API Change Proposal - Re: MSAA and Scene anti aliasing

[Chien Yang]

We are way past the feature freeze date for this release. The objective 
now is to ensure the API is clean and doesn't preclude future options. 
Currently MSAA is the only supported technique and specifying the number 
of samples will require additional API which we aren't ready to commit.

- Chien

On 7/23/2013 2:04 PM, Felix Bembrick wrote:
> Exactly.
>
> I think we need to come up with a word that implies that it's really a 
> balance of quality and speed. That's why I suggested BALANCED but I am 
> hoping we can do even better than that.
>
> As an aside, why did you decide to not expose the setting of either 
> the AA type or number of samples?  I would have though that serious 
> graphics developers would really like to have such options available 
> to them.
>
>
> On 24 July 2013 06:58, Chien Yang <chien.yang at oracle.com 
> <mailto:chien.yang at oracle.com>> wrote:
>
>     Yes, very good point, we struggled with the DEFAULT value too. It
>     doesn't really convey the in between value of FAST and NICEST.
>
>     - Chien
>
>
>     On 7/23/2013 1:41 PM, Felix Bembrick wrote:
>>     I am not sure I like the name of the value DEFAULT.  To me
>>     "default" implies some kind of "typical" option for the
>>     particular platform which could conceivably be very different on
>>     each platform.  For example, on my Windows super-computer with
>>     ultra fast GPU the "default" would logically be something like
>>     16x whereas on my iPhone I would expect the default to be using
>>     only 2x.  The comment for DEFAULT implies that it's really more
>>     of a BALANCED or MODERATE setting that would have the same
>>     characteristics on each platform.
>>
>>
>>     On 24 July 2013 06:29, Chien Yang <chien.yang at oracle.com
>>     <mailto:chien.yang at oracle.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         Hi all,
>>
>>             We appreciate all the feedback you have contributed to
>>         this topic. After listening to the feedback and an internal
>>         discussion, we would like to propose a minor change to the
>>         API for supporting scene anti-aliasing. We intentionally
>>         choose not to expose the number of samples and techniques
>>         used in this release, but this doesn't preclude future
>>         addition when the time is right for more options. This change
>>         will be tracked by RT-31878
>>         (https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-31878):
>>
>>         Anti-aliasing API Change Proposal:
>>
>>         Constructors remove:
>>         public Scene(Parent root, double width, double height,
>>         boolean depthBuffer, boolean antiAliasing)
>>         public SubScene(Parent root, double width, double height,
>>         boolean depthBuffer, boolean antiAliasing)
>>
>>         Constructor add:
>>         public Scene(Parent root, double width, double height,
>>         boolean depthBuffer, SceneAntiAliasing antiAliasing)
>>         public SubScene(Parent root, double width, double height,
>>         boolean depthBuffer, SceneAntiAliasing antiAliasing)
>>
>>         Note:The antiAliasing argument will be used if the underlying
>>         graphics driver has anti-aliasing support.
>>
>>         Where SceneAntiAliasing is an enum with the following entries
>>         at the moment:
>>
>>         public enum SceneAntiAliasing {
>>             DISABLED, // disables anti-aliasing
>>             DEFAULT, // enables anti-aliasing using a default system
>>         setting available that balances speed and quality
>>             FASTEST, // enables anti-aliasing using minimum system
>>         setting available that results in better frame rate
>>             NICEST // enables anti-aliasing using maximum system
>>         setting available that results in best visual quality
>>         }
>>
>>         Thanks,
>>         - Chien
>>
>>
>
>