[squeak-dev] We need to talk about graphics

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Fri Jul 3 20:21:18 UTC 2020


On Fri, Jul 03, 2020 at 06:15:17PM +0200, Hilaire wrote:
> 
> Le 30/06/2020 ?? 08:26, St??phane Rollandin a ??crit??:
> >>Is GPU& shader ??support necessary/desirable:
> >>yes if real-time rendering for thighs??like games/VR are important, 
> >>but in that case there
> >>is a bigger problem jitter caused by GC,
> >In the image I just uploaded two days ago and that one can get from 
> >http://www.zogotounga.net/comp/squeak/rogue.htm the main feature is a 
> >2D real-time top-down game.
> >
> >I found that the GC-caused jitter was indeed a problem, but also that 
> >the main culprit was the time it takes to simply paint an image which 
> >is a surprisingly (to me) slow operation.
> >
> >That, plus the alpha-blending issue that was discussed on the VM list 
> >a little ago, where Juan proposed two new primitives. 
> 
> Juan proposed these primitives to speed up the rendering of 
> VectorGraphics Widget Morph.

I remember a discussion about that, though I don't have a link to it. It
sounds like we need to follow up on this and make something happen.

> 
> Regarding graphics, Juan's work on Vector Graphics can be of interest 
> for Squeak.
> 

Definitely yes. Juan is working towards *both* high quality rendering
*and* high performance. I think that there may be a perception that
Morphic 3 and VectorGraphics might sacrifice performance for rendering
quality, but I am not sure that is the case at all.

This recent post by Juan would be of interest to any of us attempting to
achieve graphics performance on modern hardware:

  https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/archives/cuis-dev/2020-June/001958.html

I also have to add that the recent work that you (Hilaire) have been
doing with DrGeo on Cuis really illustrates the potential. Your circular
menu will be of interest to anyone who has been involved with Morphic,
Etoys, and Scratch interfaces:

  https://mamot.fr/@drgeo/104310151994863180

Dave



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