The higher level Flex Framework doesn't really need to know about all the AGAL, texture stuff, etc. It's possible (as Gnome2D has shown) to basically just make a blitting surface, and treat it like a BitmapData object that has high initial latency, with screaming runtime blitting, for rendering (as an extreme over simplification).
The trick with the GPU is the lack of shared address space between CPU and GPU, which creates a huge bottleneck for moving image data from CPU to GPU. That's the primary pain point. Anyone implementing a high level API on GPU, mostly needs to target that pain point - keep GPU uploads and invalidation low, and you'll be fine (as long as your GPU code is stable, handles batching well, and doesn't change the GPU state too much). On iOS, they use a metaphor of "layer backing" to help keep the pain point clear as they are designing, and communicating that to users of the their GPU powered APIs. WebKit uses that in some docs too, though it's less clear when you are activating layer backing, and Adobe tried to communicate that when they were doing GPU-Blend (something marked with cacheAsBitmapMatrix became "layer backed") with earlier builds of PFI, though they eventually switched to a GPU tessellation method of rendering. Related: What's really more exciting than I think the lack of buzz indicates, is AMD's new shared address space for CPU and GPU (in the chip shipping in both XBox One and PS4). That's going to completely remove this primary bottleneck, and make GPU programming a first class citizen, able to seamlessly share data between CPU and GPU - very very exciting. Hopefully that'll work it's way over to mobile computing in short order, where I think it'll have much more benefit (at least until Intel eventually ships a compatible extension in x86 ecosystems). Kevin N. On 7/10/13 2:02 PM, DarkStone wrote: > Hi Carlos, > > The benefit of enabling Stage3D for Flex would be: > > 1. Much better performance on mobile devices. > > 2. Be able to develop Real 3D Apps and Games. > > 3. Making Flex the best cross platform native app developing SDK. > > In fact you can use Stage3D directly in Flex Applications, Stage3D layers are > below the Flex Application layer. But you can not take any advantages of Flex > like MXML, Bindings, FXG, CSS etc. Cuz the current Flex is not design for the > Stage3D kind of things. > > In order to enable full support of Stage3D for Flex, it requires redesign > Flex Framework from the ground up. Cuz Stage3D is about GPU rather than CPU, > and the GPU Programming is quite different than CPU, you need to understand > and deal with vertex, mesh, shader, texture, AGAL... > > However there are still some feasible ways to enable Stage3D for Flex, here > is one I thought of: > > Redesign the Flex Framework by building it on top of the Starling Framework, > this approach can reserve most of the Flex API names, for example UIComponent > Class, FlexSprite Class etc. They are still the same class names and package > names, but they need to extends the Starling Sprite Class instead of the > original one. And of course, a simple extends Starling Sprite Class ain't > gonna work, we will have to reimplement all of the subclasses, yes it's hell. > > Anyway, unless someone can invest a million dollars on this, I don't think > full Stage3D support for Flex will become reality in these years, although > personally I want this so bad. > > > Sent from DarkStone's iPhone > > 在 2013-7-11，0:38，Carlos Rovira <carlosrov...@apache.org> 写道： > >> Hi, >> >> from time to time people comes with the desire to see Flex running on >> Stage3D. I would want to recopile all the state of the art info about this >> topic and see if is possible and how much work it would require. >> >> I know people like J.Campos did two attempts and get valious research from >> that experience. There's things to get into account like accessibility. >> >> Please could people share in this thread the things they know in order to >> recopile all info? Is there some things to take into account that could >> make Stage3D not possible for Flex? Could we overpass it and make it >> possible? If it would be possible...it will brings real benefits? >> >> If some work is done in this topic, I'd propose to make focused in this >> particular thing and unlike FlexJS, here I will not try to break >> UIComponent in small parts, or break compatibility. Even if it could be >> possible to have a global flag like "enableStage3D" to make our apps run on >> Stage3D if is true or remain in normal display layer, it could be great. >> >> Thanks in advance for any insight regarding this topic. >> >> Best >> >> Carlos >>
