RE: FLASH: Flash 5/6 aka DirectFlash! Some suggestions

[Branden Hall]

I see your points, however, if you look at what Flash 5 gives you, an XML

parser, socketed connection ability, color manipulation, sound control,

etc... all on top of a rendering engine that handles not only vectors, but

also bitmaps, including transparency, 200K is pretty crazy.


Also, adding a video system to Flash would add a HELL of a lot more than

200K to the size..Just look at the size of the quicktime or even vivo

plugins.  Besides, MM is trying to get Flash everywhere, and in PDAs,

phones, and web-top boxes the law of the land is the K, period.  And having

a combined plugin thing like Director does would not only add quite a bit to

the plugin size, but it would also make the plugin less cross-platform,

which is not acceptable.


As for the math... the Flash renderer, is, unless I am mistaken, scanline

based, hence trig and all that kind of stuff isn't needed by the renderer.

Thus, there is nothing to "expose" to actionscript, sorry to say.  Then,

when it comes to newtons method, etc, that kind of stuff will have to be

done *somewhere*, might as well be in the SWF its self, that way the plugin

can worry about more troublesome things.


If you compare what Unreal has code wise to do its software rendering,

including GL, and directX, its pretty nuts how *much* code is required to do

that kind of stuff fast.  Not only that, but a huge amount of the

computations inside of those kind of games are pre-processed when the maps

are made.  Also, bitmap calcuations are, but nature a LOT easier than vector

calculations... just yank open a big ass PDF and you will see what I mean.


-= Branden J. Hall

-= Senior Interactive Developer/Instructor

-= Fig Leaf Software - "We've got you covered!"



-----Original Message-----

From:

ownerchinwag [dot] com

 [

ownerchinwag [dot] com]On">mailto:ownerchinwag [dot] com]On

 Behalf Of Damien

Morton

Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 4:10 PM

To:

flasherchinwag [dot] com

Subject: RE: FLASH: Flash 5/6 aka DirectFlash! Some suggestions



Not being able to see your code, Branden, Ive had to make a few assumptions,

but Id love to hear how your code performs if optimised.


Im not sure that the use of floating points would be slower than integers,

given the fundamental overhead of running an interpreter. At any rate, there

should be virtually no difference.


Exporting Newtons method where a square root is called doesnt make sense to

me. When outputting Flash 4, this is no doubt necessary, but surely not in

the case in Flash 5. It would better in the plug-in itself, and a whole slew

of math/trig functions are probably already in there for the actual vector

drawing routines anyway, so it should 'simply' be a matter of exposing them

to actionscript.


My basic point is that fast code enables a realm of experiences that go

beyond scripted animations and into creating actual behaviours. Your version

of SodaPlay, Branden, is a great example of this, and I think that further

enabling this kind of thing will enhance Flash as a platform.


The smallness of the plug-in comes up again and again, and I wonder if the

balance between plug-in size and plug-in capabilities has been well-struck.

A 200K plug-in is a good thing (tm). Is it better than a 400K plug-in that

has some combination of much faster code execution and rendering, video

sprites and images compressed 6 times better than JPEG? I wonder.


Ive been playing Unreal Tournament a bit lately, in software rendering mode.

It runs at over 30 frames per second, and is doing a _whole_ lot more work

than a 1-spring 2-body dynamic system. At a guess, its doing somewhere

between a thousand times and a million times more work. Why does it only use

2 times the CPU of the sprung.swf demo?


Im not disparaging the Flash dev team. Flash is a cool tech, and obviously,

in getting a product out the door, there are limits to be reached and

compromises to be made. Keep up the good work and keep pushing the envelope.


------------------

Damien Morton

Senior Programmer

Dennis Interactive


> -----Original Message-----

>

From: ownerchinwag [dot] com [ownerchinwag [dot] com]On">mailto:ownerchinwag [dot] com]On Behalf Of Branden

> Hall

>

> Actually, that system does some just-plain-complex(tm) math...

> lots of fun

> calculus stuff (integration via Euler's method), and I am kinda

> sloppy with

> my floating points...  I'm sure if I went in and did a few assembler-style

> tricks to keep the code from ever using floats, it would speed up quite

> nicely. The simple fact of the matter is that you have a 200K

> plugin that is

> able to run some *serious* code pretty damn fast.  More than

> likely, F5 took

> a sort-of RISC approach to be able to do all it does with that

> little...  in

> other words, the F5 plugin is probably optimized up to wazoo for

> doing basic

> operations, and have all complex operations exsist as combinations of the

> basic ones. For example, when you export say, a square root call Flash

> probably includes the math needed to do a newtons method to get

> the sqrt in

> the SWF...  Otherwise I don't see how in the hell the plugin is still so

> damn small.

>

> Anyhoo... you have to look at all of the factors involved with

> why flash is

> what it is...

> Besides that, I honestly do not see video coming to Flash for a

> while... it

> would just bloat the plugin too much.. and once browsers get their act

> together they should all be able to do what I can do in IE... put a

> quicktime above my flash movie.  Finally, as for JPG2000... I agree

> totally... wavelets are the future!

>

> -= Branden J. Hall

> -= Senior Interactive Developer/Instructor

> -= Fig Leaf Software - "We've got you covered!"

>

>

> -----Original Message-----

>

From: ownerchinwag [dot] com [ownerchinwag [dot] com]On">mailto:ownerchinwag [dot] com]On Behalf Of Damien

> Morton

>

> Heres a couple of suggestions for Flash 6:

>

> Ive been looking at Branden Hall's sprung.swf Flash 5 demo. A 1-spring, 2

> body system consumes 50-60% of my 600MHz CPU. Now Branden is a

> smart guy, so

> I cant really imagine that hes implemented that demo too shabbily. If this

> is anything like what we can expect, then the performance of ActionScript5

> leaves a lot to be desired. Suggestion: Make ActionScript byte code

> interpretation much much faster. For games, for anything

> requiring a modicum

> of physical simulation or computation, a faster interpreter is needed.

<snip>




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