19 ms·

> These issues are inherent limitations of using a main-thread-bound rendering architecture. sorry but bullshit! Sure, multi-threaded rendering can give faster

> These issues are inherent limitations of using a main-thread-bound rendering architecture. sorry but bullshit! Sure, multi-threaded rendering can give faster results but the apps AirBnB is making could have easily rendered at 60hz with single threaded software rendering in flash in 1998! I can only guess that too much abstraction throughout the systems has turned into death by 1000 cuts and their solution, instead of getting rid of the 1000 cuts is to apply more band-aids

JamesSwift 4y ago
Lottie is an industry standard cross-platform animations pipeline, its not limited to "apps AirBnB is making".
- gfxgirl 4y ago
  Irrelevant, the apps it's being used for would run fine on a 25yr old machine at 60fps. You shouldn't need multi-threading to render a few thousand objects and most UI apps of the type Lottie is being used for animate 100 or less at a time. Note: It's good that Lottie runs faster for its users. My point is only that the entire stack is over engineered and the solutions being used are because the stack is bloated and inefficient
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    I agree with the general point you're making, but a 1997 computer would not be able to render even just a basic loading spinner at 1170x2532 at 60 FPS. Software rendering would be impossible even with an infinitely fast CPU as it would exceed the bandwidth limit of AGP 1.0, which itself only came out that year. The graphics hardware at the time simply did not support that resolution at any speed.
    - mike_hearn 4y ago
      This is a common problem when people complain about graphics performance and compare to older hardware - we forget how much higher modern screen resolutions are. It's not a smoothly scaling problem either. As often with scaling, you hit problems at particular levels that require a totally new solution to the problem. CPU speeds stagnated whilst screen technologies didn't, hence, complexity.
deepfriedrice 4y ago
> their solution, instead of getting rid of the 1000 cuts is to apply more band-aids That's engineering at scale. It's impossible to remove more than a small fraction of those cuts within any reasonable time frame.
dlivingston 4y ago
This makes me wonder: are immediate-mode GUIs (like Dear ImGui) subject to stuttering and frame-drops under compute-heavy workloads?
- dagmx 4y ago
  Yes they are. They’re beholden to whatever your event loop is. they’re being told when to draw (hence the immediate), so if you suddenly have computation on the same thread that’s blocking OR your thread gets deprioritized , you’ll get stutters. Immediate mode UIs aren’t very suitable for mobile use though. They don’t have great consideration for battery efficiency, unless you introduce a retained backing of some kind. They’re also not great for accessibility, though that’s mostly just because they’re not native.
  - gfxgirl 4y ago
    Do you have any proof of this or just a gut feeling? Immediate mode guis do cache stuff, at least Dear ImGUI, one of the most popular Immediate mode guis caches. Further, at least in my mobile usage almost everything I do with my phone re-draws the entire screen. The #1 thing to do is scroll through content. There's very few apps I run where only some tiny thing is getting updated. Maybe my music player. I don't think it's settled that retained more GUIs are a battery win.
    - dagmx 4y ago
      Once you’ve introduced a state based caching and differentiation layer, you’re introducing retention and are entering into hybrid UI. If you don’t have sufficient caching layers to figure out when something has to update, you’re drawing too often killing battery. Maybe there are fewer purely immediate mode UI libraries today, which muddies the discussion though. On the note of the apps used, I would say the vast majority of apps I run only have a few elements updating at any given time. Most of them are based on scrolling for navigation but that’s a small part of what I do. Photo viewing and editing, viewing sites, replying to messages or mail, listening to music. Very little is a full screen update, and if it is, UIKit and SwiftUI are caching large amounts of the view objects to keep things snappy and only doing it when they receive input that requires it. Can immediate GUIs do that too? Of course, but again you enter the domain of retention.
rweichler 4y ago
Yep, same deal with AsyncDisplayKit and the classic "iOS can't handle our scale". Too many cooks. Move along, this isn't the library you're looking for
dagmx 4y ago
You’re ignoring the OS doing other things as well before letting you draw to the screen. This isn’t a video game where they’re direct drawing to a graphics context with exclusive use of the resources. They’re also setting up native widgets in the background, coordinating data downloads etc.. Unlike a video game where you control the rendering and scheduling to a greater degree, here they’re beholden to when the OS deems it ready to redraw or scheduling of background processes that may move their task to a lower priority. Yes you can go fast if you don’t factor in the rest of the system, but they designed Lottie to play well within a retained mode UI setup, which has inherent overhead.
- jhatemyjob 4y ago
  Interesting. Are videogames not beholden to the OS? Are all background processes suspended when SDL is running? Clearly videogames don't have native widgets in the background, nor do they ever "coordinate data downloads" (????) What an absolutely braindead reply. A telltale sign a comment has almost no thought put into it: when you go into the user's post history and see the first page filled with comments written that very same day. Scatterbrained to the max. Hey dude I'm gonna give you some unsolicited advice. Lay off the keyboard for a bit, would ya? Maybe go outside for a walk. You are spending way too much time writing comments on the internet. https://youtu.be/FmDFCKVnaRY?t=341 https://youtu.be/FmDFCKVnaRY?t=341
  - dagmx 4y ago
    The irony that you’re the one who’s getting worked up about someone else’s internet activity while acting like I’m the one that needs more reality. You’re right your advice is unsolicited, so please kindly keep your issues to yourself. I’d have been happy to discuss the nature of a UIKit and iOS based app cycle that affects these things, but I won’t with such an insufferable person who has nothing better to do than to contribute nothing other than their own anger out to the world. I find topics interesting. I comment on said topics. That’s all that matters. Not your opinions. Not your weird hang ups. It’s the holiday season. Go find someone to love you or share joy with instead of finding people to hate on on the internet. You clearly need it if this is the kind of stuff that gets you raging.
bfgoodrich 4y ago

JamesSwift 4y ago

Lottie is an industry standard cross-platform animations pipeline, its not limited to "apps AirBnB is making".

gfxgirl 4y ago
Irrelevant, the apps it's being used for would run fine on a 25yr old machine at 60fps. You shouldn't need multi-threading to render a few thousand objects and most UI apps of the type Lottie is being used for animate 100 or less at a time. Note: It's good that Lottie runs faster for its users. My point is only that the entire stack is over engineered and the solutions being used are because the stack is bloated and inefficient
- plorkyeran 4y ago
  I agree with the general point you're making, but a 1997 computer would not be able to render even just a basic loading spinner at 1170x2532 at 60 FPS. Software rendering would be impossible even with an infinitely fast CPU as it would exceed the bandwidth limit of AGP 1.0, which itself only came out that year. The graphics hardware at the time simply did not support that resolution at any speed.
  - mike_hearn 4y ago
    This is a common problem when people complain about graphics performance and compare to older hardware - we forget how much higher modern screen resolutions are. It's not a smoothly scaling problem either. As often with scaling, you hit problems at particular levels that require a totally new solution to the problem. CPU speeds stagnated whilst screen technologies didn't, hence, complexity.

deepfriedrice 4y ago

> their solution, instead of getting rid of the 1000 cuts is to apply more band-aids That's engineering at scale. It's impossible to remove more than a small fraction of those cuts within any reasonable time frame.

dlivingston 4y ago

This makes me wonder: are immediate-mode GUIs (like Dear ImGui) subject to stuttering and frame-drops under compute-heavy workloads?

dagmx 4y ago
Yes they are. They’re beholden to whatever your event loop is. they’re being told when to draw (hence the immediate), so if you suddenly have computation on the same thread that’s blocking OR your thread gets deprioritized , you’ll get stutters. Immediate mode UIs aren’t very suitable for mobile use though. They don’t have great consideration for battery efficiency, unless you introduce a retained backing of some kind. They’re also not great for accessibility, though that’s mostly just because they’re not native.
- gfxgirl 4y ago
  Do you have any proof of this or just a gut feeling? Immediate mode guis do cache stuff, at least Dear ImGUI, one of the most popular Immediate mode guis caches. Further, at least in my mobile usage almost everything I do with my phone re-draws the entire screen. The #1 thing to do is scroll through content. There's very few apps I run where only some tiny thing is getting updated. Maybe my music player. I don't think it's settled that retained more GUIs are a battery win.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Once you’ve introduced a state based caching and differentiation layer, you’re introducing retention and are entering into hybrid UI. If you don’t have sufficient caching layers to figure out when something has to update, you’re drawing too often killing battery. Maybe there are fewer purely immediate mode UI libraries today, which muddies the discussion though. On the note of the apps used, I would say the vast majority of apps I run only have a few elements updating at any given time. Most of them are based on scrolling for navigation but that’s a small part of what I do. Photo viewing and editing, viewing sites, replying to messages or mail, listening to music. Very little is a full screen update, and if it is, UIKit and SwiftUI are caching large amounts of the view objects to keep things snappy and only doing it when they receive input that requires it. Can immediate GUIs do that too? Of course, but again you enter the domain of retention.

rweichler 4y ago

Yep, same deal with AsyncDisplayKit and the classic "iOS can't handle our scale". Too many cooks. Move along, this isn't the library you're looking for

dagmx 4y ago

You’re ignoring the OS doing other things as well before letting you draw to the screen. This isn’t a video game where they’re direct drawing to a graphics context with exclusive use of the resources. They’re also setting up native widgets in the background, coordinating data downloads etc.. Unlike a video game where you control the rendering and scheduling to a greater degree, here they’re beholden to when the OS deems it ready to redraw or scheduling of background processes that may move their task to a lower priority. Yes you can go fast if you don’t factor in the rest of the system, but they designed Lottie to play well within a retained mode UI setup, which has inherent overhead.

jhatemyjob 4y ago
Interesting. Are videogames not beholden to the OS? Are all background processes suspended when SDL is running? Clearly videogames don't have native widgets in the background, nor do they ever "coordinate data downloads" (????) What an absolutely braindead reply. A telltale sign a comment has almost no thought put into it: when you go into the user's post history and see the first page filled with comments written that very same day. Scatterbrained to the max. Hey dude I'm gonna give you some unsolicited advice. Lay off the keyboard for a bit, would ya? Maybe go outside for a walk. You are spending way too much time writing comments on the internet. https://youtu.be/FmDFCKVnaRY?t=341 https://youtu.be/FmDFCKVnaRY?t=341
- dagmx 4y ago
  The irony that you’re the one who’s getting worked up about someone else’s internet activity while acting like I’m the one that needs more reality. You’re right your advice is unsolicited, so please kindly keep your issues to yourself. I’d have been happy to discuss the nature of a UIKit and iOS based app cycle that affects these things, but I won’t with such an insufferable person who has nothing better to do than to contribute nothing other than their own anger out to the world. I find topics interesting. I comment on said topics. That’s all that matters. Not your opinions. Not your weird hang ups. It’s the holiday season. Go find someone to love you or share joy with instead of finding people to hate on on the internet. You clearly need it if this is the kind of stuff that gets you raging.

bfgoodrich 4y ago