Cross-platform visualization in C#

[Jon Harrop]

I would like to write and sell high-performance 2D and 3D vector graphics
software in C# running under both .NET and Mono. What libraries would you
recommend?

My first choice would be OpenGL but I believe support under Windows is
uncertain and I have found the Tao bindings (the only significantly-widely
used OpenGL bindings available for .NET) to be unreliable.

Here is an example of the kind of thing I would like to render:

http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/fsharp_for_visualization/?mpdlcs

As you can see, conventional GUI toolkits (e.g. WinForms, GTK#) would not be
particularly useful.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.

http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u

[Jon Harrop]

Re: Cross-platform visualization in C#

Michael B. Trausch wrote:

On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 21:29:39 +0000
Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsulta ncy.comwrote:
>

>I would like to write and sell high-performance 2D and 3D vector
>graphics software in C# running under both .NET and Mono. What
>libraries would you recommend?

>
I am not actually sure if what you're looking for exists. I am going
to wager a guess that the grail you seek is a managed wrapper library
which abstracts away the interface differences between, say, OpenGL and
DirectX. Being high-performance, I doubt that your managed layer would
want to sit any higher than that in the abstraction chain.

I just want the (managed) functionality. I don't care if it has been
abstracted or not.

Now, I don't know the Windows side at all, so I can't speak to what
might be feasible there. But it would _seem_ like you could collect
the two APIs together into individual wrappers, and then provide a
single interface that can choose which one to use at run-time,
providing its own abstracted API. You could choose to make the
abstracted API resemble DirectX or OpenGL or the hybrid of them meeting
in the middle or anything else that might make sense. Of course, that
does make the assumption that you're pretty well-versed in both,
because you'll have to handle the nuances of both along the way in the
abstraction.

I would just use OpenGL and forget about Direct X.

I suppose you could say that I am looking to reimplement part of WPF on
Mono, so I'd like anything that gives me a headstart. The Mono guys
apparently do not intend to reimplement WPF (or F#) which is a great shame:
that is one of the main reasons I use .NET!

Looks like I'll have to start from scratch...

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.

http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u