4 ms·

Like I said in my top comment, it's a profiler. I need to consume logs from distributed applications (on possibly tens of thousands of nodes) and render them in

Like I said in my top comment, it's a profiler. I need to consume logs from distributed applications (on possibly tens of thousands of nodes) and render them in as coherent a fashion as possible. Going to 3d rendering via OpenGL / WebGL was one of the options I considered. But honestly, this is a boatload of complexity. Why do I need to pick up a full 3D rendering library just to draw rectangles on the screen? Plus, consider: the slot viewer (where the rectangles are shown) still needs to draw some UI components (e.g., on hoverover). I still need that UI integration there, even if it's not as performance-sensitive. So I end up needing something along the lines of egui anyway. I definitely understand that not all UI libraries are going to be optimized for this. But I was surprised that it wasn't easy to e.g. get a high-performance canvas dropped into libraries that specifically advertised themselves as high-performance.

IX-103 3y ago
The reason to pick up a "a full 3D rendering library" is that it is actually a lower level interface to the hardware. Almost all 2D operations are now implemented on top of 3D hardware primitives. By limiting yourself to a 2D engine you're ensuring there are more layers of abstraction between you and the hardware. While # layers of abstraction doesn't always correlate with overhead, it does place limits on performance.
- josephg 3y ago
  Yeah. And it’s not one or the other. On the web you can make a “3d” rendering surface for the profile traces and use absolutely positioned DOM elements rendered on top for you hover-over widgets and things. It’s still a bit of a mess though. I understand wanting to keep everything in a single UI library if you can.
josephg 3y ago
I was curious so I took a look at firefox's profiler. It looks like it does a hybrid render, using a couple of canvas elements for the flame graph and the stack trace (up the top), but the rest of the UI is rendered using plain old DOM elements. It performs great, despite the whole thing being pure javascript. Example: https://share.firefox.dev/40QUthv https://share.firefox.dev/40QUthv . (Though this trace is probably smaller than the profiling traces you're demoing.)

IX-103 3y ago

The reason to pick up a "a full 3D rendering library" is that it is actually a lower level interface to the hardware. Almost all 2D operations are now implemented on top of 3D hardware primitives. By limiting yourself to a 2D engine you're ensuring there are more layers of abstraction between you and the hardware. While # layers of abstraction doesn't always correlate with overhead, it does place limits on performance.

josephg 3y ago
Yeah. And it’s not one or the other. On the web you can make a “3d” rendering surface for the profile traces and use absolutely positioned DOM elements rendered on top for you hover-over widgets and things. It’s still a bit of a mess though. I understand wanting to keep everything in a single UI library if you can.

josephg 3y ago

I was curious so I took a look at firefox's profiler. It looks like it does a hybrid render, using a couple of canvas elements for the flame graph and the stack trace (up the top), but the rest of the UI is rendered using plain old DOM elements. It performs great, despite the whole thing being pure javascript. Example: https://share.firefox.dev/40QUthv https://share.firefox.dev/40QUthv . (Though this trace is probably smaller than the profiling traces you're demoing.)