[m0deth]

Thanks!

Ok, maybe you guys have thought of this....but can you take a lesson from the game devs....and leverage DirectX shaders?

Here's the idea.....some of the neater "sparkly" effects most GUIs use can be done in hardware on the GPU, even shader model 2 effects could be run nicely on cards as low as fx5700's or like ati's. This sort of thing might help in rendering effects on low cpu machines with video cards users generally pick to handle video for MP.
Things like Transparency Blending, Lightmapping, Ripple effects, and raster+vector animation could lend to skins that look like theater curtains opening with full 3d effects for example. The ideas would be widely varied from the skin artists once you give them the right tools you know? I'm sure they can think of better ideas for these uses than myself, but you get the idea I hope, it could set MPII apart from every other app. out there in this genre, make it modular, so that end users can choose which features to enable based on system makeup and that would open up so many possibilities.

Just an idea, thanks for the reply
sorry if the ideas are broken....I see things in my mind working and then have to translate into words....sometimes it works =]

m0deth