DISABLED the CPU load (as measured by top) is a consistent 20-25% on a 1GHz Pi (ie. normal, minimal activity, vsync enabled) but with the busy animation ENABLED the CPU load is pegged at 90%.
So that's 65-70% of the CPU load just to animate the busy indicator...
Since by definition the busy indicator is shown when XBMC is actively doing something and in need of as much CPU resource as is available, it seems counter-productive to then steal a significant chunk of those CPU cycles (on a Pi at least) just to display an animated "busy" graphic.
Perhaps the Confluence skin could use an alternative animation that isn't so resource heavy (at least on low power devices, why not even all devices). A "busy" animation that updated only once a second rather than 300 times a second would seem more appropriate.
Not sure if its the placebo effect but with the busy animation disabled, addons like BBC iPlayer and SportsDevil do seem to respond more quickly when navigating channel listings etc., as this is when the busy indicator is displayed.