It's quite a while now that I'm using Magnify + Afterglow as mouseover effect, and I like it very much. But there is something that I don't like of this, and it's how fast Nexus can render those effects.
I'm using 48x icons with 160x magnifying size, and when I pass over an item the dock seems to have some small breaks in the mouseover animation. It's not a very big issue, it doesn't even happen always, but I'd like to don't see any break.
Is there anything I can do to improve the rendering?
I'd do anything, and I don't care about resource usage, so even if I have to use 200MB for nexus it's ok. I just want those breaks gone.
I have already tried setting Nexus's process with above normal, high and real-time priority, but nothing changes.

Actually I just tried your settings and I hardly see any animation "breaks", if at all, so I'm guessing it could be CPU and GPU power. What kind of hardware do you have, mate?
Mine's a Phenom six-core 1100T with a Radeon 6950.

If it doesn't happen always, I doubt it has anything to do with the 'performance' of the effects themselves. Try turning off the background Glass Blur effect and see if that makes the problem go away.

Every effect is already optimized to death. What you guys don't realize is how much work is actually happening in the background for those effects to work. For instance, blurring semi-transparent parts of the dock background means that the dock background must be scanned, pixel by pixel, for those 'semi-transparent' parts - and this must happen every time the dock magnifies, since magnifying changes the background.

The results of this scanning are then cached in memory, but they must still be made at least once.

Things that change the icon (for instance, spinning, rocking, animated icons, etc...) must also change the icon's reflection image - and this in real time. The old reflection must be destroyed and a new one built based on the current icon.

And then there is everything else that is happening at the same time, like updating system tray icons, updating running applications, making and displaying thumbnails of running applications, etc, etc, etc...

For all that Nexus does, it's actually very good how fast it does it. One just can't expect miracles, every little thing you turn on has a price in terms of performance.

My HW is:
CPU: Intel DualCore 2 Duo E6550 @2.3GHz, 2MB L2 Cache
RAM: Kingston KVR800 DDR2 2x2GB @800MHz
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 4850, 512MB @667MHz core speed, @900MHz mem speed
Main HD: Maxtor STM3320620AS SATA, 320GB @7200RPM (on 3Gbit port)

Turning off the blur doesn't really change it (small, very small improvements). From my HW I can see only the CPU as a "not enough". Do you think it's it?

The CPU could be the cause. However, I'm thinking that something else could be the cause: the laws of physics and mathematics. You see, you've got quite a size difference there, so in a very short time, the dock is required to change from very small to very big. Given that the quantisation (in other words, the granularity) of the effect is dictated by the processor clock as well as the Windows scheduler, even small "breaks" in the execution of the code are noticeable.
Also, the nexus code itself does some kind of quantisation, because it has to divide difference in size with a fixed time in which the effect must be completed. If we assume that the effect lasts for 500 milliseconds and Jorge has coded Nexus so that the effect will produce, say, 20 frames, each frame will be approximately 5.6 pixels bigger (or smaller) than the previous. That could be noticeable on its own, however, it gets worse. Since there's no decimal pixels, the size gets rounded so every once in a while it'll have a 'jump' (i.e. 5.6 rounded is 6, then 11.2 is 11, then 17, 22, 28, 34, 39 etc.) so the difference between each frame size isn't constant.
If the size change wasn't so big, the effect would more likely go unnoticed, but since you've taken it to the extreme...

One other thing for Jorge: shouldn't there be a "magnify settings" button next to the checkbox, for when the combined effect is in use? Now you'll have to first select "magnify", make adjustments and then select the normal effect and check "combine".

I realize that, but, on the other hand, changing the Magnify settings is not something you do constantly. Usually you set it once and then leave it alone. This said, I also don't like very much the way it is now.

T3STY, 'small breaks' is also a very subjective term. I think you would have a very hard time capturing this in video, but can you give it a try?

As for CPU, an E6550 dual core at 2.3GHz is not exactly 'state-of-the-art' either, but it's also not a single core P4.

Ok Jorge, I'm aware of good video capture programs but I'll search for them and make a video of this asap.

The only problem is that video capture programs consume *a lot* of CPU resources when capturing, so that by itself will interfere with whatever you are trying to show. On the other hand, perhaps it will also slow down things enough for me to understand exactly what you mean by 'small breaks'.

I tried to capture the video with Hyper Cam but I got a very bad result; the dock was slown down very much, so the little breaks are even bigger.

By little breaks I mean that even if mouse on an item the should magnify and get the afterglow effect, it actually stays normal (48x icon) for some time, less than a second, and just then starts getting rendered. This doesn't always happen, but when it happens it's not an isolated case, it happens to almost all the items on the dock and you see the dock items rendering like you'd have an old P4 single core CPU @1.5GHz with 533MHz RAM.

If you still want the video I made, I can upload it, but you won't understand more from it (also because the video, for some reason unknown to me, is speeded up)

I have edited the video and slowed it down a little, it's just a bit slower than it was really rendered on the screen. It's the highest quality I could get (I'm a total noob in video editing...).
You can download it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/582scor320k2k47/Nexus.wmv

@ Testy:
Wait wait, don't tell me, let me guess: you're aaaaaaan... Apple fan, right?

Personally I can't make heads or tails from the vid, by the way.

You're right, the video didn't help. Either that, or I'm blind.

@skagon: yes and no. Yes because graphics is very well made, clean and nothing more than what's necessary to the user. No because I'm not a fan of UNIX-like systems (for a lot of motivations.. I'm not going to say'em all here ) And anyway, I change my dock background along with the wallpaper, DarkTech is beautiful on the right wallpaper!
Another thing: I'm a Microsoft fan

@Jorge: I'm sorry it didn't help. I tried to explain it the best I could by words but if there's anything I can do to help you understand let me know.
Although, I'll wait for next version of Nexus, and if performances improve or get worst than this, then there is something wrong with Nexus; if they're the same it's the CPU. BTW: are you rendering on GPU (using DirectX) or is it all on the CPU?

All on the CPU and whatever gets a bit of hardware acceleration provided by GDI and GDI+.

T3STY, try these. It's what I used to capture and post a video in this thread. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4165

1. http://www.screencapturer.com/

2. http://tinypic.com/

If you need any help with either the capture program or the site to post the video, let me know.