GTK 4.14 Adding Graphics Offloading Capabilities Under Wayland

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GTK 4.14 Adding Graphics Offloading Capabilities Under Wayland

The GNOME GTK toolkit is introducing support for graphics offloading within the toolkit. This new GTK "GraphicsOffload" support is Wayland-only at this time and not working either for non-Linux platforms...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GTK4-Graphics-Offloading

[uid313]

So can you offload render the whole application (Gtk.Application or Gtk.ApplicationWindow) to a subsurface?
Then you could have a first-person shooter game where you run up to a computer in the game and interact with a GTK application through that in-game computer.

[skeevy420]

So can you offload render the whole application (Gtk.Application or Gtk.ApplicationWindow) to a subsurface?
Then you could have a first-person shooter game where you run up to a computer in the game and interact with a GTK application through that in-game computer.

Is GNOME the boss level?

[binarybanana]

So can you offload render the whole application (Gtk.Application or Gtk.ApplicationWindow) to a subsurface?
Then you could have a first-person shooter game where you run up to a computer in the game and interact with a GTK application through that in-game computer.

No, you need the opposite of what this does: a way to export buffers of the window content and import them as texture in the game.

[oleid]

This is a neat feature! Looking forward to it!

In turn this can yield more efficient video playback on the GNOME Wayland desktop and other benefits.

Michael: are you sure this requires Gnome? The blog post only mentions Wayland.

[Artim]

This is a neat feature! Looking forward to it!



Michael: are you sure this requires Gnome? The blog post only mentions Wayland.

Weil, it's the implementation in GNOME. But of course other DEs should be able to implement something similar.

[Artim]

I'd be interested what that means for software vs hardware decoding. Would this make the implementation of hardware accelerated video playback? Also, would that even have any effect when using hardware acceleration, would it make it even more efficient? Or is the effect negligible or even non existent when not doing software decoding?

Also, it says that this would be best to use when nothing is displayed above the video. But would that even be relevant in reality? If I think about the full screen player interfaces of the likes of VLC or the players built into browsers, they do display the video controls on top of the video if need. Or can the application seamlessly switch between this new mode when no controls are displayed and the old method when displaying them?

[Monsterovich]

Remind me, doesn't Xfce4 use a similar feature for its settings application? This looks like another "innovation" from Apple.

[You-]

I'd be interested what that means for software vs hardware decoding. Would this make the implementation of hardware accelerated video playback? Also, would that even have any effect when using hardware acceleration, would it make it even more efficient? Or is the effect negligible or even non existent when not doing software decoding?

Also, it says that this would be best to use when nothing is displayed above the video. But would that even be relevant in reality? If I think about the full screen player interfaces of the likes of VLC or the players built into browsers, they do display the video controls on top of the video if need. Or can the application seamlessly switch between this new mode when no controls are displayed and the old method when displaying them?

The subsurfaces and can raised and lowered as needed. Which means maximum benefit when no control, some benefit with overlayed control and same as current when its too complicated to offload at all.

hardware decoding should work with this, but you could use hardware decoding anyway. The main differences may be the number and types of hoops you have to jump through to get it working - hopefully this will make it simpler.

[You-]

Remind me, doesn't Xfce4 use a similar feature for its settings application? This looks like another "innovation" from Apple.

I doubt it. and no overlays, offloads and hardware planes etc are not from Apple. Even x11 had xv for some video offloading capabilities.