README

FastCanvas for Delphi FireMonkey

FastCanvas replaces the canvas and the 3D context of FireMonkey (FMX) on Windows with its own GPU renderer on Direct3D 11 or Direct3D 12. Programs stay standard FMX programs: forms, controls, styles, TBitmap, TTextLayout, TViewport3D, TForm3D and effects work as before; a few lines before Application.Initialize switch them over.

Русская версия

• Fast. Every shape, glyph and image is one instance of an instanced draw; antialiasing is analytic in the pixel shader; text comes from a glyph atlas; commands are recorded on the main thread and executed on a render thread. 5 to 60 times faster than FMX's default canvas on shapes, text and bitmaps, 2 to 4 times on real forms.
• Its own 3D contexts on the same device: TViewport3D renders straight into the form on the GPU, effects (shadow, glow, blur) filter bitmaps without leaving the GPU, FMX's per-draw overhead is gone.
• Ray-traced effects (Direct3D 12, DXR 1.1): shadows, soft shadows, ambient occlusion and reflections added to any FMX 3D scene, with FMX's own materials and lights; application ray passes (compute and pixel shaders over the scene).
• Looks like FMX. Text is antialiased in grayscale with DirectWrite's contrast and gamma, as FMX's Direct2D canvas draws it (optionally ClearType, aliased or as Windows draws it: FastCanvasTextAntialias); windows are shown through DirectComposition, so forms drawn transparent over Mica or Acrylic look as with the stock canvas.
• HDR output (Direct3D 12) on HDR displays, for forms and TForm3D: SDR content unchanged, 3D content above SDR white (DrawIntensity: lamps, screens, the sky brighter than white without shaders; application passes).
• DLSS Super Resolution (experimental; Direct3D 12, NVIDIA RTX, Win64): the 3D scene of a TForm3D drawn at a lower resolution and reconstructed by NVIDIA DLSS, the 2D panel on top at full resolution. It pays off on heavy scenes; on light ones DLSS costs more than it saves (about 0.9 ms per frame at 2560 x 1400 on an RTX 3090).
• Robust. Device loss (driver update, GPU reset) is recovered and bitmaps keep their pixels; partial repaints on Direct3D 12; stress runs and the Direct3D 12 debug layer stay clean; nothing leaks at shutdown.

Speed

Frame times of the same scenes at 1920 x 1080 (ms, lower is better; AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, Ryzen 5 7500F). d2d is FMX's default canvas; the best stock canvas is the fastest of FMX's Direct2D, GPU, GDI+, Skia and Skia Vulkan canvases in that scene.

All 26 scenes, two sizes, the method and the cost of the ray-traced effects: docs/BENCHMARKS.md. The benchmark program, its scripts, the summaries and every run (environment, command line, statistics) are in the repository (src/Bench, tools, results): the numbers can be checked and measured again on another machine.

Requirements

• Delphi 13 (RAD Studio 37.0) or later, FireMonkey, Win64 or Win32 (Win64 is faster on the CPU side).
• Windows 10 or 11.
• A GPU with Direct3D feature level 10_0 for the Direct3D 11 back end (WARP without one), 11_0 for Direct3D 12.
• DirectX Raytracing tier 1.1 for the ray-traced effects (NVIDIA RTX 20 and later, AMD RX 6000 and later, Intel Arc); without it they are simply not drawn.

Use

Add three folders to the project's search path:

src\Canvas
third_party\delphidx12\src
third_party\pasvulkan\src

and install FastCanvas before Application.Initialize:

program MyApp;

uses
  System.StartUpCopy,
  FMX.Forms,
  FastCanvas.Device,       // FastCanvasBackend
  FastCanvas.Canvas,       // InstallFastCanvas and the canvas settings
  FastCanvas.Context3D12,  // the Direct3D 12 3D context
  Main in 'Main.pas' {MainForm};

{$R *.res}

begin
  FastCanvasBackend := TFastCanvasBackend.D3D12;
  // Optional: text antialiasing, Grayscale (default, as FMX), ClearType, Aliased or System (as Windows).
  FastCanvasTextAntialias := TFastTextAntialias.ClearType;
  InstallFastCanvas;
  InstallFastContext3D12;
  Application.Initialize;
  Application.CreateForm(TMainForm, MainForm);
  Application.Run;
end.

For Direct3D 11 leave FastCanvasBackend at its default and use FastCanvas.Context3D11 / InstallFastContext3D11: the 3D context must match the back end. Nothing else changes in the program.

Example

Two RAD Studio projects in example, both in the group Examples.groupproj. All their components are on the forms in the designer; FastCanvas is installed in the .dpr. The window title tells what draws it.

• HelloFastCanvas.dproj: a form with animated 2D drawing, a button with a shadow effect, a lit 3D cube over a floor in a TViewport3D and a switch for ray-traced shadows.
• HelloForm3D.dproj: a TForm3D, the whole window one 3D scene: animated objects on a reflective floor, a lamp, a swinging camera, and a panel (a TLayer3D with standard controls) that switches the ray-traced shadows, soft shadows, ambient occlusion and reflections, the floor, and HDR output: on a display in HDR mode the lamp shines brighter than SDR white (DrawIntensity), the rest looks as in SDR; on NVIDIA RTX cards, DLSS Super Resolution (nvngx_dlss.dll of the DLSS SDK in third_party\nvidia_dlss\bin\win64 is copied next to the program when it is built).

Open Examples.groupproj (or one of the projects) in RAD Studio and run: the projects target Win64 (Win32 too) and already have the search path (..\src\Canvas;..\third_party\delphidx12\src;..\third_party\pasvulkan\src). From the command line:

cd example
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\37.0\bin\rsvars.bat"
msbuild Examples.groupproj /p:Config=Release /p:Platform=Win64

(the programs are in example\Win64\Release). Environment variables of the examples: FC_BACKEND=11 (Direct3D 11: no ray tracing, no HDR), FC_PRESENT=flip (windows without DirectComposition), FC_TEXT=cleartype|aliased|system (HelloFastCanvas: text antialiasing), FC_STOCK=1 (FMX's own canvas and 3D context, to compare), FC_HDR=force (HelloForm3D: HDR output also on an SDR display), FC_DRED=0|1, FC_DLSS_JITTER, FC_DLSS_VIEW=input|motion (HelloForm3D: DRED breadcrumbs and DLSS diagnostics).

Main settings

Global variables, set before Application.Initialize; all of them in docs/USAGE.md.

Repository

Limitations

• Windows only (Win64 and Win32); no printing canvas (TPrinter).
• ClearType (FastCanvasTextAntialias) only in window frames: text in bitmaps (effects, TLayer3D, TForm3D), in transparent forms and rotated text stays grayscale.
• Partial repaints and HDR output on Direct3D 12 only; windows with HDR output are opaque.
• Windows presenting with tearing (AllowTearing) take Flip.
• The ray-traced effects do not trace transparent objects.
• DLSS: TForm3D windows only, no multisampling; motion vectors only for opaque objects moved by their matrices.

Contributors

• Hemul GM: NVIDIA DLSS Super Resolution in the Direct3D 12 3D context (FastCanvas.Dlss, FastCanvas.Context3D12.Dlss.inc, Shaders\FastDlss.hlsl, the DLSS panel of HelloForm3D), first tested by him on an RTX 5080.

License

MIT, see LICENSE. Third-party code and formulas: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. FastCanvas contains no code of Embarcadero's FireMonkey; building it requires a Delphi license.