[muzzakus]

Hi Guys,

Looking at the sticky threads there is a big question mark over whether the GUI performance can be taken further. I wonder if more information is availble on this topic as it's a decision point for me.



I find it hard to understand why it could not be flawless 60fps. We see many advanced and super smooth apps on iOS devices.



Taking into context :



With lastest ralease of ATV2 XBMC vs Latest release of XBMC4Xbox. Nothing scanned in library, hi-res fanart or thumbnails not a factor.


Xbox age = 10 years
ATV2 age = Current year

Xbox Ram = 64 Meg
ATV2 Ram = 256 Meg

Xbox resolution setting = 720p
ATV2 resolution setting = 720p

Xbox running Confluence Skin = Flawless 60fps Vsynced
ATV2 running identical Confluence Skin = Stuttery framerate, poor user experience


So If I may pose -

a) Is the ATV2 Xbmc port not utilisng hardware acceleration for the GUI and future Hardware implementation can fix stutter?

b) Is the ATV2 Xbmc indeed utilisng hardware acceleration for the GUI but underlying code factors need optimisation and even rewriting to fit ATV2 architecture?

c) ATV2, Ipad, etc. Has never seen anything as demanding as Xbmc before even tho it's not obvious. Xbmc as we know is as good as it's going to get on ATV2. Xbox architecture is significantly more suited to Xbmc application GUI principles.


No puns intented, just a clinical straight query.



Thanks.

[topfs2]

If you think it can be made faster, the source is available, patches welcome.

XBox was a gaming machine, made to run games and GRAPHICS fast. ATV2 is not.

[muzzakus]

If you think it can be made faster, the source is available, patches welcome.

XBox was a gaming machine, made to run games and GRAPHICS fast. ATV2 is not.

Sorry to make you upset. Didn't mean to. So reading between the lines it's c) ATV2 is not suited to Xbmc GUI and nothing can be done.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

[topfs2]

There are tons of optimizations which can be done, but yes. XBMC is a really heavy app to render and its not designed with slow GPU in mind.

I'm mostly upset about people who, without knowing, make assumptions that clearly it must be possible to be faster and that its simple. I spent an entire summer coding and trying to optimize and what I learnt was that its real hard getting it faster without making optimized skins. In fact, to reach 60fps on that hardware I could not even have backgrounds, the GPU of the ATV2 is far faster than that of the hardware I had though.

So this is a big culprit, most skins are designed around fast GPUs and not around the ones found in embedded systems (which are slower than that of the old xbox). Obviously there is still lots we can do for the skinner but in the end, thats what makes the most impact.

[topfs2]

And to be a little more helpful I'd suggest trying one of the lighter skins available. SLiK is one example but the ATV 1 skin should be light as well. There are many more but I have not tried em all.

Confluence is about average in terms of how heavy it is, its by far not the most heavy but its also not the lightest. It is designed to fit the majority of the used hardware where its trying to be snappy but give lots of features. I'm sure there will be more and more ATV2 optimized skins in the future.

EDIT: If you take a real close look at the ATV2 skin and know how confluence is coded and how much our renderer has to work with our skins you'd see that the ATV2 skin OS X ships with is at most doing one tenth of the work we do.

[davilla]

Patches are welcome, arm chair comments are not. please keep the silly comparisons out too. nothing happens by magic, it takes time and effort and HARD work.

If I work on GUI, users bitch about video playback, if I work on video, they bitch about GUI. Gezz, give me a break guys.

Locking this thread because it pissed me off.