Opera Core Concerns

Official blog for Core developers at Opera

Graphics demos

My name is Tim Johansson, I am a core technology developer at Opera. I work in the core graphics team which is responsible for all the rendering (of web pages, SVG and <canvas>) and image decoding in Opera.

In the middle of December Opera had an engineering seminar outside Oslo in Norway. At the seminar there were a few presentations. I gave a presentation about graphics in Opera and showed a few demos. In this post I will write about two of the demos, and link to videos of them.

Opera Flashlight

One of the first assignments I had at Opera was to work on a technology for platform independent graphics, which is now used in some of Operas products including the Opera SDK.
When working on it I quickly realized that this technology would make it easy to upload Opera to a texture in a 3d application.
Since I had been working on a 3d engine for fun in my spare time I spent a late evening integrating Opera into my 3d engine. The place I thought sounded most fun to add it was as the projective texture used for the flashlight in the 3d engine.

This video demonstrates the result of that late night hack more than 3 years ago.

Hardware acceleration

One of the things I have been working on lately is hardware acceleration of the vector graphics library used for SVG and <canvas> in Opera using 3d hardware (through OpenGL and Direct3D).

In order to get the most performance from rendering SVG/<canvas> in hardware it is good to avoid reading the rendered image back from the graphics card to system memory since that is a slow operation.
This can be solved by rendering all of Opera (including UI and web pages) in hardware. Rendering Opera in hardware also makes it possible to add visual effects without any additional CPU cost.

This video shows a demo of Opera running fully hardware accelerated. The demo build used in this video is an interal Opera core technology reference build with hardware acceleration enabled. Hardware acceleration is still experimental and is not in any released or soon to be released products.

Selectors APIPresto in the the Opera User-Agent string

Comments

João EirasxErath Thursday, June 5, 2008 9:26:50 PM

omg !!!!!!
I want this on my Opera build.

Really nice work p

How about flipping pages using a cube like the desktops in linux ?

Idan AdarYtseJam Thursday, June 5, 2008 9:31:50 PM

NEAT!!

Patrick O'Reillypaddy2k Friday, June 6, 2008 12:37:32 AM

That is pretty dam cool. It looks pretty stable there. But I guess you'll start to run into the same problems as Compiz does with different graphics cards?

Luchio Friday, June 6, 2008 2:46:34 AM

Awesome demos! I hope we'll see the hardware acceleration someday, though I suspect it is a nightmare to test out on all possible hardware and OS configuration... Good luck!

Non-Tropponon-troppo Friday, June 6, 2008 5:46:53 AM

Wow, zuper cool!

I can imagine a browser wars 3D game where weapons are projected correct rendering of standards tests like Acid3!

Tim, thanks for this...

Northgrove Friday, June 6, 2008 10:26:43 AM

Obviously made just for demo purposes, but if making it to an actual Opera build in the far future wink, I'd rather see the transition effects configurable. It's important that they don't slow down the UI much as the user have to wait for sliding pages. But especially quick crossfades would be pretty slick. smile I actually think Microsoft took a hint there and that's why they switched to those (fades) in Windows 2000 rather than slower sliding menus of Windows 9x.

Capricouscapricous Friday, June 6, 2008 10:31:16 AM

Tim, bring on that awesome acceleration! It looks much more practical than the Firefox Cube Plugin [which only works on Windows].

Go Opera features!

RedFoxOne Friday, June 6, 2008 12:13:31 PM

Neat. Isnt that the coolest thing ya ever saw!

JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com

Keiv M.KeMiSa Friday, June 6, 2008 12:34:13 PM

wow

Bruno Casanobrunitoc Friday, June 6, 2008 3:42:58 PM

WOW

Is it coming to any Opera build ? Or it is only for testing ?
I would like to see it in the next version, Opera 10, OR EARLY !!!!


BEST FEATURE EVER SEEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!up party

FataL Friday, June 6, 2008 3:55:05 PM

Nice one! up
But don't forget to make all transitional effects optional. wink

Andresandresruiz Friday, June 6, 2008 4:39:23 PM

Big boys + big brains = big toys

Jimtoyotabedzrock Saturday, June 7, 2008 9:02:59 PM

Wow that’s awesome! DirectX will make it easy to support all MS platforms. Any possibly us Win users will get to try this first?

Does it render the entire page using the GPU or just specific parts?

amphi Monday, June 9, 2008 1:46:50 AM

Great stuff! bigsmile

Timothy ConnerVJgamer Wednesday, June 11, 2008 3:49:59 AM

RedFoxOne: Neat. Isnt that the coolest thing ya ever saw!

Ditto!

Glebgr1b0k Thursday, June 19, 2008 2:20:26 PM

that's great!
p.s. check tags, you lost commas

PeaceDestroyer Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:18:18 PM

Absolutly awesome!
I hope you could show us some more of this in the future. Good job indeed, it could be incredible to see this in Opera 10.

up

LaliLali19871014 Saturday, August 30, 2008 11:42:07 AM

Great up
Than you will can "copy" the penguin Compiz?
And for example for Ctrl + Tab (And Shift + Ctrl+Tab) can make something such as this: http://www.opera-bongeszo.com//sites/default/files/kepek/2008/9/fulvaltas.jpg
It will be super king
bye

Rafael Luikrafaelluik Friday, September 5, 2008 9:52:48 PM

I can't wait to see hardware acceleration, it's a dream that I have!

Opendix Thursday, October 2, 2008 6:27:21 PM

What is the core-Team doing the whole time? smile

Haavardhaavard Friday, October 3, 2008 12:48:39 PM

They are working on the core.

Kristofferstoffix Friday, October 3, 2008 2:29:03 PM

They must be working really hard,
since they don't even have time to
post new blogposts wink

Haavardhaavard Tuesday, October 7, 2008 12:35:39 PM

They are working very hard, actually. There are multiple projects, including the next major core version which is to power Peregrine smile

Opendix Thursday, October 9, 2008 8:04:38 PM

Yeah.. I thought that they are working very hard... soo... I can look forward to the next post.. perhaps they can tell us something about Peregrine *harriba* bigsmile

K Y Nghoneydew Friday, October 24, 2008 1:13:00 AM

Very impressive...!!!cheers

What graphic card do i need to use this feature?

Keldian.-Keldian Friday, November 21, 2008 7:35:39 PM

Excellent, I can't wait to see the future. bigsmile

sms985 Tuesday, November 25, 2008 9:18:23 AM

available in opera 10 perhaps? would be so great!

Bella Martensbellamartens Sunday, July 18, 2010 11:29:26 AM

just read through it, although it is an old post its still good - cool to see how things have evolved since 2008 in Opera

nidheeshrnidheeshroosevelt Wednesday, October 27, 2010 1:53:06 PM

me too read it just now...2 years gone.....still no hardware acceleration?????????

Jimtoyotabedzrock Thursday, October 28, 2010 2:02:41 PM

I think they are holding onto this as an ace up their sleeve since the Opera software renderer using a single CPU can almost match what other vendors have put out.

tisazalay Friday, December 17, 2010 9:26:20 PM

Are there plans to include this in the core in a future release? Maybe presto 3?

jehovajah Monday, March 21, 2011 10:29:54 PM

My basis question is why does the blog not support Latex? Does it support mathML? How can mathematicians work in these conditions?

Chirpie Tuesday, March 22, 2011 3:29:21 PM

Originally posted by jehovajah:

My basis question is why does the blog not support Latex? Does it support mathML? How can mathematicians work in these conditions?

Not sure why you are asking about this in a blog run by someone who doesn't control what's allowed on this site...

jehovajah Thursday, March 24, 2011 2:24:23 AM

Originally posted by Chirpie:

My basis question is why does the blog not support Latex? Does it support mathML? How can mathematicians work in these conditions?

Not sure why you are asking about this in a blog run by someone who doesn't control what's allowed on this site...




Thanks chirpie.

Trying to locate who is.

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