Tool Evaluations

The Gridmedia^® Computer Game Framework™, including the End-User Tools, have been developed as a part of multiple research projects at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The tools have been evaluated many times throughout the project. We wish to provide an overview of some of the more important evaluation results with respect to the Web browser plug-in.

Table I. Overview of API classes and functionalities of selected tools.

Table I illustrates an overview of essential API classes and functionalities for Microsoft Silverlight 4/XAML, Adobe Flash 10/MXML, and our Web browser plug-in (GXP/GXML 2.5). The table provides an overview of some features (and is not a complete picture). Our Web browser plug-in provides improvements with respect to safer content for young people and children, accessibility, the game API, and user input. Our Web browser plug-in does not provide XML classes, since they can be implemented in Java byte code. And, our Web browser plug-in does not provide a set of many security models, since the C++ library should be used for authoring software applications (i.e. not applications, components, or similar). The user input capabilities in our Web browser plug-in also includes support for game pads and input devices that are supported by DirectX and DirectInput 8 (in addition to keyboard and mouse). The audiovisual API provides support for DirectX DMO filters that can be used to provide capture, processing, and rendering of audiovisual content (i.e. video and audio content). The DRM filter currently supports Microsoft Windows Media DRM, including license acquisition and playback of protected content. The Network class provides basic functionalities for network access and use, including HTTP, sockets, and multicast. The System class can be used to access local system information. We currently do not provide printing, but it may be added to the System class. The Cache and Storage classes are used to store data on the local system (Cache is temporary, and Storage is permanent). The external API of the Web browser plug-in (to the containing HTML document) is currently provided with an ActiveX API that can be accessed by JavaScript. We currently do not provide an API for Netscape-based Web browsers (it is planned).

Table II. High-level overview for game development.

Table II provides a high-level overview of the capabilities of Microsoft XNA 3.1/4.0 CTP and our Web browser plug-in with respect to game development. Microsoft XNA games cannot be played in a Web browser, but it is interesting to compare the tools with respect to the main “game development functionalities.” Microsoft XNA is mainly a tool that is used by hobbyists to easily create small DirectX-based games for Xbox 360 and personal computers. The tool provides an integrated development environment (IDE) on top of Microsoft .NET (including the DirectX 10/9 API). The games can use mouse, keyboard, and game pads. The game API of our Web browser plug-in is in many ways similar to Microsoft XNA, except that we provide wider support for graphics libraries and input devices. Our plug-in also enables game playback in common Web browsers.

Table III. Compressed binary sizes of Silverlight, Flash, and our GXP.

Table III illustrates the compressed binary sizes of Microsoft Silverlight 4, Adobe Flash 10, and our Web browser plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 (and later versions) on Microsoft Windows. Flash is almost twice as large as our plug-in, and Silverlight is almost 6.4 times larger. The current version of our plug-in lacks some functionality that makes the comparison slightly skewed in the favour of our plug-in. The comparison can only be valid with a comparable set of functionalities, and our plug-in does currently not provide the GXML 2.5 text elements, some of the controls, styles, data sources, cache, storage, and printing. We estimate that adding these functionalities would have added some tens of kilobytes to the compressed binary size. If the estimate holds, our plug-in would still be significantly smaller than Silverlight and Flash.

Get More Information
End-User Tools Brochure
Company Information

Selected Research Papers
Ole-Ivar Holthe. "A Multimedia Presentation Framework for Web 3.0 Computer Game Experiences." IEEE MultiMedia, October-December 2010, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 70-79.
Ole-Ivar Holthe. "Player GX: Safer Content Only Techniques." Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2010.
Ole-Ivar Holthe, Ola Mogstad, and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Geelix LiveGames: Remote Playing of Video Games." Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2009.
Ole-Ivar Holthe and Leif Arne Rønningen. "GX: Web Browser Plug-In for GPU-based Video Effects." Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2008.
Ole-Ivar Holthe, Kristian Amlie, Richard Tingstad, and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Geelix HUD: Capturing and Sharing Live Video and User Input from Computer Games." Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2008.