JavaFX graphics performance and suitability for advanced animations

[steve.x.northover at oracle.com]

Hi John,

Let's get very specific.  Can you post a small example where the 
animation performs poorly?  Then we can all get to the bottom of it.

Thanks,
Steve

On 31/05/2013 8:30 AM, John C. Turnbull wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> Let me start by saying that on re-reading my last post I realised that it
> had a "tone" which was not intended and may have appeared overly critical or
> negative.  If you or anyone on the JavaFX development team were offended in
> any way then I am sorry.  All I can say in my defence was that it was posted
> after midnight at the end of a very long day...
>
> Anyway, I want you to know that I am not here to engage in gratuitous JavaFX
> bashing or trolling.  In fact, I am one of the strongest supporters and
> proponents of JavaFX that there is.  I am in the process of bringing JavaFX
> into my (large corporate) workplace and am involved in a private project
> which I take very seriously that will also be using JavaFX.  Consequently I
> have more at stake and more interest in having JavaFX succeed than most.  If
> everything goes according to "plan", I will be focussing on Java and
> especially JavaFX for the next 10 years or so.
>
> >From my perspective it is important to address the features or issues with
> JavaFX that the competitors perceive as weaknesses and reasons why the
> technology is a "dead duck".  The JavaFX community is vibrant with many
> well-known evangelists who are doing a very good job of promoting JavaFX and
> highlighting its many benefits but it is rare for them to say anything
> negative about it.
>
> Is this because there are no "negatives" with JavaFX or is just that they
> steer clear of them?  I tend to think that they prefer to concentrate on the
> pros rather than the cons and that's fair enough, they are there to further
> the cause of JavaFX rather than detract from it.
>
> I am someone who has been told tends to "say the things that other people
> think but are afraid to say".  I am not out to  win any popularity contests
> and will call a spade a spade.  As I said, when it comes to JavaFX, I am
> doing this because we need a balanced argument that confronts the opposition
> head on.  Many of the criticisms levelled at JavaFX by competitors have a
> valid foundation and as community we need to be able to respond to them.
> The issues I highlighted in my last post are real and I very much believe
> that if solutions are not found then JavaFX is going to struggle in the
> "real world" in the longer term.
>
> The market for graphics toolkits and cross-platform developer tools is
> extremely competitive and cut-throat and no one is going to give JavaFX a
> break.  I am merely trying to bring these issues up within the JavaFX
> community so we can address them as soon as possible.  As I said, I am very
> much *for* JavaFX.  I both want it to succeed and *need* it to succeed.
>
> As Daniel Zwolenski has posted, animations which I have found to perform
> quite poorly in JavaFX work very well inside a web page with JavaScript
> (with or without Canvas) on the exact same machine.  Clearly then there must
> be something fundamentally different in the way these competing technologies
> are handling animations.  To me this says that it must be possible for
> JavaFX to achieve similar levels of performance as other technologies are
> able to extract better performance out of the same OS and hardware.
>
> This says to me that developers who are not necessarily tied to the Java
> language for any reason would obviously choose a technology that performs
> better.  This is the concern.  This is the kind of thing we need to redress.
>
> Whilst my comments may be seen to be unnecessarily critical, I am being far
> kinder than our competitors.  New features can be added to JavaFX but if the
> "core" features are not working as well as the other products on the market
> then clearly there is a real problem.
>
> I made a comment along the lines that I feel the animations in the Ensemble
> demos do very little to promote JavaFX and, as harsh as it may sound, I
> stand by that.  Scott Palmer has echoed those sentiments with his recent
> commentary on Brick Breaker.  While obviously it's a lot of work, JavaFX
> needs at least one truly awesome demo that showcases everything it has to
> offer.  If such a demo is not possible with JavaFX as it currently stands
> then that tells us something.
>
> My own personal feelings about JavaFX are that it is an absolutely awesome
> product with amazing potential.  It is a vast improvement over Swing and,
> although not many people outside the Java community realise this, it has
> features and capabilities that other competing products simply don't have.
> If we can get the basics working better, JavaFX has the potential to be a
> very significant player and not just for developers who have traditionally
> programmed in Java.  For me, they are the people we should really be
> targeting.
>
> Also, I think the JavaFX development team are doing a first class job.  Even
> though I think I made this clear, none of my critical commentary is directed
> at them.  I also acknowledge that my references to the policies of Oracle
> management are not particularly helpful in this forum as clearly nothing I
> say here is going to change anything in that respect.  Such comments
> probably only serve to frustrate the development team even more than they
> are already are.
>
> So, in summary, I am here to help.  Whilst you may not agree with my
> methods, please know that I have the best interests of JavaFX and the
> community in mind.  I am prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure the
> success of JavaFX on a vast variety of platforms and for as long as
> possible.  I am going to devote some time into building OpenJFX and trying
> to get to the bottom of the performance issues I have informally reported.
>
> If other products can achieve high-quality and high-performance animations
> on my computers then why can't JavaFX?  The answers must be out there...
>
> -jct
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Bair [mailto:richard.bair at oracle.com]
> Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013 01:12
> To: John C. Turnbull
> Cc: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
> Subject: Re: JavaFX graphics performance and suitability for advanced
> animations
>
> Hi John,
>
>> Graphics?  Yes, to a point.  But my post was really about graphics and
>> the issues related to performance.  Again, unless those issues are
>> resolved then it's not appropriate to state that JavaFX is suitable for
> "graphics".
>
> You asked what the "full range of applications for which JavaFX is or will
> be suitable for".
>
>> 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).
>
>>>> 4.       Is JavaFX more targeted at form-based UIs rather than high
>>>> performance graphics?
>>> No.
>> Again, good to know but where are all the high-performance JavaFX
>> apps?  So far I have seen nothing but form-based apps.  Wouldn't it be
>> prudent for Oracle to include a "showcase" app or game that shows us
>> the full capabilities of JavaFX with high-performance graphics?
>>
>> I am sure I am not alone in feeling that the animation examples in
>> Ensemble do very little to promote the graphics capabilities of JavaFX.
> Are you offering to contribute? :-)
>
>>> Are your slow examples reproducible? If so we need the test case. Is
>>> there
>> an issue filed? We can't fix things we can't reproduce.
>>> We spend a *considerable* amount of time and energy on performance
>>> and for
>> the things we're measuring we're doing well.
>>> As the saying goes "what's measured, improves". After the switch to
>>> gradle
>> and the new project layout, one thing I'm going to
>>> look at is using JMH[2] in OpenJFX so we can write micro benchmarks
>>> and
>> have them easy for everybody to run and
>>> contribute to. Our current set of micro benchmarks are based on the
>> predecessor of JMH which was the
>>> JRockit benchmark suite and was proprietary (hence we cannot just
>>> open
>> source our existing benchmarks without doing some rewrite).
>>
>> All good points.
>>
>> 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=
>