3 ms·

How does this (and Pathfinder for that matter) compare to NanoVG? I've recently been experimenting with swapping out Cairo for NanoVG and it seems much faster.

by eco 6y ago

How does this (and Pathfinder for that matter) compare to NanoVG? I've recently been experimenting with swapping out Cairo for NanoVG and it seems much faster. The lack of dashed lines may kill my experiment though unless I can think of a decent workaround.

raphlinus 6y ago
I expect it to be faster, but doing performance evaluation is really hard work. Performance depends on so many variables, including the workloads you're trying to render and a ton of factors about the GPU and system. I know people are really curious about competitive performance against other renderers, and it's something I should probably do, but honestly I'd love it if somebody else took up that mantle.
- eco 6y ago
  I kind of meant more in terms of how they work and what they can do but I suppose I could do the work in answering that question myself by figuring out how nanovg works then comparing it to what you've written. I've been finding Patrick's pathfinder work fascinating so it's nice to have yet another project to follow.
  - raphlinus 6y ago
    Got it. So far my research prototype really just does filled paths and limited strokes, but the architecture should extend to a richer set of graphics primitives. Pathfinder also started out that way but recent work is building out a good chunk of the SVG imaging model. I definitely recommend checking it out, there's a good chance it'll do what you need.
pcwalton 6y ago
I have to say I'm consistently impressed by NanoVG. Not because it does anything fancy, but because it doesn't. It's not the fastest or the most featureful vector renderer out there, but it resides in a very nice sweet spot that balances performance, features, and simplicity. In general I've found NanoVG to have comparable performance to the master branch of Pathfinder. NanoVG currently performs better at text (PF's implementation is designed to get international text right first and optimization hasn't really been done yet), while PF generally does better at complex vector workloads like the tiger.
pbsurf 6y ago
I've just released a fork of nanovg that does GPU rendering a bit like Pathfinder, so it can support arbitrary paths - nanovg's antialiasing has some issues with thin filled paths. It also adds support for dashed lines. https://github.com/styluslabs/nanovgXC https://github.com/styluslabs/nanovgXC If you give it a try, let me know how it works for you.
- eco 6y ago
  That is very exciting to hear. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

by eco 6y ago

raphlinus 6y ago

I expect it to be faster, but doing performance evaluation is really hard work. Performance depends on so many variables, including the workloads you're trying to render and a ton of factors about the GPU and system. I know people are really curious about competitive performance against other renderers, and it's something I should probably do, but honestly I'd love it if somebody else took up that mantle.

eco 6y ago
I kind of meant more in terms of how they work and what they can do but I suppose I could do the work in answering that question myself by figuring out how nanovg works then comparing it to what you've written. I've been finding Patrick's pathfinder work fascinating so it's nice to have yet another project to follow.
- raphlinus 6y ago
  Got it. So far my research prototype really just does filled paths and limited strokes, but the architecture should extend to a richer set of graphics primitives. Pathfinder also started out that way but recent work is building out a good chunk of the SVG imaging model. I definitely recommend checking it out, there's a good chance it'll do what you need.

pcwalton 6y ago

I have to say I'm consistently impressed by NanoVG. Not because it does anything fancy, but because it doesn't. It's not the fastest or the most featureful vector renderer out there, but it resides in a very nice sweet spot that balances performance, features, and simplicity. In general I've found NanoVG to have comparable performance to the master branch of Pathfinder. NanoVG currently performs better at text (PF's implementation is designed to get international text right first and optimization hasn't really been done yet), while PF generally does better at complex vector workloads like the tiger.

pbsurf 6y ago

I've just released a fork of nanovg that does GPU rendering a bit like Pathfinder, so it can support arbitrary paths - nanovg's antialiasing has some issues with thin filled paths. It also adds support for dashed lines. https://github.com/styluslabs/nanovgXC https://github.com/styluslabs/nanovgXC If you give it a try, let me know how it works for you.

eco 6y ago
That is very exciting to hear. I'll give it a shot. Thanks.