What is commodetto/static?

[stc1988]

I tried running examples/commodetto/static, but I couldn’t find any documentation on it, so I’m not sure what functionality it provides.

The example description says “efficiently render static,” but in what kind of cases can this functionality be used?

[phoddie]

The functionality it provides is rendering static efficiently. ;)

It has a few uses:

• Show static when waiting for video to be available
• Demonstrate how to implement and integrate a custom renderer extension for Poco
• Confirm that irregular shaped objects, such as animated GIFs, are not drawing the background pixels

Here's a video of that last one:

mario.static.mov

It is pretty efficient. On an ESP32-S3, it can fill the screen with static at about 96 FPS.

Note: The ESP-IDF random number generator (esp_random) is too slow for efficient static (it is designed to be a cryptographically secure RNG). pocostatic.c should use rand() on ESP32 instead. I'll update that in the sources.

[stc1988]

Thank you for the explanation. I still don’t fully understand it, but the example just looks like a sandstorm, so it’s hard to imagine the functionality.
It would be easier to understand if there were an implementation example like a video. Of course, it doesn’t have to be Mario ;)

[meganetaaan]

I didn't understand what 'static' meant until I saw this thread. In Japan, we call it 'テレビの砂嵐' (TV's sandstorms), but now I get it. Thank you for explaining!

[stc1988]

@phoddie
I understood the meaning of “static” and your explanation. Therefore, I don’t think any revisions to the examples are necessary.​

@meganetaaan
Thank you for following up.

[phoddie]

Thanks for your feedback. A simple solution is to link to Wikipedia and this thread. I made the following update to the documentation:

The static example demonstrates how to use Poco to efficiently render video static. More information here.