Forgot to mention that slickgrid can take an object as its data source! No need for all that data listed in form.js. Give it a live object.
Having spent some time comparing the available grids, AW is not planning the features the others have. No server side paging, etc. Are you considering using a different grid component in the future?
It seems I would have to override a lot of FiC methods if I used a grid other AW myself.
Why does FiC set the aw grid virtual mode off? Wouldn't having it on make the grid perform paging, and thus handle larger record sets? I see it is not server side paging, but it should help.