3 ms·

Why isn't vector good enough?

by tormeh 12y ago

maccard 12y ago
Because you still have to rasterise it, which is a relatively slow operation, and considering rendering the OS assets is one of the most common tasks you will perform, it probably needs to be a very fast routine
- tehmaco 12y ago
  Would it not be more efficient to produce the correctly scaled bitmaps once, then cache the output?
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Yeah, just render it on resolution change.
    - bitL 12y ago
      It's not that simple. Normally you render significantly upscaled stuff in an off-screen buffer and then downscale it for the best possible appearance for every single frame. There are some ratios you need to keep, or you'd end up with Linux-style graphics "quality" (try scaling factor other than 1.0). If you just scale icon/bitmap once without thinking about this, it would look most likely ugly after upscaling/downscaling steps (unless you got lucky).
      - vidarh 12y ago
        That's mainly an issue at low resolutions.
        bitL 12y ago
        It's like when you learn how to notice aliasing artifacts in photos taken with DSLRs. It cannot be unseen. So even if those issues are mostly noticeable in low-res, you "cannot unsee" them in higher resolutions anymore either.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  The bigger problem is decent renderings at lower resolution. My wife did a lot of red lining for low-end Nokia phones. Even at the higher end, you still need to carefully produce bitmaps (make in Illustrator, red line the bits in PhotoShop). Now, this becomes easier at higher resolutions, but you still need to do it, I think (fonts are all hinted to avoid artifacts, some basic shapes are fine, but do anything complicated and you'll begin to notice jaggies that you can eliminate with a hand tuned bitmap...).
georgemcbay 12y ago
Vectors are not a panacea. http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-icons.html http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-... (Among other articles about this topic). Having said that, I still wish they were better supported in modern OSes as a hybrid solution because while they start to fall apart at small sizes they do handle the scaling in the other direction (which is what this topic is mostly about here anyway) well, certainly better than just upsampling a bitmap icon.

Why isn't vector good enough?

by tormeh 12y ago

Why isn't vector good enough?

Because you still have to rasterise it, which is a relatively slow operation, and considering rendering the OS assets is one of the most common tasks you will perform, it probably needs to be a very fast routine

tehmaco 12y ago
Would it not be more efficient to produce the correctly scaled bitmaps once, then cache the output?
- tormeh 12y ago
  Yeah, just render it on resolution change.
  - bitL 12y ago
    It's not that simple. Normally you render significantly upscaled stuff in an off-screen buffer and then downscale it for the best possible appearance for every single frame. There are some ratios you need to keep, or you'd end up with Linux-style graphics "quality" (try scaling factor other than 1.0). If you just scale icon/bitmap once without thinking about this, it would look most likely ugly after upscaling/downscaling steps (unless you got lucky).
    - vidarh 12y ago
      That's mainly an issue at low resolutions.
      - bitL 12y ago
        It's like when you learn how to notice aliasing artifacts in photos taken with DSLRs. It cannot be unseen. So even if those issues are mostly noticeable in low-res, you "cannot unsee" them in higher resolutions anymore either.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
The bigger problem is decent renderings at lower resolution. My wife did a lot of red lining for low-end Nokia phones. Even at the higher end, you still need to carefully produce bitmaps (make in Illustrator, red line the bits in PhotoShop). Now, this becomes easier at higher resolutions, but you still need to do it, I think (fonts are all hinted to avoid artifacts, some basic shapes are fine, but do anything complicated and you'll begin to notice jaggies that you can eliminate with a hand tuned bitmap...).

georgemcbay 12y ago

Vectors are not a panacea. http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-icons.html http://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector-... (Among other articles about this topic). Having said that, I still wish they were better supported in modern OSes as a hybrid solution because while they start to fall apart at small sizes they do handle the scaling in the other direction (which is what this topic is mostly about here anyway) well, certainly better than just upsampling a bitmap icon.