It is true, that I could use mimpaps and show only the preview of a scaled-down version of the image.
But the rendering pipeline of PSD documents is extremely complex. There are not just layers, but also layer styles, raster masks, clipping masks, adjustment layers. Folders of layers can have their own layer styles and masks. You need to allocate separate buffers to render "sub-trees". And everything is GPU accelerated (over WebGL).
I am afraid that remaking it to a mip-mapped system would take me like 1 000 hours of work, so I think it is easier to remake V8 (which I guess could be like 100 hours of work). As the usual capacity of RAM will keep growing, they would have to do it at some point anyway.
But the rendering pipeline of PSD documents is extremely complex. There are not just layers, but also layer styles, raster masks, clipping masks, adjustment layers. Folders of layers can have their own layer styles and masks. You need to allocate separate buffers to render "sub-trees". And everything is GPU accelerated (over WebGL).
I am afraid that remaking it to a mip-mapped system would take me like 1 000 hours of work, so I think it is easier to remake V8 (which I guess could be like 100 hours of work). As the usual capacity of RAM will keep growing, they would have to do it at some point anyway.