A lot of us have beefy rigs due to our passion for gaming or just because we could afford them thanks to DevEx. We may test something and it looks all good on our machine, but low-end devices have trouble handling the same thing. Not everyone has an armada of devices specialized for testing various user cases (poor hardware, bugs that are only present on a certain system, etc).
It’d be great if we had access to this sort of information so we could log and identify instances such as:
###System resources usage:
- What is the cause of performance issues? What do I need to improve? (currently via exclusively FPS we can’t determine this)
- Memory usage?
- CPU usage?
- Network usage?
- GPU usage?
- Knowing the cause of performance issues, I can possibly reduce the load on their system in that area in-game, on-the-fly
###Device & Hardware
- Do performance issues occur only on poor hardware? (don’t have access to a device’s specs ATM)
- Do performance issues occur even on beefy hardware?
- Does an issue occur only on a specific device / OS?
- Tailor UI of buttons (i.e. press
<image_of_e_key>) to platform
- For instance, replace
with 
- Entice users to play on specific platforms (much like ROBLOX does) with platform-exclusive gifts
- Use platform to better target users
- iOS users might like a sleeker call to action
- XBox users might prefer something that makes them feel badass
A lot, if not all, of this info is exposed via settings(), but it’s not accessible through local scripts – only plugins and up. ROBLOX engineers aren’t the only ones who need to identify issues with and improve their implementations 
It’d be nice if we could get access to this data, so that we could aggregate metrics to identify performance shortcomings, tailor experiences, and potentially adapt to issues on the fly.
22 Likes
This isn’t a bad idea. However, you may need to accept incorrect or missing info based on the platform and situation. Specifically, getting percentages won’t be reliable.
For example, a mobile/laptop device could report CPU/GPU usage based on the current power state and frequency/voltage scaling, or the maximum allowed in the current conditions, or the maximum the OS would allow the app to use, or the maximum allowed by the HW. A basic tailoring attempt could even hit a lockout condition where the CPU is in low/mid power mode near 100% and won’t increase because you won’t push it harder due to the near 100% reports.
Memory usage is likewise annoying – a report of 1GB is confusing without knowing the actual upper limit. This is also up to the OS to report to us, if it chooses to do so at all. (edit-- and there is also issues with reporting system memory as the OS might not allow the app to use this amount. The OS could change allowable memory usage at a whim.)
Network usage is useful. We likely should give you that. It doesn’t tell you if the device can support more/less, but the server knows this reliably. Mobile platforms could have wide swings in capacity as well – it might not even be possible to give a useful percentage as a result.
Platform-specifics is another topic of interest. I like this idea overall. However there are product and dev-rel issues as you mentioned – should developers be able to kick/teleport all Win32 users to a different server?
(also, if this becomes a thing, bots will mess with your stats…)
(–edit: we might also ban you if you have excessively creative uses of these stats that violate consumer protection laws…)
3 Likes
It’s a great idea but I’d still like it optional. I’m just one of those people that doesn’t like sharing and I shouldn’t be forced to without any acknowledgement that’s very shady and I’m pretty sure that starts going illegal right there.
Don’t get me wrong I participate in the steam hardware survey but that’s optional but there’s still a disclaimer showing how the Information is going to be used and not passed on to a third party and explicitly saying “no user information will be collected” I’m very protective about all my data. Equally if I decide to deny the data, I should still be treated fairly.
Ah, alright. Yeah, the OS not providing some of that information isn’t that surprising. That’s fine though – what we could get is still plenty valuable.
Not illegal, and you’re over-dramatizing. Every program you run on your computer has access to all the information listed – ROBLOX even already tracks this data. There’s nothing concerning about sharing hardware info.
3 Likes
with 
It’d be nice if we could get access to this data, so that we could aggregate metrics to identify performance shortcomings, tailor experiences, and potentially adapt to issues on the fly.