Re: Future of Flex technology

[Om <bi...@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Hertenstein, David <
hertenstein_d@idea365.onmicrosoft.com> wrote:

> With Adobe obviously focusing on improving the runtime for the gaming
> stuff, that in theory should be good for Flex if the new features can be
> utilized by class updates in the framework right? I'm pretty knowledgeable
> and familiar with Actionscript as it has matured over the years, but not as
> much with the inner workings of the Flex source, but from my understanding
> hopefully I'm on the right track there.
>
> With Flex being focused primarily on data driven apps, as opposed to
> custom applications (games) would it be possible to create some new Flex
> components that utilize Stage3D? I know there are some simple controls that
> have been built using starling, feathers UI, but I imagine the same
> technique used there could be applied to Flex components. Also maybe there
> could be some Flex components related more to the 3D context itself. My
> understanding is that the display list which is the normal 2D graphic
> pipeline sits on top of an underlying 3D context that is initialized but
> maybe Flex could be useful in adding some interoperability between the two.
> So possibly a set of components that renders out to the 3D stage as opposed
> to the display list. That might be a little too abstract of a description
> but it would be great if there were not only components to create stage3D
> contexts in a Flex application (I think that you are supposed to be able to
> have multiple contexts in a single application), but also to be able to
> pass in something to a context via a flex component. So the component would
> initialize the context and make sure it's visible and size it etc, but then
> you could nest things in the component in order to control the innards of
> the context itself.
>
> Just a few thoughts, but these are the kinds of things that I imagine in
> terms of Flex maybe being able to utilize new features from the runtime as
> they come out, besides the cross compiling work.
>
>
David, you are indeed on the right track.  This is effectively the approach
I am experimenting with, currently.  Although, Stage3D is all a bit new to
me and it is taking a while for me to get accustomed to working with those
APIs.

One thing I realized was that to have any chance of success, we need to
re-write a lot of existing Flex code or start from scratch with this
approach.  Luckily, Alex has started working on his new ASJS framework -
essentially re-imagining the Flex framework.  I hope to follow him and see
how much I can abstract the display list rendering out and use Stage3D
instead.

If you are subscribed to dev@flex.apache.org, please look out for more
emails about this approach in the future.  Unfortunately, with the
Installer, Mustella CI, OneClickMustella etc. related work, I dont have a
lot of bandwidth currently, but I hope to make some time soon.  If you are
interested, you could come join the fun!

Thanks,
Om

RE: Future of Flex technology

["Hertenstein, David" <he...@idea365.onmicrosoft.com>]

Thanks, will do. From what I know about starling, it's just a matter of using a different set of classes for some of the basic display object types. Would doing just that suddenly make Flex just work with it? I don't know enough about Flex to really know that. In terms of the Stage3D stuff though, Christer Kaitila has a good book on the subject that I've read through but I haven't really done a lot of work with directly yet. So I imagine that just getting Flex components to be hardware accelerated via starling would in and of itself make a lot of these mobile performance complaints go away if it was possible to do it. However, if we could get some new components to leverage the stage3D in a data driven way, I think that would certainly be something that could help boost Flex in a positive direction after the transition.

Thanks,
David Hertenstein
Lead Developer
.idea

T. 214.529.0668
E. david.hertenstein@idea.com 

www.idea.com


-----Original Message-----
From: omuppi1@gmail.com [mailto:omuppi1@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Om
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2013 5:06 PM
To: users@flex.apache.org
Subject: Re: Future of Flex technology

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Hertenstein, David < hertenstein_d@idea365.onmicrosoft.com> wrote:

> With Adobe obviously focusing on improving the runtime for the gaming 
> stuff, that in theory should be good for Flex if the new features can 
> be utilized by class updates in the framework right? I'm pretty 
> knowledgeable and familiar with Actionscript as it has matured over 
> the years, but not as much with the inner workings of the Flex source, 
> but from my understanding hopefully I'm on the right track there.
>
> With Flex being focused primarily on data driven apps, as opposed to 
> custom applications (games) would it be possible to create some new 
> Flex components that utilize Stage3D? I know there are some simple 
> controls that have been built using starling, feathers UI, but I 
> imagine the same technique used there could be applied to Flex 
> components. Also maybe there could be some Flex components related 
> more to the 3D context itself. My understanding is that the display 
> list which is the normal 2D graphic pipeline sits on top of an 
> underlying 3D context that is initialized but maybe Flex could be useful in adding some interoperability between the two.
> So possibly a set of components that renders out to the 3D stage as 
> opposed to the display list. That might be a little too abstract of a 
> description but it would be great if there were not only components to 
> create stage3D contexts in a Flex application (I think that you are 
> supposed to be able to have multiple contexts in a single 
> application), but also to be able to pass in something to a context 
> via a flex component. So the component would initialize the context 
> and make sure it's visible and size it etc, but then you could nest 
> things in the component in order to control the innards of the context itself.
>
> Just a few thoughts, but these are the kinds of things that I imagine 
> in terms of Flex maybe being able to utilize new features from the 
> runtime as they come out, besides the cross compiling work.
>
>
David, you are indeed on the right track.  This is effectively the approach I am experimenting with, currently.  Although, Stage3D is all a bit new to me and it is taking a while for me to get accustomed to working with those APIs.

One thing I realized was that to have any chance of success, we need to re-write a lot of existing Flex code or start from scratch with this approach.  Luckily, Alex has started working on his new ASJS framework - essentially re-imagining the Flex framework.  I hope to follow him and see how much I can abstract the display list rendering out and use Stage3D instead.

If you are subscribed to dev@flex.apache.org, please look out for more emails about this approach in the future.  Unfortunately, with the Installer, Mustella CI, OneClickMustella etc. related work, I dont have a lot of bandwidth currently, but I hope to make some time soon.  If you are interested, you could come join the fun!

Thanks,
Om