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From: Arnoud Bos <arnoud@artim-interactive.nl>
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Subject: GPU / DisplayList / Future of Flex
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:26:57 +0100
Message-Id: <93183756-61F1-44EA-A704-852DFEB73B65@artim-interactive.nl>
Cc: Arnoud Bos <arnoud@artim-interactive.nl>
To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
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Hi All,

First of all as a full time flex developer  i want to thank you all for =
putting so much energy and effort in the startup of what i believe to be
the birth of a much  better Flex. I was really worried that after the =
recent announcements of adobe, but you guys give me hope again.

On topic: I read all on this list and i'm especially interested in a =
future version that is completely redone, more light, easier to cross =
compile etc.
The thing is i spoke with the flash player engineers art Adobe max about =
rendering future versions of Flex on the GPU (That was a month before =
the announcement=20
to donate it to Apache). What worried me is that Tinic  told me that the =
DisplayList is too difficult to render on the GPU and that this is=20
highly unlikely to going to happen in future versions of the flash =
player. Reason is that it's too nested and that the mixing of data and =
display is in the way.

So i tend to think that Adobe dropped flex for this reason too (there =
are of course more reasons, but this one is never outspoken).=20
Performance might never come close to native as it's al based on the =
displaylist.

Now what Adobe did is create Starling (which is opensource too):

"The Starling Framework is a pure ActionScript 3 library that mimics the =
conventional Flash display list architecture. In contrast to =
conventional display objects, however, all content is rendered directly =
by the GPU =97 providing a rendering performance unlike anything seen in =
the Flash Player before.
The familiar API ensures that you don't have to learn anything new. =
Simply exchange the native Flash classes with their Starling =
equivalents, and you're done. Furthermore, Starling supports many =
convenient new features, like bitmap fonts, sprite sheets or particle =
effects."

So i wonder could the future version of Flex use a similar approach? I =
think if we can pull it of to render on the GPU it would be a massive =
performance gain. It would give Flex an extra egde.
I know there are many people on this list with deeper understanding of =
the flash player so please enlighten me. Is such an approach even =
possible for Flex?


All the best,

Arnoud Bos
Artim interactive
T +31 6 246 40 216
E arnoud@artim-interactive.nl


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