Qt 6.0's 3D Renderer Is Much Improved But More Work Remains

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Qt 6.0's 3D Renderer Is Much Improved But More Work Remains

With Qt 6.0 due to be released in December, Qt-minded consulting firm KDAB has published a blog post outlining the extensive 3D renderer improvements made for this big toolkit update. While Qt6's 3D rendering abilities are much improved, there still is further work ahead...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt6-3D-Renderer-Improvements

[DarkCloud]

Rendering thread gone ? So does this mean animations stop (like a busy indicator) while one does work like loading a large file. If so I guess it is now up to developer to do threading for heavy work loads.

There is a bigger picture here. If threads are to hard to use for these C++ experts at the Qt company, what does it spell for the average C++ developer. Maybe everything is going to get watered down with micro services, now the latest rage in the JavaScript world.

[Guest]

Rendering thread gone ? So does this mean animations stop (like a busy indicator) while one does work like loading a large file. If so I guess it is now up to developer to do threading for heavy work loads.

There is a bigger picture here. If threads are to hard to use for these C++ experts at the Qt company, what does it spell for the average C++ developer. Maybe everything is going to get watered down with micro services, now the latest rage in the JavaScript world.

Multi-threading is a bit hard, but it's not THAT hard. Plenty of software regularly does work on multiple threads and does it well. Look at Chrome and Android apps for example.

[iamsergio]

Rendering thread gone ? So does this mean animations stop (like a busy indicator) while one does work like loading a large file. If so I guess it is now up to developer to do threading for heavy work loads.

This was already the case in Qt 5.
If you're doing "heavy work" on the main thread you're screwed. Put that work in another thread (regardless if this is Qt 5 or 6).

[bug77]

Multi-threading is a bit hard, but it's not THAT hard. Plenty of software regularly does work on multiple threads and does it well. Look at Chrome and Android apps for example.

That may be, but it is easier when the responsibility for handling the render work falls to one party as opposed to several. I don't fully understand what they did and why, I hope more details will emerge in time.

Edit: After reading the full announcement, it appears the "render thread" was not a real render thread as Qt Quick was still duplicating some of its work. Oh well, their mess to clean up, I guess.

[ed31337]

Multi-threading is a bit hard, but it's not THAT hard. Plenty of software regularly does work on multiple threads and does it well. Look at Chrome and Android apps for example.

Hmm, not sure I'd use Chrome as a shining example of threading to look at. For one, it mostly uses multiple processes, not threads, AFAIK. And two, it's huge. Takes up a ton of memory, plus the source is so huge that you aren't likely to learn much from trying to climb that mountain of code.