JavaFX graphics performance and suitability for advanced animations

[Daniel Zwolenski]

Here is pretty much the same animation in JavaScript of the animated box:
http://www.zenjava.com/demo/animate1.html

While it's not perfect, on my system (Google Chrome, Windows 7, Dell
Latitude E6520) the visual appearance is noticeably better than the JavaFX
one. For example there is no shimmering of the borders (there's an ever so
slight jitter but it's far less noticeable than the JFX 'shimmer'). The
text also seems more crisp in the JavaScript one in my system (without
setting any magic caching settings).

I don't know if its pixel snapping or crack jamming, or whatever else the
options are, but it does look noticeably better in my web browser than my
native desktop app. I'm hoping JavaScript level performance (or whatever
you want to call it) is a pretty low bar to be aiming for?

The drop shadow is not great in either system. It looks slightly better on
the JScript one but that may be because it is darker and bigger in this
sample.




On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com>wrote:

> Thanks for the issues! As mentioned in RT-30830 and RT-30827, the jittery
> text and fuzzy lines are two manifestations of the same thing. When
> animating, you have two choices. Do you draw everything on pixel
> boundaries, or do you draw "in the cracks" between the pixels? Of course
> the only way to draw between pixels is to draw antialiased on the pixels on
> both sides of the "crack", leaving things blurry.
>
> By default all Text is drawn pixel aligned in order to be crisp (more or
> less -- Windows & Mac may have different answers on this point). So when it
> is animated, it looks like it is jiggling (it is) because each glyph is
> figuring out whether it ought to go left or right. Text nodes are supposed
> to allow you to break out of this behavior for the sake of animation (there
> are a few issues related: RT-23580, RT-6475), but it looks like the way I
> would have tried (cache=true, cacheHint=SPEED) doesn't draw anything in
> this case, and we need to figure out why.
>
> However expect that you will need to do *something* to Text to tell it
> whether you care about animation smoothness or static crispness with the
> text, so that we can be sure to layout the glyphs optimally for your use
> case.
>
> The fuzzy lines on the other hand are perfectly normal and expected. You
> could of course write your app to pixel-snap the animated rectangles, and
> then see if it looks jittery or not (likely, yes).
>
> The Canvas bug is very interesting, and we'll get to the bottom of it.
>
> Thanks
> Richard
>
> On May 30, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Daniel Zwolenski <zonski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A little bit more esoteric, but some "not very nice looking" rendering
> when animating a very lightly styled Node:
> https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-30830
>
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:07 PM, Daniel Zwolenski <zonski at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Jittery text when scaling in an animation:
>> https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-30827
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Wow. Thanks!
>>>
>>> On May 30, 2013, at 6:48 PM, Daniel Zwolenski <zonski at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I have replicated the z-order problem with the Tower Defender game and
>>> the Canvas: https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-30826
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 1:26 AM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Note this is only for Mac.
>>>>
>>>> On May 30, 2013, at 7:54 AM, Richard Bair <richard.bair at oracle.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Anybody interested in jitter ought to look at
>>>> https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-26702
>>>> >
>>>> > Richard
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>