We are having issues with flash player performance using touch screen devices with IE10/IE11 on Windows 8/8.1. I don't believe there is any specific flash player version involved. Any of the most recent embedded flash player versions for IE10/11 appear to replicate this.
Symptoms:
In IE10/IE11 on a touch screen device, in applications with a thousands of objects on the screen, frame rate drops significantly, and the flash player will intermittently hang. This does not occur in Chrome, and with simpler applications no frame rate issues are noticed in IE10/11.
Resolution:
Disable touch screen device drivers in the Windows Device Manager.
Test Case:
Load http://yesenergy.com/XTreme.swf in a multi-touch Windows 8/8.1 device using IE10 or IE11 in desktop mode. This application creates a scenario similar to the one that causes this issue with our production applications that experience this issue.
Note the frame rate, it should be about 24fps.
Type in "20000" (twenty thousand) and hit enter. Wait for the application to complete drawing all 20k icons. It will tell you how long it took (though this is not part of the test). It should take 2-4 minutes.
Make sure the mouse is not over the flash content by clicking into the IE address bar, and note the frame rate with 20k icons.
Expected result:
Frame rate should about 24fps.
Actual Result:
On multi-touch laptops in IE10/IE11 in Winodws 8/8.1, the frame rate drops to at or below 10fps and CPU utilization for the flash player plugin skyrockets. If you disable the touch screen drivers and restart IE, and repeat the test, the frame rate returns to 24fps.
To disable the touch screen:
Go to the Windows 8 start screen:
1. Type 'Control" and click on the "Control Panel" in the results.
2. Type "Device" in the search in the upper right of the control panel.
3. Click "Device Manager" in the results.
4. Expand the "Human Interface Devices" tab.
5. Right click on "HID-compliant touch screen" and select "Disable"
6. Answer "Yes" to the confirmation dialog.
7. Reboot windows for good measure.
I am looking for a resolution to this problem that does not involve our customers having to disable a major feature of their laptops. As our applications do not use multi-touch, perhaps there is a way of disabling multi-touch support in the flash player run time.
I would also like for Adobe to research and correct this issue, as I'd consider it a bug.