FPS is a meaningful measure in a macOS application.

[ShikiSuen]

I would like to pull the topic of Qt FPS issue on macOS from an unrelated thread to here:

@PaulWalmsley

I don’t know why you keep talking about FPS - it’s a meaningless measure in a desktop application. Desktop applications have a totally different update mechanism to games, and the speed of a graphics card will have almost no effect on the perceived redraw rate. The framework we use does support Retina but there are certain areas where there are extra things we need to do to go cope with multiple DPIs, some of which we just haven’t had time to do yet.

It is a meaningful measure in a desktop application because FPS is the unit people use to measure the UI fluency of an app, regardless whether it is a video game or not. The OP of the following thread uses FPS to measure the UI fluency issue of Qt under macOS:

Rendering performance problems on iMac with Retina 5K

All mac developers using Qt could following the instructions from this article to download Apple Quartz Debug to measure the FPS of any macOS application (esp. under HiDPI retina display):

How to Monitor FPS (Frames Per Second) Live in Mac OS X with Quartz Debug

I added a screenshot of using Cubase 8.5 under macOS Sierra (running on a compatible PC), Low DPI 1600x900 using Geforce GTX 950 (better than the AMD M395X shipped with iMac 5k). The screenshot (Quartz Debug running at the bottom right of the screen) indicates: 1) Cubase using Qt could not fully occupy the graphics to keep 60fps; 2) The performance meter at the bottom left of the screen indicates that this is not CPU bottleneck.

N.B.: Dorico does not have a performance meter yet, but there may be some way to monitor its CPU and memory occupation. According to Quartz Debug under HiDPI (MacBook Pro early-2015, Iris Graphics 6100 under the factory resolution of my laptop), Dorico runs at 60fps if only scrolling (the fluency here is exactly as what Daniel advertised). However, resizing window and zooming the score content are having their FPS bottleneck at 30fps.

Afterwords:

I need to say that I am not blaming on this but just agree that it is pretty hard for you Steinberg to do optimization for macOS. I know you are not in a talking mood on topics of optimized application UI responsiveness under macOS, and I may shut up on this topic since the finish of this reply for a while. But I will still keep on looking for a day when this issue is solved among at least Cubase (because Cubase is so famous in Mainland China due to the widespread of cracked Cubase 5, and I have to exchange some of my projects with them in Cubase format).

Dorico currently is and will still be the most fluent Steinberg application for mac under HiDPI, but Cubase / Nuendo and Wavelab are not yet. Wavelab may have choices to use Xamarin (Visual Studio for Mac) to migrate to macOS in lieu of using Qt for possible better HiDPI performance; but I am wondering what will Cubase / Nuendo do.

Anyway I may not come here to check this reply anymore, depending on what the incoming replies look like. Asking for improving application experience under macOS looks like a sin here, but I am pretty sure there will be people complaint this after me.

EOF.