Which graphics library should I be using?

Posted by DaveDev on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by DaveDev
Published on 2014-08-19T07:45:30Z Indexed on 2014/08/19 10:30 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 176

Filed under:

c#

|

libraries

|

wpf

|

graphics

I have been developing and maintaining a WPF application, for which I've recently been tasked with adding a 3D representation of some of the data.

I'm new to graphics programming in every kind of way so I'm curious whether I should stick with 3D graphics capabilities built into WPF or should I investigate other solutions, like OpenTK or SharpGL

My objective is to represent the data so that it will eventually appear similar to:

enter image description here

with nodes connected by lines. I need to rotate the image around each axis and each node will be a 3D model of the device it represents.

So far, I've been able to experiment with the tutorial outlined here: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 3D Tutorial and it was helpful as an introduction.

But I can see that there are other ways to implement 3D graphics solutions and I wonder if they are more suitable for my needs, or should I stick with the in-built WPF solution?

What are the pros and cons of each?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about c#

.NET WebRequest.PreAuthenticate not quite what it sounds like

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
I’ve run into the problem a few times now: How to pre-authenticate .NET WebRequest calls doing an HTTP call to the server – essentially send authentication credentials on the very first request instead of waiting for a server challenge first? At first glance this sound like it should be easy:… >>> More
HttpWebRequest and Ignoring SSL Certificate Errors

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
Man I can't believe this. I'm still mucking around with OFX servers and it drives me absolutely crazy how some these servers are just so unbelievably misconfigured. I've recently hit three different 3 major brokerages which fail HTTP validation with bad or corrupt certificates at least according to… >>> More
Dynamic Type to do away with Reflection

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
The dynamic type in C# 4.0 is a welcome addition to the language. One thing I’ve been doing a lot with it is to remove explicit Reflection code that’s often necessary when you ‘dynamically’ need to walk and object hierarchy. In the past I’ve had a number of ReflectionUtils that used string based expressions… >>> More
The dynamic Type in C# Simplifies COM Member Access from Visual FoxPro

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
I’ve written quite a bit about Visual FoxPro interoperating with .NET in the past both for ASP.NET interacting with Visual FoxPro COM objects as well as Visual FoxPro calling into .NET code via COM Interop. COM Interop with Visual FoxPro has a number of problems but one of them at least got a lot… >>> More
Finding a Relative Path in .NET

as seen on West-Wind - Search for 'West-Wind'
Here’s a nice and simple path utility that I’ve needed in a number of applications: I need to find a relative path based on a base path. So if I’m working in a folder called c:\temp\templates\ and I want to find a relative path for c:\temp\templates\subdir\test.txt I want to receive back subdir\test… >>> More

Related posts about libraries

why do game engines prefer static libraries over dynamic link libraries

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I've been reading a few gaming books. And they always prefer to create the engine as a static library over dynamic link. I am new to c++ so I am not highly knowledge when it comes to static libraries and dynamic link libraries. All I know is static libraries increase the size of your program, where… >>> More
which open source license to use for libraries depending on other libraries

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I develop a couple of open source projects licensed under MPL1.1. All projects depend on a lot of other open source tools. I avoid any GPL licensed libraries for the viral nature of GPL. The licenses of the libraries my tools depend on are Apache2, LGPL2, LGPL3, CPL, BSD, JSON, MIT and some personal… >>> More
gcc linking shared libraries with dependent libraries

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a complicated project with multiple executable targets and multiple shared libraries. The shared libraries currently don't have their dependent shared libraries linked in, and the result is that linker arguments to build the executables are hideously long and hard to maintain. I'd like to… >>> More
wxWidgets in Code::Blocks

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello all, I'm trying to compile the minimal sample from the "Cross-Platform GUI Programming with wxWidgets" book but the following compile errors: ||=== minimal, Debug ===| C:\SourceCode\Libraries\wxWidgets2.8\lib\gcc_lib\libwxmsw28u_core.a(corelib_frame.o):frame.cpp:(.text+0x918)||undefined reference… >>> More
Differences Between NHibernate and Entity Framework

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
Introduction NHibernate and Entity Framework are two of the most popular O/RM frameworks on the .NET world. Although they share some functionality, there are some aspects on which they are quite different. This post will describe this differences and will hopefully help you get started with the one… >>> More