JavaFX graphics performance and suitability for advanced animations (BrickBreaker)

[Pavel Safrata]

Hello,
I'm a bit behind with this thread but I want to make a few comments on 
AnimationTimer as  there is a hidden message in the discussion that 
AnimationTimer is the way to go.

First, AnimationTimer is called in each pulse, which doesn't have much 
in common with display refresh rate (if I understand the term 
correctly). More importantly, AnimationTimer is kind of extreme 
low-level animation API that should not be needed in vast majority of 
cases. I think a better way to code BrickBraker would be to use a single 
TranslateTransition for the entire straight part of the ball's 
trajectory; it would automatically compute the interpolation and sync 
the position on every pulse, which should have the same result as doing 
everything manually with the AnimationTimer (but expressed in simpler code).

Regards,
Pavel

On 31.5.2013 22:45, Richard Bair wrote:
> I pushed the fix to graphics. Thanks Scott for tracking that down! It looks 10x better.
>
> Richard
>
> On May 31, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> Patch attached to https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-29801. I'm not seeing any stutter on my Mac, interested to hear the experience on Windows.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> On May 31, 2013, at 8:44 AM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ya I did the same, am now adjusting it so the factor by which things move is better.
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>> On May 31, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Scott Palmer <swpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Richard, I suspect you made a typo.  I think you mean "*40*ms is a really odd number..." (it was 25 FPS, not 25ms)
>>>>
>>>> I quickly hacked it to use AnimationTimer and the animation is very smooth now.  Though I didn't make the required changes to adjust the speeds based on the refresh rate.  The quick conversion to AnimationTimer is trivial.. but going through and adjusting all the translations and increments to be relative to the time between consecutive frames is something I don't have time for.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Scott
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Scott
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 11:21 AM, Kevin Rushforth <kevin.rushforth at oracle.com> wrote:
>>>> Btw, there is a JIRA issue filed against BrickBreaker specifically: https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-29801
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Richard Bair wrote:
>>>>> Have you tried to determine what the FPS is? My guess is that FPS is not anywhere near the limit and it is the occasional stutter that is the problem, but I'm not certain. Knowing that helps to point in which direction to go. The fact that it runs pretty well on a PI is indication that it isn't the framerate.
>>>>>
>>>>> Richard
>>>>>
>>>>> On May 31, 2013, at 4:26 AM, Scott Palmer <swpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Speaking of poor animation in Ensemble...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Is anyone able to run Brick Breaker without choppy animation or poor framerate performance on the ball?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Now, I suspect the issue there is in the balls animation implementation in the application rather than the JavaFX framework, as the bat moves smoothly when I move the mouse, but the overall perception of JavaFX performance for this demo app is not good. I would go so far as to say that Brick Breaker has had the opposite effect it was intended too - simply because the animation of the ball is not smooth.  That's something that would run smoothly on a Commodore 64,yet the last time I tried it (5 minutes ago) with JavaFX 8.0-b91 on a quad-core 3GHz Windows 7 box with a decent NVIDIA card, it didn't run as smoothly as I would expect.  Just a single ball with a shadow bouncing around the screen seemed to have a low framerate and the occasional skipped frame.  It just didn't look that great.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The fact that Brick Breaker ships as a sample app from Oracle and it's animation looks bad is harming JavaFX's reputation in my opinion.  I think  it could run much better on the existing JavaFX runtime.  The simple animations in the Ensemble app run much smoother for example.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Scott
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 11:11 AM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Then you mention Halo 5.  I have to say the subtext here troubles me
>>>>>>> greatly.  If I read you correctly then you are saying that JavaFX is not
>>>>>>> really suitable for games (at least anything beyond the demands of something
>>>>>>> like Solitaire).  As someone else pointed out, what is point of developing
>>>>>>> 3D support in JavaFX if it is not really suitable for games?  To say it is
>>>>>>> not suitable for games implies that it is not really suitable for *any*
>>>>>>> application that requires performant animations and visualisations.  What
>>>>>>> use then is the 3D API?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> That's not fair at all. There are a *lot* of enterprise use cases for 3D, and we get these requests all the time. Whether we're taking about 3D visualizations for medical or engineering applications or consumer applications (product display, etc), there is a requirement for 3D that are broader than real time first person shooters.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Game engines often have very specialized scene graphs (sometimes several of them) as well as very specialized tricks for getting the most out of their graphics cards. When we expose API that allows people to hammer the card directly, then it would be possible for somebody to build some of the UI in FX and let their game engine be hand written (in Unity or JOGL or whatever).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> However, I am not sure that having me preparing "reproducible" test cases
>>>>>>> will actually help.  In my experience, the Ensemble app already serves this
>>>>>>> purpose.  The choppiness I describe is *always* prevalent when I run the
>>>>>>> animations and transitions in Ensemble (including Ensemble 8).  The only
>>>>>>> variation is in the degree of that choppiness.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then start with that, something absolutely dead simple like a path animation or rotate transition and lets figure out how to measure the jitter and get it into our benchmark suite.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Richard
>>>>>>
>>>>>>