Oct 06
The application is implemented based on 3D Text Space. You will notice that the number of characters displayed in the Silverlight version is much less than that in Flash. It’s because Text Rendering in Silverlight is CPU intensive and too many TextBlock objects will make the application crash.
I think there are some other ways to increase the performance of using TextBlock in Silverlight. However, I didn’t have any idea yet. If you have have any suggestions, please feel free to share with me.
Comparison
Flash implementation: 80 minutes(Implemented First)
Silverlight implementation: 50 minutes
Source codes
Spiral Text [Flash 9, AS3] (35.4 KiB, 2,455 hits)
- Spiral Text [Silverlight 2, C#] (20.9 KiB, 2,516 hits)
Flash
Silverlight
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October 6th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I don’t understand how Silverlight is getting all the votes. It is clearly rendering *fewer* characters at a *slower* framerate. How is that better?
October 6th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
This is a website for newbie Silverlight developers who want to try it (i.e. fanboys). That’s why almost everytime they come and click repeatedly on the “Make Silverlight Larger” link. Flash developers are already settled with what they have.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Well said yuku.
I think you hit it on the nail.
Silverlight is like all choppy and slow which slow down my browser like hell.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
I wonder who really needs comparisons like these, It would be amazing to think that silverlight could overtake adobe and macromedia’s 15 years of development. Flash is far better anyway, easier to develop to and by now, has far better dev support.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:37 am
I understand your concern on what is the meaing of the voting.
Actually, i don’t really intended to get any meaning from the voting. It’s really just for fun and let all of you to vote what you like (no matter what’s the reason behind.)
October 7th, 2008 at 12:58 am
As a C# guy Silverlight appeals to me more, but this article is biased. To make things worse, when I initially clicked on the Silverlight example it only refreshed when i scrolled the page, while the Flash one was fine.
My girlfriends also been moaning about the Silverlight player itv.com use for their catchup, it was very unresponsive in Firefox, so she switched to IE which was better, but she had no ability fast forward pause or rewind, which is simplistic controls nowadays. These issues a hopefully more down to ITV than Silverlight. ITV vs BBC iPlayer doesn’t really do Silverlight much justice. Here’s hoping it gets better.
October 17th, 2008 at 6:27 am
[...] to get into the DOM from Silverlight this time… you know you’re going to have to at some point :) Flash vs Silverlight: Spiral Text Terence Tsang posts a very cool spiral effect with text. DataGrid in ComboBox Lee stuffs a datagrid [...]
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:04 am
Francis Lukesh said “I don’t understand how Silverlight is getting all the votes. It is clearly rendering *fewer* characters at a *slower* framerate. How is that better?”
Hey Francis,
Microsoft is not going to compare its product(Silverlight) with Adobe(Flash)..Its u and me who r comparing, b’cos in current senario we developer needs only such application which will resolve our problem or fulfill all the requirements without any specialization( like Flash….Thats why they comes under Multimedia team),
We all developers have to appericiate Microsoft for providing us such a tool like Silverlight which give us more respect and satisfaction in Development area where we are.I understand why u r that much of worry…. :) The main problem for all flash workers is : If a developer is able to work as a Multimedia person then naturally its a difficult time for a multimedia person to safe his position(only through adding some action scripts… no one will be king).
Never Mind…
Cheers by Anand Ranjan
November 19th, 2008 at 10:15 am
From what i’ve seen of both programs.
Flash and silverlight have the same quality rendering of bmp images, and silverlight has a higher default framerate, which means its going to be smoother, but take up more processing power.
However Flash is still the vector king, and font is vector based.
This test proves that, and since I beleive the future of graphics lies in vector objects. Flash gets my vote.
December 29th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Do you want true??
This’s answer of here..
http://www.hoons.kr/Board.aspx?Name=mysilverlight&Mode=2&BoardIdx=18191&Key=&Value=
January 13th, 2009 at 12:19 am
I am developer. The flash example runs better. That is not a real world usage for silverlight. It is cetarinly unfair to do this comparison. Silverlight is used to build applications for websites, or websites entirely build upon it. Silverlight is not to be used to do fancy animations like the above.
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:39 am
[...] If you are going to make animations using text, I am sure Flash is much more better. Take a look on my previous sample “Text Tunnel“. [...]
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
William,
Thanks for the suggestion. You are right that Silverlight may not be target for this.
Actually, my focus is let programmer to pick the best technology for their needs.
September 26th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Update with the new bitmap caching in Silverlight 3, and then enableGPUAccelaration with a param to the object and you should easily beat Flash. Silverlight 3 is now doing full 3D games without lag (Lets see flash try that), so I would think it could handle this no problem.
September 28th, 2009 at 6:34 am
[...] Terence Tsang pointed out that Text rendering in Silverlight requires a lot of CPU resources. He created a very nice 3D Spiral Text application to illustrate his findings. [...]
October 6th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
There are two Silverlight items here that should be fixed: 1 - The Silverlight version should use Glyphs element vs TextBlock and 2 - The Silverlight version on Silverlight 3 should use TextHintingMode=”Animated” to correctly account for the fact that you are not trying to render this text for UI rendering.
Hope this helps,
-mark
Silverlight Program Manager
Microsoft
April 13th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Great article! Information is Always KEY. BTW I love how simple your blog layout is!
July 14th, 2010 at 2:40 am
[...] Flash Silverlight Download [...]