On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Daniel Freeman <madcompone...@gmail.com>wrote:
> I've done some experiments with Stage3D accelerated Flex components, > derived from MadComponents classes. > > > http://madskool.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/madcomponents3d-part5-stage3d-accelerated-flex/ > > It is my intention to port MadComponents to AS"next". I propose that these > ported MadComponents/MC3D classes might form the basis of a new Flex mobile > framework that utilises hardware GPU rendering. > > I'm aware that Thibault Imbert has proposed that a new Flex framework > should be based on Starling and Feathers. But I believe that the MC3D > approach is better suited to the next Flex mobile framework. > > MadComponents is a fully fledged framework, not just a UI framework. It > allows for versatile styling of components (without having to design > texture skins), server communication, and memory management. > > However, until we know more about AS"next", which framework approach to > choose is mostly speculation. > > So I'd like the members of this group to read my blog post, and let me know > what they think. > Daniel, Thanks for your interest in helping out Apache Flex! I have been following Madcomponents and your blog for a while now. I looked your example in your "stage3d accelerated flex" post [1]. While that is good for a nice looking demo, I dont think that the approach you suggest can be used to support an real framework like Flex. Whenever I see a reference to FlexGlobals.topLevelApplication anywhere in a component's code, I always think of it as a hackish workaround trying to cover up for the lack of a good design. More specifically, this approach would blow up when there are two instances (Lists in your example) on the stage and we try to animate both of them at the same time or at a slight lag. The topLevelApplication goes invisible, the first List does its thing on the gpu, then sets the topLevelApplication to be visible. Now, if the second component had already started the transition, it would expect the topLevelApplication to be invisible while it runs. But the first component would have made it visible because it had finished running. This would cause quite serious rendering issues to say the least. While I have your attention, I would like to talk about another blog post of yours that I had bookmarked a while ago [2] Here, you talk about building a set of UI components from scratch that would directly draw to Stage3D (no starling or anything in between) I think that your example and your approach made a lot of sense. If you have been following the thread [3], we are talking about a brand new flex framework designed from scratch. This is where I am planning to spend my time on for the next few months. My hope was to start building a graphics rendering layer that draws directly to Stage3D, much like how you mention in the blog post. Is this something you can help out with? This approach would set us free of the shackles of the current Flex framework - which frankly needs a lot of rework and/or hacks to support Stage3D. Regards, Om [1] http://code.google.com/p/mad-components/source/browse/trunk/FlexMadComponents/src/FlexMadPageTransitions.mxml [2] http://madskool.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/drawing-madcomponents-with-stage3d/ [3] http://markmail.org/message/yjykc72a7qeoootr
