From the blog:
ReasonStudios wrote:
In Reason 12 we updated the graphics and improved the browser. But I want to take a moment to highlight the engineering effort behind it. Reason is now over 20 years old, and the graphics engine used to be one of the oldest parts of the code. For years we’ve put off changing the graphics engine because we knew what a massive undertaking it was. But in 2019 we decided that enough was enough.
Yep, you read that right. The work to deliver those beautiful hi-res graphics, spinning fans and wear and tear on Subtractor started in 2019. Some of our best engineers spent almost one and a half years performing the brain transplant that updating the graphics engine was. They meticulously moved Reason over, bit by bit, testing on more and more hardware configurations until we in early 2021 opened for a broader public beta test.
Not only did they make Reason work great at any zoom level, but they also switched out all graphics processing to use the dedicated graphics card that all modern computers have.
To put it in perspective, we estimate this investment was on par with building the whole RE-technology. There’s still room for improvement in how Reason handles application zooming, but it’s a huge leap for us to have this out – Reason is more future-proof than ever and we have a great platform to build all those features upon.
Graphics
RE developers have been required to design their products in high resolution
for years. Products that were then sold to customers in good faith, even though the high resolution graphics included in said purchases were never made available to those that had paid for them;
for years. I appreciate the engineering effort involved, but if your best and brightest engineers spent a couple of years grinding at figuring out how to provide support for a graphics resolution requirement that your company has imposed on third-party developers -- from the beginning -- in regard to a proprietary technology (RE) that your company invented, I personally believe that the engineering effort could have been spent in a better way.
If you have been requiring enhanced graphics from RE developers since its inception, please explain why you make a point to say the following:
ReasonStudios wrote:For years we’ve put off changing the graphics engine because we knew what a massive undertaking it was.
Pixels do not make music.
Pictures are not songs.
High graphical overhead is not a composer.
I would opine that using vector graphics that are colorful instead of lifeless and gray would be a better approach.
It could be engineered once, requiring only minor changes if any, and provide future-proofing regardless of native resolution changes among future devices.
It would favor performant audio over graphics rendering and leave GPU acceleration for increasing performance beyond the standard user experience, where possible.
It would also free engineers to focus on improving the core of the app that is in dire need of help.
The bottom line here is that this is an audio program and it has had performance issues and stagnation issues that have not been adequately addressed for a very long time. During a crucial period where dedicated customers have demanded serious improvements in the areas affected by issues that have been openly and commonly complained about, the priority was chosen to deliver an upgrade to looks instead of performance and a more modern feature set. This should cause, and has caused, concern among those dedicated customers.
Many who have used Reason for years do not run the app on modern, GPU accelerated computers as you describe in your blog post. Reason traditionally has been a lightweight music program that can run on minimal hardware. Now the emphasis is on leveraging GPU acceleration as a necessity to run the app normally, let alone enhancing performance to any degree. This, in my mind, is an entire expedition's worth of steps in the wrong direction.
Commitment to photorealistic skeuomorphism will remain a pain point in the development lifecycle moving forward as long as it is prioritized.
Retaining this priority has and will necessarily demote the focus on improving the creation of music and sound(s) to an increasingly secondary position.
It's your baby, do what you will with it. But be warned: this single emphasis on what you can see, rather than what you can hear or how you can do what you can do, could very easily undo all those efforts of engineering.
that wasn't my point and besides RS said they wanted feedback & ideas so I say all are welcome I just knew video syncing would definitely be followed by other video associated feature requests and I would definitely prefer that RS concentrated on music features before over reaching on video 
And I do think the new hi-res graphics are stunning - it makes me want to work in Reason again, especially at higher zoom levels when I need to focus on a specific device. I do wish it worked better in standalone DAW though, as zooming the whole app is a pain in the ass IMHO. 
