Effect Request: Blur that doesn't cost arm/leg

Currently, using a Blur Vertical and Blur Horizontal is extremely slow. Is there any way we could get a blur that's fast? I know it's possible, but it's just about someone getting around to it. Blur is very useful, I'd like to be able to use it without a performance tank.

Also, from what I've heard, a Blur can be done even faster if the object isn't rotating? That effect would be useful too...

Blur doesn't slow me down. Perhaps you should post a cap, or add a ticket to the tracker.

Blur Horizontal and Vertical don't slow me down either, and I tend to use the bloom trick with them (two of each followed by a glow on a full screen canvas) and there's little to no difference.

Well, I'm using Blur Horizontal + Blur Vertical + another effect (which doesn't seem to be slow) on particles. When the particles move really fast or happen to overlap other particles with other effects, the blur can slow things down.

I read this post by Ashley in a topic about Bloom: "It's not quite what you wanted, but you could try playing around with a combination of blur and glow shaders like this .cap. It's not particularly efficient, though - the blur shaders in Construct are a bit slow."

I was taking this to mean that they could be faster, but from more searching it seems Blur is one of the most intensive shader effects to run and maybe it cannot be written better. Sorry if that is the case. I also noticed that for a full Blur, I have to use Horizontal and Vertical rather than just a single Blur effect. I was thinking this would be slower? I thought with many effects, one effect after another uses the image from the first effect, so it would have more to blur the second time.

Anyway, since what I'm doing is with moving particles, I'd like to save all the performance I can. If it can't be faster, are there any recommended effects that are similar to blur but quicker?

Thanks for the help

Edit: As for the overlapping thing, it was the effects on the other particles that were slowing it down. So yeah, particles with Soften or Blur of anything like that passing by each other are a bad idea (kind of expected). I still have the slowdown with fast moving particles though.

Well, until you get a real solution you can reduce the number of points (samples) in the blur fx file.

The blur isn't as strong but you will gain some FPS.

That sounds useful 6Fix. Where exactly in the .fx file can I change the number of points?

Removing link again, don't want to encourage people to use a simple hack

Actually, when I put that effect on my two particles instances of one kind, it also makes an entirely seperate particles object (using the regular blurs) look super blury, lol. Anyway, the lower points does kind of look bad on my tiny particles, but thanks anyway.

Also, I've noticed that particles can become MUCH slower when you turn up the X offset. This does not make sense to me. It is the same number of particles... I'm gonna make a Help topic for it to see if it is a bug.

Yeah sorry, not ideal for particles. In order to make up for the lowered samples, have to move the pixel spread.

You would have to make adjustments for single particles and as result, it would look bad on larger objects

Thanks for trying though. I kept the regular blur but I'm using the particles a little differently so they use a LOT less particles and don't have a huge X randomizer (apparently X randomizer is really slow). Have to sacrifice somewhere right? The new way of doing the particles looks even better actually

I just hope I don't end up in a situation where there's no alternative whatsoever...

Come to think of it, couldn't you also make a sprite of the particle and blur it yourself, and then use that as the particle? As long as you use alpha with it, it should blend well enough without any shaders.

Yeah, use blur shaders only if you need to turn blur on and off at runtime. If your particles are always going to be blurred, just pre-blur them in Photoshop or something.