Finally, hardware acceleration?

[Rezmason]

I'm not necessarily encouraging it, but I've got some interest in the latest beta version of the Flash player. (Here's the link (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html) to download the browser plug-in.) The press release (again, link (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/releasenotes.html)) mentions some neat stuff:


A strengthened connection to JS through the ExternalInterface API
Vector graphics acceleration for multi-core machines
"Hardware scaling" in full-screen mode, "for improved video performance and quality"


What, pray tell, does "hardware scaling" mean? It sounds like it could be a feature limited to video in full-screen mode. But do you think it could pave the way for hardware acceleration?

[CarlLooper]

See here - for some behind the scenes discussion - it's not just hardware scaling:

http://www.kaourantin.net/

http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/06/flash-player-update-3-beta-1.html

Although, other than hardware scaling it's just mutithreaded improvements for multi-core machines ...

Hmmm ...

Carl

[senocular]

Most of the GPU work is hardware scaling. The other things are great as well (and mostly rely on multithreading), but when people are looking at HW accel, they're usually thinking GPU.

I'll make an example demonstating what that HW scaling really is

[CarlLooper]

Ah yes - but when people are looking at GPU it's not just hardware scaling their thinking about!

Still - it is all good - most definitely - no complaints from me!

:)

Carl

[senocular]

Ah yes - but when people are looking at GPU it's not just hardware scaling their thinking about!

And yet, so far that's mostly all they're getting from the Flash player using the GPU ;)

But yeah, these updates are great and higher end machines (multi cpu/core) blaze :beam:

[Rezmason]

I've got a single core.

Yeah, laugh it up. But as Douglas Hofstadter once said,


I suspect that the welcoming of constraints is, at bottom, the deepest secret of creativity.

And if a two-year-old iBook G4 counts as a constraint, then I welcome and work with it without hesitation, to further my creative pursuits. :thumb2:

[senocular]

That's a pretty cool quote. I've always liked working under limitations for that very reason.

[mathew.er]

lol I don't know if thats a good way to accelerate, but with this new FP (got it with Flex 3) all videos stopped working for me. :D

[CarlLooper]

Re- constraints:

When Charlie Chaplin had to shoot a scene requiring a train to arrive at a train platform he couldn't afford to arrange a real train so he did a shot of a man on the platform watching the train arrive - with the shadow of the train crossing the man's face - the shadow being that cast from a cardboard cut-out of a train. The result was far more interesting than if had arranged a real train. The constraints had forced him to think creatively.

Carl

[senocular]

FYI here is the example I said I would create earlier:
www.senocular.com/pub/kirupa/hwscale.html

The source is available under the same name .fla

[Rezmason]

Whoa, that's really buggy for me. Maybe I should have restarted my machine after installing the plugin. Or it's just buggy. Frankly you guys have as long as it takes to hammer out the weird stuff. I can see the advantage, though, of using this as a form of acceleration.

[senocular]

Whats buggy? and what OS are you on?
Oh, and one of the bugs is mine :ne: I forgot to initialize the rectangle prior to dragging or scaling the box. I fixed it now :beam:

[Rezmason]

It's amazing that we can talk to someone so involved in development. Here's my scoop, Sen:

I'm running OSX 10.4.10 on a 1.42Ghz G4, with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 graphics card. When I make your demo full-screen, and then escape to the normal mode, the Flash object onscreen is completely transparent (you can see the web page's background color behind it), and as that little ox moves around, the visual data within the ox's bound rectangle is drawn.

...

Here's a screenshot. I downloaded your page and swf file, and changed the page's background:

http://homepage.mac.com/rezmason/demo1.png

[senocular]

OSX did have a lot of problems in earlier builds. I think most of them are fixed now. We're doing some more extensive Mac testing next week, so it should be good for the final release.

Thanks for the screenshot. This is currently my feature (well, I'm one of many working on it) so its good to know when something goes wrong :)

[Rezmason]

No problem. By the way, the mouseWheel event isn't dispatched in this latest version.

EDIT: Or maybe it is. I just can't seem to get mouseWheel events working in a browser, is all. That probably hasn't got to do with this latest version.