Platform/GFX/Direct2DDemo
Demoing Direct2D
Since there are occasions where people might want to demonstrate Direct2D browser hardware acceleration. I'll briefly describe here how to do this.
Required Software
You need to be running either Windows 7 or Windows Vista with the Vista Platform update. Windows 7 is preferred because of it using WDDM1.1
Required Hardware
You'll need to make sure you have DX10 compatible hardware or higher. DX9 hardware may work, but performance will vary significantly. Onboard graphics chipsets may also not function quite as you'd like them to. nVidia or ATI hardware is at this point the best hardware to demo this on. In order to check for recent enough drivers and DX 10 support, go to Run, and execute 'dxdiag'. Under the 'display' tab it should display DDI: 10 (or higher), and on windows 7 it should display WDDM: 1.1
Installing a Build
Mozilla 1.9.3 (mozilla-central) builds as of Friday, February 26, 2010, contain support for Direct2D and DirectWrite. This also includes Mozilla 1.9.3 alpha 2.
Starting the build
The best way to start is is to just run the firefox executable with a special d2d profile. (i.e. firefox -no-remote -P d2d) A second instance can then be ran in order to make comparisons on a different profile.
Using Direct2D
By default, Direct2D and DirectWrite are turned off. Steps to turn it on:
- Enter 'about:config'
- Click through the warning, if necessary
- Enter gfx.font in the 'Filter' box
- Double-click on 'gfx.font_rendering.directwrite.enabled' to set it to true
- Below this, right click and select New > Integer to add a pref setting
- Enter 'mozilla.widget.render-mode' for the preference name, 6 for the value
- Restart
Some good sites
Some good sites that show off the advantages of hardware acceleration well are the following:
- http://people.mozilla.com/~vladimir/demos/photos.svg (particularly noticable when sizing up the photos)
- http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/balloon.svg
- http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/clipdrag12.svg
- http://maps.google.com/ (zoom in and out once, to make sure that images are cached, and then see the smooth zoom in/out animation in the D2D build)
