I don't think a lot of developers would need the entire 2D drawing API to be hardware accelerated. If we could just render stuff to bitmaps/ layers that we can freely move around and send those to the GPU compositor that would be great for animation, scrolling, etc.
On Sep 16, 7:50 pm, Romain Guy <romain...@android.com> wrote: > Hi, > > This is something we have investigated several times in the past. The > biggest issue with hardware acceleration of the 2D drawing API is > coverage. Many features offered by the existing 2D APIs are difficult > or extremely expensive to implement using OpenGL. There are also > issues with various OpenGL implementations. As game developers know > very well, different GPUs and OpenGL drivers sometimes behave a little > differently or suffer from different bugs. By using a software > rendering API we can guarantee rendering fidelity across all devices. > There is also the problem that mobile GPUs are not all well suited for > the kind of operations required by a 2D drawing API as currently used > by the Android UI toolkit (fill rate or shaders complexity can be a > problem for instance.) > > Hardware acceleration of the drawing APIs is something we would love > to have but it is by no means a magic bullet that's going to solve all > issues. > > For what it's worth, window composition is already hardware > accelerated and has been so since Android 1.0. > > > > > > On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:36 AM, markusn82 <markus...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I've been developing Android application for quite awhile now. Please > > correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know the UI toolkit and 2D > > graphics API aren't hardware accelerated (the official documentation > > states that Canvas is not accelerated). I've found that most non- > > trivial animation or blending operations are painfully slow even on > > mid-level devices like a Droid, even after taking much time to > > optimize my code. > > > I'd like to know what the rationale is for not providing hardware > > support for these frameworks? Wouldn't it be possible to at least make > > it optional for vendors to implement support? Does anyone have any > > additional information about this issue? > > > Thanks! > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > > Groups "Android Developers" group. > > To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > > For more options, visit this group at > >http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > > -- > Romain Guy > Android framework engineer > romain...@android.com > > Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time > to provide private support. All such questions should be posted on > public forums, where I and others can see and answer them -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
