Previously the OpenGL instance was tied to each render/cache task,
creating and destroying it each time one started and stopped. This was
completely unnecessary since the instance holds no state and can be
shared by all of the render tasks without having to expensively start
a new one.
A huge optimization that ensures only the parts of a node graph that have
changed get pushed to the renderer. For thread-safety, the node graph is
copied elsewhere so that users can make changes asynchronously and the graph
can update when its threads are ready. Up until now, if an input value changed,
every node's values would be re-copied, or worse, if a connection was changed,
the entire graph would be recopied. This has been negligible in testing since
we've been largely testing with small graphs, but for massive projects, it's
important that this be as optimized as possible.
context
More intuitive code flow and allows the user to undock the viewer (which
forcibly destroys and recreates the context) and the viewer will handle
creation of the new texture in said new context.
Since EmitCachedFrameReady() makes a copy of the texture, we can economize a lot
by re-using the same copied texture for all the times rather than making a
separate copy for each time.
Sending a texture directly from the texture cache is dangerous since once the
reference is relinquished, it could be picked up and used by another thread.
Copying the texture to a separate one takes a little extra time but lets the
viewer remain in control of that texture.
Various backend improvements are included in this commit, mostly for the
benefit of exporting. These include:
- Moving more non-GL code from OpenGL derivatives into base classes
- An "export mode" that changes the cache behavior of video backends
- Using the Viewer's UUID introduced a few commits ago
- No longer hardcoding the pixel format/render mode in the backend (since
they'll inevitably differ when exporting vs previewing)
- Improved signalling for frames that are completed
Creating and destroying textures is a slow process, particularly when we can
re-use them throughout most of the render chain. We now keep them stored so
they can be re-used which improves performance substantially.
Workers run in different threads and the backends can poll whether the worker
is currently busy or not. However the previous iteration has the worker (and an
atomic int) provide the busy state which could easily desync with the main
thread (since all workers run in different threads). By holding the busy states
in the main thread, the main thread will always be able to poll the busy state
accurately.
Updating values rapidly would cause strange jitters as a
byproduct of the viewer trying to update from the renderer while
it was still working. Rather than the viewer trying to access the
the renderer, we now send textures in the initial update signal
to keep everything synchronized.
Major refactoring work to try sharing as much code as possible between the
video renderers and audio renderers, as well as make them as
platform-independent as possible.
commit
For testing the new iteration, the texture cache disk download was written
into the main thread instead of into the separate threads. Now they're back
in separate threads again.
Also I think some of these files probably should have been in the previous
commit.
Once again, conceptually this system should work, however it does not seem to
be the most efficient and it wouldn't surprise me if the multithreading was
eventually upgraded to an even more coherent system one day. However for
"core principles" this should be fairly decent.
The previous iteration was fairly OpenGL-heavy. It's now been separated into
a base class that is OpenGL independent and a derived class that is
OpenGL-based. Over time this should allow for portability away from OpenGL
if necessary.
Previous iteration used probably an excessive amount of threads to make
everything work. New iteration intends to use precisely the amount of logical
threads available and using a moved QObject rather than a subclassed QThread
itsmattkc