Forums » Impact Engine » appmobi open sources DirectCanvas etc.

this is a big deal! awesome news for impact developers... cant wait to get my hands on it and compile my own app locally!

appmobi folks, thanks!!

i wonder if they'll continue full steam with the android version of direct canvas, which i think was scheduled to come out early next year...?

http://www.appmobi.com/PDF/appMobi_Open_Source_Final.pdf

SAN FRANCISCO – November 22, 2011 – HTML5 development powerhouse, appMobi
(www.appmobi.com) today announced that on Black Friday (November 25) it will open source key elements of its mobile technology to further accelerate the industry's migration to HTML5. The newly open sourced technology will include the appMobi cross-platform device APIs, which support HTML5 development for both Android and iOS platforms. appMobi will also release the source code for its much heralded “mobiUs” browser, which allows HTML5 Web apps to perform identically to native apps.
The bounty of technology made available to HTML5 developers is rounded out with appMobi’s
“DirectCanvas” technology, which accelerates HTML5 canvas rendering, physics calculations and sound by as much as 1500 percent, providing native performance to HTML5-based games.

Something I've been trying to understand. Is it up to us (the game developer) to implement any DirectCanvas code into our games? Or is this an advancement that will potentially be worked into the HTML5 specification in general for the canvas element?

I don't believe so, though I'm sure the AppMobi folks will drop by to clarify further if needed.

Basically, when deploying a 'native app', if you use the UIWebView in iOS or whatever the Android equivalent is, you get something that performs no better (and often worse) than the canvas element in the browser itself. Both iOSImpact and DC work by providing something that covers most if not all of the Canvas functionality - but strips away all the non essential stuff so that you get a faster app out of it.

It won't be part of the specification because it's nothing to do with the specification; it's purely an implementation detail.

overtime the canvas implementations should get faster in the browser, but both iOS impact and DC do NOT implement the whole canvas spec - just enough features to accelerate games on hardware.
It seems odd that the browser makers can't also do that, but I guess there's so much other stuff to do in the browser... google also seem to be focusing on webGL and a high speed graphic canvas just for mobile seems to treated as a distraction.

I was quite careful to say 'functionality' not 'specification' - I'm aware that some of the API functionality isn't present but the core principles of drawing, querying etc. of the canvas are present in both. I'm not sure how much is left out in either case though. I don't know about appMobi but it seems that the primary exclusion in iOSImpact is the vector drawing stuff - which to be fair is not something I'd expect to see so much in Impact games anyway.

The browser makers, though, have to implement to the specification and also tend to write things more for compatibility rather than performance.

I think I understand a little better now.
Does DirectCanvas improve performance in desktop browser games, or is it just applicable to mobile browser games?

it's for the mobile browser, AFAIK

desktop browsers are already super fast , Chrome being the leader.