# Interpreting the visual profiler information **URL:** \ **Category:** Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2017, 12:36pm UTC](https://forum.defold.com/t/interpreting-the-visual-profiler-information/5166 "2017-02-13T12:36:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![benjames171](https://forum-defold.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.defold.com/benjames171/32/34759_2.png) [@benjames171](https://forum.defold.com/u/benjames171)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 12:36pm UTC](https://forum.defold.com/t/interpreting-the-visual-profiler-information/5166/1 "2017-02-13T12:36:45Z")
Is there any documentation on how to interpret the visual profiler output? My Android builds are experiencing intermittent but severe slowdown (maybe 25% speed) and I’m looking for clues. It seems strange that the game starts perfectly fine but after a minute slows right down then a few seconds later speeds back up again. ![](https://forum-defold-uploads.b-cdn.net/original/2X/d/d580b78e977592d1c94e5807bdf1113cccb366a6.png) ---
**Author:** ![sicher](https://forum-defold.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.defold.com/sicher/32/8_2.png) [@sicher](https://forum.defold.com/u/sicher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 1:08pm UTC](https://forum.defold.com/t/interpreting-the-visual-profiler-information/5166/2 "2017-02-13T13:08:58Z")
It might be that you create a lot of garbage that needs to be collected during the slowdown. Either way, the profiler shows various scopes and how much time is spent in them (milliseconds and # of calls). The bars on the right are color coded to correspond to scope colors. At the bottom you have resource counters. The web profiler is easier to work with since it allows you to sample data at any point and study that data without interruption. In your case you can wait for a slowdown, sample data and then check what takes time. See [Debugging in Defold](http://www.defold.com/manuals/debugging/#_web_profiler) ---
**Author:** ![benjames171](https://forum-defold.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.defold.com/benjames171/32/34759_2.png) [@benjames171](https://forum.defold.com/u/benjames171)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 2:12pm UTC](https://forum.defold.com/t/interpreting-the-visual-profiler-information/5166/3 "2017-02-13T14:12:24Z")
Thank you - seems I’m rendering too much stuff. A further off-topic question - if I set the alpha of a gui object to 0, does it still get sent to be rendered? ---
**Author:** ![sicher](https://forum-defold.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.defold.com/sicher/32/8_2.png) [@sicher](https://forum.defold.com/u/sicher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 2:19pm UTC](https://forum.defold.com/t/interpreting-the-visual-profiler-information/5166/4 "2017-02-13T14:19:47Z")
Yes, it will be sent to be rendered. If you don’t set a texture, it will break the batch so make sure to set a texture accordingly. Check out > [@Draw calls and Defold](https://forum.defold.com/t/draw-calls-and-defold/4674): > > I am by no means an expert in this field, but sometimes I think about performance. Here is some thoughts about draw calls in Defold. Draw Calls What is a draw call? In a one liner: “A command that tells the GPU to render a certain set of vertices as triangles with a certain state (shaders, blend state and so on). A command like this is often more than one object.” A batch is a term that is basically means multiple commands that share the same state. If you are curios of a more in depth explan… and > [@Bring Me Cakes. Red Riding Hood Puzzle](https://forum.defold.com/t/bring-me-cakes-red-riding-hood-puzzle/3164/25): > > Optimisation is one of final step of game development. But after @Mattias_Hedberg [post](https://forum.defold.com/t/draw-calls-and-defold/4674), I tried to optimize one of scene. It’s the shop collection, with 3 tabs. All made in gui. [image] [image] [image] fist tab with particles and a spine animation. Other just boxes and text nodes. And results: 1st tab: before: 24 draw calls after: 7 draw calls 2nd tab before: 45 draw calls after: 2 draw calls 3rd tab before: 48 draw calls after: 2 draw calls The main tricks are: and Layers. One… ---
**Author:** ![britzl](https://forum-defold.b-cdn.net/user_avatar/forum.defold.com/britzl/32/23_2.png) [@britzl](https://forum.defold.com/u/britzl)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 2:46pm UTC](https://forum.defold.com/t/interpreting-the-visual-profiler-information/5166/5 "2017-02-13T14:46:43Z")
> [@benjames171](#): > > if I set the alpha of a gui object to 0, does it still get sent to be rendered? It’s better to use gui.set\_enabled(node, false) since “Disabled nodes are not rendered and animations acting on them are not evaluated.”