future of GPU in flash, thoughts [DISC]

[mr_malee]

hello everyone, through some searching I have found a way to enable GPU in flash *that elusive green square. Sorry if this has been posted before, but here's how to enable GPU rendering.

this document explains it: http://www.adobe.com/support/documen...ease_Notes.pdf (page 65)

you'll need CS4

navigate to this directory: "C:\Documents and Settings\username"

there should be a "mm.cfg" file in there, if not, just create one.

add these lines to the mm.cfg file:

DisplayGPUBlend=1
OverrideGPUValidation=1

create a flash movie, go into publish settings, go down to "Hardware acceleration", select "Level2 - GPU"

Test your movie, run the movie outside of the FlashIDE in the flash10 debug player.

you should see a green square in the top-left corner, if its any other colour, GPU cannot be enabled.

Adobe do not recommend you do this as it could crash your computer http://tv.adobe.com/#vi+f15384v1063

let me know if you have any success my card is pretty crappy here, would love to see how many sprites a good card could handle. When testing on my computer the example runs at 40fps in GPU and 11 in normal with 6000 bitmaps moving around

I cannot get this working in a html file, I believe adobe has stopped this from happening since it needs the mm.cfg file to work

[tonypa]

I see green square. However, it runs within debug player at ~45 fps no matter if gpu is enabled or not. It runs at 60 fps in non-debug player.

[mr_malee]

hmm, guess you don't need the debug player then. Their doc must be wrong?

so how did it run without GPU enabled tony?

EDIT - It seems the mm.cfg might not be needed, guess its only used to show if GPU can be used. Simply toggling the publish setting will alter the performance. Also, it seems the gpu likes bigger images. running the above with 8000 2px bitmaps will run quite slow on the GPU, using normal mode will render it faster. However, rendering 8000 sprites of the pig in normal mode will render much slower than in GPU.

[hatu]

Malee can you test it with 3D rendering? I'd imagine that's where the most obvious increase should be if it actually works.

[Ray Beez]

I strongly recommend you and others here join the CS5 beta program so that there are voices there from the game development side of things.

https://prerelease.adobe.com/

They are pretty far from a release (CS4 was only patched a month or two ago, for the first time!).

Your voice WILL be heard there and you can help shape the next release.


As for GPU... I think most of that implementation was strictly in favor of video streaming (ie: blitting a rectangle of graphics real quick). That's why you see little to no improvement in anything else, such as interactive and dynamic elements.

They don't have a solid grasp on using the GPU. Photoshop CS4 won't even do GPU accelleration unless you have a very modern card. Odd considering PS is mainly just 2D and 2D accelleration hardware hasnt really changed since the mid to late 90's.

[UnknownGuy]

And the place to sign up for the pre-release program is here I believe:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform...lease_interest

That video was pretty interesting Malee. I have never watched videos on their site before.

[tomsamson]

Yes,its a good idea to take part in a beta to see what they are doing or not doing and get heard, just as you should also post your views in your blog or other blogs on the topic (see here: http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=800427 )
Regarding the "GPU acceleration" as it exists in the flash player right now is a bad joke.
As Ray pointed out its main use is for video playback right now and even for that it isn´t all that useful as it only works in certain cases on certain (very few) graphics cards.
I hope with the louder getting of contender tech and complaints by the community now Adobe will be forced to act propperly (or, well, more and more will switch over to other things with time and it will be Adobe´s own fault).