Xceed Chart for WinForms supports two types of render devices based on GDI+ and OpenGL rendering technologies. Each device has its advantages based on the features of the underlying technology. Choosing the proper device for your charts is very important in terms of presentation quality and performance.
The GDI+ device is specially designed for displaying two-dimensional charts and often produces better-looking 2D charts than the OpenGL device.
The OpenGL device can display both 2D and 3D charts. It supports hardware-accelerated 3D rendering, which greatly improves performance.
The following table outlines the major differences between the features of the two devices:
|
Feature |
GDI+ | OpenGL |
|---|---|---|
| View / Projection | 2D orthogonal projection only. Supports viewer rotation. View properties like elevation, rotation and perspective angle are discarded. | 2D orthogonal, 3D orthogonal and perspective projection. Support for camera elevation and rotation, viewer rotation, depth offset and perspective angle. |
| Charting types | Supports all charting types except Grid Surface and Mesh Surface series, since they are typical 3D chart types. | Supports all charting types, but it is recommended to use the GDI+ device for typical 2D charts. |
| Shadows | Supports solid, linear, radial and Gaussian shadows for all scene elements. | Supports solid, linear, radial and Gaussian shadows for texts and backplanes. |
| Lighting | Support for lighting simulation with the help of a fill effect image filter. | Realistic 3D lighting model with up to 8 light sources. |
| Anti-aliasing | Supports anti-aliasing of points, lines and polygons. | Supports anti-aliasing of points and lines. |
| Jittering (whole scene anti-aliasing) | No | Yes |
| Image Filters for fill effects | Can be applied on all scene elements that support fill effect (except image borders) | Can be applied to scene elements that support fill effect, except 3D objects (chart walls, axes, data items etc.) and image borders. |
| Hardware accelerated rendering | Yes, when the render surface is set to RenderSurface.Window and the graphics card supports 2D acceleration. | Yes, when the render surface is set to RenderSurface.Window and the video card supports 3D acceleration. |
This table can help you to determine which device is more suitable for your application. Just compare the features with the ones that you need and if necessary change the device. By default, when the control is created, the rendering device is GDI+. It can be changed easily with the following line of code:
| VB.NET | |
|---|---|
chartControl1.Settings.RenderDevice = RenderDevice.OpenGL | |
| C# | |
|---|---|
chartControl1.Settings.RenderDevice = RenderDevice.OpenGL; | |