Hi,

I'm thinking about dropping/removing the Flashplayer 9 compatibility of krpano.
Please vote what you think.





first some notes:

• the internal preloader will be still Flashplayer 9 compatible and show an Flashplayer 10 needed message when a too old Flashplayer wil be used, that means there will be no changes in the HTML about the minimal Flashplayer version necessary,
• using the Flashplayer 9 renderer (display.flash10=off) will be still possible,
• regarding to the Adobe Flash Player Version Penetration page the Flashplayer 10 has already a ubiquity of 94-97% (March 2010)
  

the advantages:

• a smaller krpano.swf (~10kb)
• a bit faster startup
• a bit faster krpano code execution
• a quicker development of the rendering part
• easier and 'better' adding of new Flashplayer 10 and 10.1 features (like Touch Gestures)

best regards,
Klaus

Hi,

okay, I will try to explain a bit more detailed, but that can be a bit technical:

Zitat

if I look at my environment and my customers on the otherhand. Think most run on flash 9.

really? on the other site - everyone I know personally has already the Flashplayer 10 installed (even if they didn't know that),
due the automatic updating from Adobe I think the most people should already have a Flashplayer 10...

Zitat

If it's possible to show a Flashplayer 10 is needed message, how bout skipping that and put the display.flash10=off

it doesn't work so simple
something similar is already done - when a Flashplayer 9 was used, only the Flashplayer 9 capabilities were used,

internally it works in that way:
there are two complete different and separated rendering engines in krpano:
- the Flashplayer 9 one (~10kb)
- and the Flashplayer 10 one (~14kb)

they are embedded inside krpano and depending on the used Flashplayer, only the needed one will be loaded,

~70% of the code of them both is completely the same and duplicated,
the Flash10 renderer includes the Flash9 renderer completely (only with different data types) plus it additionally uses some of the new Flashplayer 10 features like 'Vector' and the 'drawTriangle' function for drawing 3d distorted bitmaps,

this splitting int two separated renderer engines is necessary, because when new Flash10 features were directly compiled into the main swf, the whole swf can't be executed anymore by the Flashplayer 9,

Zitat

I think with the latest SWFOBject we could always "force" a expressinstall with flash version 10. No need to put that in the SWF.

yes, but that doesn't make it easier, then you need also an additional express-install file and there still some browsers were that 'express-install' doesn't work well (just try it),

Zitat

Doesn't really matter. If people can download a spherical image, they sure can download the plugin :) If the size becomes to big, you always enable some kind of preloader for the swf alone or include it in the current loader of the images.

in my mind every byte counts ;-)
and note - new features also need new additional space!
without a constant optimizing of the code and the code size and improving the internal compressions, the krpano.swf would be already over 300kb!

Zitat

A "bit" is a bit vague to state my opinion about this.

I can't give correct measurements yet, and I don't expect a real 'feel-able' speedup (especially on newer computers), the current code is already good optimized, but a bit faster is a bit faster

Zitat

This could be interesting, what kind of developments do you have in mind?

like multi-resolution hotspots, more pano/object views inside krpano, fewer memory need for the internal data structures (important for large gigapixel panos), manual 2d-frustum-clipping, ... just everything that effects the rendering,

Zitat

Alsoo, this is something I noticed. Flash 10 uses hardware accelaration.

as far I know that will be only used to 'blit' (=draw/copy) the finished content to the screen and for video decoding, both doesn't effect the pano viewing directly (beside of the bugs that some new beta/rc flashplayer 10.1 versions have with hardware acceleration ),

Zitat

You could always finish till 1.09 Final and start 1.10 with only flash 10 support.

yes, I could start dropping it later, but I think it's already a good time for it,

Zitat

Or if you have time, work on both versions and release them side by side.

yes, having two versions would be theoretical possible, but I have a made bad experiences with such - I will not do that!

Zitat

Have you thought of ofline tours? they cant upgrade to flash 10

what's the problem about offline tours?
existing tours will not be effect of course, and when using the standalone player you can choose the used player version by yourself (e.g. kprotect will only exports flashplayer 10 exe/app files),

Zitat

As a developer I would say yes! ... But as a user I would say, keep flash 9

right! but what when there no Flash9 users anymore?

best regards,
Klaus

Hi,

Zitat von »Jarredja«

Just to clarify, would version 1.0.8 be Flash 10 only or would that be done in 1.0.9?

that's the question I could drop the Flash9 comapbilty already in the current 1.0.8 version or wait and drop it later in 1.0.9, but I will not actively developing on two versions...
btw - using old version is always possible, just have a look at the archive,

Zitat von »marquee«

I'm browsing under the hood of some of the panoramas and quickly realised that I can't see the code editor because I have an current krpano player and it keeps telling me wrong Krpano version.

sorry, I'm simply forgot the upload the updated plugins to the krpano page
but the plugins in the download packages are up to date of course,
the krpano.swf and the editor.swf are only checking them selfs to be from same build to avoid incompatibilities between them,

best regards,
Klaus

Hi,

Zitat von »Shanti«

but about the GPU, there is already a beta version of a new player (TPP ? ) that uses only 4-7% CPU to show the panorama, it even worked on my 6-7 year old video card, so using flash 10 + gpu is a good idea.

it's not possible to have any direct access to the GPU from Flash!
the TPP player only uses the fact that the Flashplayer sometimes seems to use the GPU when using the Flash10 PerspectiveProjection to transform flash objects, but that works only on some specific GPU cards, and when Flash is not using the GPU (which can't be detected), this method of drawing 3D transformed images is slower than the usual Flash10 drawTriangle method...

Zitat von »Shanti«

if the code is already duplicate why not create a Flash 9 version only and a Flash 10 version ?

only the 'renderer' code is 'duplicated', the core is always Flash 9 based, and when starting to use Flash10 capabilities in the core, building a Flash9 version will not be possible anymore

best regards,
Klaus

Hi,

Zitat von »Shanti«

but I wasn't saying create 2 parallel versions, I meant create 1 version 9 (or probably just leave the current one as the last v9) and leave it like that, just for "backup" then the new features will only be Flash 10 :)

the older versions are always available here in the download archive:
http://krpano.com/download/archive/

best regards,
Klaus