Graphics Libraries
4/19/2010
Windows Mobile 6.5 supports both two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) graphics.
2-D Graphics Support
DirectDraw
DirectDraw is the recommended way to manage 2-D graphics in your application.
DirectDraw supports the following features:
- Hardware-accelerated drawing and software rendering. DirectDraw provides a consistent experience across all hardware devices.
- Integration with the graphics device interface (GDI). A program can use the services of both DirectDraw and GDI.
- Low additional footprint. Using DirectDraw adds only a minimal amount of code to your program.
DirectDraw is particularly useful in high-performance applications such as games and video playback.
Windows Mobile Version 5.0 and later supports DirectDraw and Direct3D, giving improved consistency across devices.
More information can be found in the topic DirectDraw Application Development
3-D Graphics Support
Direct3D is the recommended way to create animated, 3-D graphics for Windows Mobile devices. All Windows Mobile Version 5.0 and later devices support DirectDraw and Direct3D, giving maximum consistency across all devices.
Some device hardware provides 3-D graphics acceleration, but this is not universal. If a specific device does not provide hardware acceleration, software must perform the 3-D graphic rendering.
Direct3D Mobile is not just a port of the desktop Direct3D API. Instead, Direct3D Mobile has been engineered specifically for the needs of the mobile content developer.
Mobile-specific features of Direct3D Mobile include:
- An ultra-small runtime and driver (As low as ~150KB total)
- Removal of FPU binding. The implementation includes IEEE 32-bit floats and 16.16 fixed-point math for fast 3-D calculation. Fixed point math eliminates the need for slow floating point emulation when hardware acceleration is not available.
Windows Mobile also includes support for Managed Direct3D Mobile, which is included in the . This framework is included with Visual Studio, and is also available online.
The Direct3D Mobile Extensions (D3DMX) are 3-D helper functions based on the Direct3D desktop API. These functions help with matrix calculations and other operations such as:
- 3D Vector/4D vector + matrix operations
- Vector add, normalize, and scale
- Dot products
- Translations
- Transpose
- Texture libraries
- Texture create and load
- MIP-map filters
- Macros
- Radian-to-degree transforms
More information can be found in the topic Direct3D Mobile Application Development
See Also
Concepts
Windows Mobile Support for Game Development