Introduction

The performance of Intuiface web and Progressive Web App (PWA) deployments are influenced by one or more factors:

1. For both web and PWA deployments: selected media formats and experience resolution
2. Exclusively for web deployments: your choice of license model (Player Licensing vs. Views Licensing)

This article discusses those factors.

Preferred media formats and screen resolution

The rules of thumb for optimizing the performance of any webpage or PWA equally apply to Intuiface experiences published to the web or as a PWA.

Images

• If possible, use the webp format. It is optimized for web use, supporting lossless compression that can be 26% smaller than a PNG file. It also supports animation and transparency.
• Make sure the pixel dimensions of your image do not exceed the size of the Image Asset used to display it. Anything larger than the Image Asset container will 1) unnecessarily occupy excess space in memory, and 2) necessitate real-time reduction of the image size to fit in the container.

Videos

• If possible, use either the mp4 or webm formats, using the h.264/h.265 codec. Both formats achieve high compression levels and work well with progressive downloading over the internet.

Experience resolution

• Use an experience resolution matching either the exact pixel dimensions of the target device's display or at least matching the target display's aspect ratio.
  If the aspect ratio of the experience differs from the aspect ratio of the device, Intuiface will retain the experience's aspect ratio, reducing it in size to fit within the device screen. Any part of the display that doesn't include the experience will be colored black.

Performance tradeoffs between Player Licensing and Views Licensing

Overview

The mechanism used to download and store media can vary based on the licensing approach chosen. Here is a summary of when data is downloaded for the experience and for the Headless CMS (H-CMS):

Understanding the table

• .ifx: This is the project file created by Composer. It's the heart of a project. Never edit it by hand!
• Media: All Intuiface asset types other than videos.
• Manifest: H-CMS base(s) used by the experience.
• Long Text: Unlike short text, which is stored in the manifest, long text is retrieved separately.
• Deploy: Downloaded when the experience is deployed. Deployment is incomplete until all media across the entire experience (and thus across all scenes) is downloaded in its entirety. The experience cannot be run until the deployment has finished.
• Launch: When the experience URL is loaded in a web browser or when the PWA is run. The webpage/PWA is not entirely loaded until all associated files are downloaded in their entirety. The webpage/PWA will not run until all downloading has been completed.
• Web request: Media is downloaded only when that media is visible onscreen. Once loaded, the associated browser's cache mechanism determines if it will be downloaded again or if a cached copy will be used when the media goes offscreen and then returns.
• Progressive download: Like a web request, but the video will play immediately - rather than waiting for the entire file to be downloaded - and can be paused, rewound, etc. Video caching is determined by the browser and may or may not occur. If not cached, the video will be progressively downloaded every time it is played. Internet connectivity is required.
• Sync-request: Specific to the Headless CMS, this is the synchronization mechanism that keeps the local copy of the H-CMS base in sync with the online master. Synchronization always occurs at experience launch and can be initiated by the experience at any time.

Understanding the performance tradeoffs of Player Licensing vs. Views Licensing

For in-venue deployments, PWA deployments, and webpage deployment with Player Licensing:

• All media is downloaded before the first run. The initial run is delayed until all downloads have been completed, but offline use is possible, and performance is unaffected by network speeds.

For webpage deployments with Views Licensing:

• Views licensing enables near-instant use of the running experience but requires internet connectivity at all times and thus may suffer performance issues if the network is slow or if very large media files are part of the experience.