Release Notes 1.38

Changelog

Version 1.38.0

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Released 21 Feb 2023

Feature	Introduce a new 'UI Surface Partitioning'' feature that gives the ability to split the UI in parts that will be rendered in separate textures. See the documentation for more details'
Enhancement	Added documentation for the coh-composition-id, coh-partitioned, and coh-rendering-options
Enhancement	Enhanced stroke rounded rects to use geometry instead of Path for better performance
Enhancement	Implemented a full page capture feature that can serialize a loaded page to a binary blob for easier debugging
Enhancement	Added support for null when setting style.[top|left|right|bottom]PX for unsetting the property
Enhancement Unreal Engine	Added a way to ignore the automatic binding of specific UFunctions
Fix	Fixed a crash when applying white-space property on input elements
Fix	Fixed a deadlock that can occur during loading of images
Fix	Fixed a regression with user images that may have caused crashes
Fix	Borders having width less than 1px and using images/gradients as border-image-source are no longer disappearing
Fix	Fix the disappearing of small border corners
Fix	Fixed pausing animations with zero duration to render the correct state
Fix	Fixed a potential crash when creating/destroying video elements or changing the src attribute
Fix	Fixed a potential crash when destroying Vertex/Index buffers in the backend when using the ViewSettings::ExecuteCommandProcessingWithLayout option
Fix	Fixed a crash when nesting elements that use the clip-path property in an SVG
Fix	Fixed potential threading issue when using multiple views along with the ViewSettings::ExecuteCommandProcessingWithLayout option, leading to the missing texture errors
Fix	Removed additional memory allocation for texture updates
Fix	Fixed an assert in Debug configuration related to visual AABBs
Fix	Fixed possible GPU hang due to failing Index buffer diagnostic check 16690 in the stock PS4 backend.
Fix	Fixed wrong layout when using font-fit in a dynamically sized flex sub-tree
Fix	Fixed inner HTML in localized content not displayed correctly unless wrapped in a single HTML element
Fix	Fixed unnecessary request for an invalid texture from the backend in the Compositor sample
Fix	Fixed incorrect handling of background-size single value extent and auto value
Fix	Fixed possible assertion for a missing render target when having an element with both coh-composition-id and filter CSS properties
Fix	Fix the occasional disappearing of SVGs used as masks
Fix	Fixed SVGs not drawing correctly when using preserveAspectRatio="none"
Fix Unity	Fixed submission validation errors for PlayStation 5
Fix Unreal Engine	Fix retrieval of game viewport when multiple PIE processes exist

Migration guide

Changed Stroke Circle / Stroke Rounded Rectangle shader

After changing the input.Additional.z for the Stroke Rounded Rectangle and Stroke Circle geometry to be the sum of the radius and half of the stroke width, the shader also had to be altered. Meaning that in this version of Gameface, the Stroke Rounded Rectangle and Stroke Circle shader (when ShaderType is 2) has been changed. Before, to calculate distance2OuterEdge we used to subtract the sum of the radius (input.Additional.z) and half of the stroke width (input.Additional.w) from de(distance between the current pixel and the center of the circle). Now we only subtract the radius. Moreover, to calculate distance2InnerEdge, we now subtract the difference between the radius and half of the stroke width instead of the whole stroke width from de.

Before:

CohShadeGeometryRare.ihlsl

...
const float de = length(posPixels - input.Additional.xy);
const float distance2OuterEdge = de - (input.Additional.z + input.Additional.w / 2);
const float distance2InnerEdge = de - (input.Additional.z - input.Additional.w / 2);
...

After:

CohShadeGeometryRare.ihlsl

...
const float de = length(posPixels - input.Additional.xy);
const float distance2OuterEdge = de - input.Additional.z;
const float distance2InnerEdge = de - (input.Additional.z - input.Additional.w);
...

Added new texture property

Previously

The description (Texture2D object) has a field named Props. It's used to set some flags for the texture which can provide some specific information. We've added new flag called ImageProperties::IMP_ClearOnInit by which we should understand that the texture should be cleared when it's being created. Previously, we were sending empty data to the backend, so the flag was added to save up some memory.

Some rendering APIs can directly memset the texture memory while others should allocate some temporary memory and update the texture's resource with it. Below you can check an example of the simplest approach to migrate this change:

dxVector<unsigned char> empty;
// Renoir expects text atlases to be clear before usage.
// Previsouly we were sending empty data from Renoir, but this can result in memory spikes
// if many atlases need to be allocated in single frame and it was meaningless to send 0's.
if (description.Props & renoir::IMP_ClearOnInit)
{
  dataLen = description.Width * description.Height * (renoir::BitsPerPixel(description.Format) / 8);
  empty = dxVector<unsigned char>(dataLen, 0);
  data = empty.data();
}

...