Of course. You need about 1 hair per 2x2 pixels on a 1080p screen and 4x4 on a 4K screen. That totals about 10,000 hairs per icon in the simulation, which can be precomputed into animations. Third-party icons will be 2D (or 2.5D if the FG/BG layer of the icon is handled separately, doubling the animation data). Now it's "just" a matter of drawing 10,000-20,000 lines with precomputed shading and textures from the icon's 100x100 bitmap render.

Also, the GPU is only used by apps while they're in the foreground, so the launcher might be able to use all of its power. And it could cache animations for existing icons (who cares if the system uses 32 GB of storage? Buy the higher option, peasant!)

[–] BanMe@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

But I want it to leave an indent where my finger presses, in the direction I drag it. And you have to gently rub it to get the indent to go away.