Andy,
I figured I'd give it a month, or so... ya'know... to see if you'd get any form of reply, in this thread, from WGT... soooo... a bump-up is definitely warranted.
And unless you've got a response privately, this, once again, seems to have fallen on deaf ears (as far as the developers' interests are concerned). :-/
Perhaps we're "so far off-base" with our "semi-learned conjecture" they've deemed our efforts not worthy of reply. But there can be no denying that the issue ( no matter the sporadic nature of it ) still remains worthy of continued investigation by us, AND them.
I applaud your own determined efforts.
bubbadork:
It's even more critical. Those Flash numbers presume there's no competition for CPU resources during the meter animation.
WGT should run the frame rate as low as possible while still achieving an acceptable degree of visual smoothness. However, the lower the frame rate, the more pixels must be laid down per frame, resulting in clumpiness, which isn't quite the same thing as stutter caused by inability to get the job done in time.
I, and others I'm sure, would have to agree that a "less pretty" meter bar would certainly suffice in a trade-off for a better performing one.
If a "wait" command was as easy as it sounds to insert into the ActionScript when the backswing starts, I'd bet that the game's programmers would've tried it by now - in an effort to isolate the meter's animation. They have, however, recently incorporated the negation of a "H-I-O opportunity" on the CTTH's at that very instant, with the last update.
The meter animation, even if allowed to "run alone" at a reduced frame rate, seemingly would require the resultant "pixel bloat" to be sliced-up even further in an attempt to maximize its smooth operation (with the various screen resolutions being used by all of us), hence allowing for a similarly unreliable experience.
My Quad CPU's (with a modest 6GB's of RAM) performance doesn't really begin to suffer until the back-nine during an 18hole game. It's not all about the coding, I'm sure.
But it would be nice to hear some "official word" on this topic... if only to serve to steer us away from what may seem to be our "errant conjecture".
Pugs