[gameprogrammer] Re: Vector Graphics (seconded request)

Bob, your post is based upon a rather outdated notion of "vector graphics". 
While this term can be used to refer to pre-raster displays, it is now more 
commonly used to refer to rendering capabilities similar to those of Adobe 
Illustrator, Corel DRAW, Xara X and so on. I believe this is the 
functionality Florian desires.

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 10:17:41, Bob Pendleton wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-11-02 at 09:13, Florian Hufsky wrote:
> > I found some hardware accelerated vector graphics libraries:
> > http://www.chem.pwf.cam.ac.uk/~jdh30/programming/opengl/smoke/
> > http://svgl.sourceforge.net/
>
> OpenGL (cross platform) and DirectX (MS Windows only) are your two best
> choices.

OpenGL and DirectX are _much_ more low level than this. Consider the OpenGL 
calls which would be required to render this vector-graphic image, for 
example:

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/webdraw01.png

This is clearly non-trivial!

Both Smoke and SVGL aim to render such vector graphics by converting the 
conventional vector-graphics primitives (gradient and radial fills; areas 
enclosed by implicit lines and curves; stroked contours etc.) into OpenGL 
primitives (filling commands and triangle meshes). The hardest part of this 
is the efficient tesselation of vector "areas" into triangle meshes.

> Folks, there is nothing new or special about vector graphics.

I beg to differ. Vector graphics is still a very active area of research.

> We've been  
> doing it for 50, maybe 60 years. At the core of every 3D graphics
> systems is a vector graphic system.

Albeit a rather incapable system.

As the author of Smoke, I can comment on what I have done which is new: Smoke 
can render vector graphics around two orders of magnitude more quickly than 
software-based renderers (such as those found in current Adobe and Corel 
software) partly by using hardware acceleration and partly through the 
careful selection of appropriate data structures and algorithms. This is a 
very difficult task and one which had never been addressed previously, to the 
best of my knowledge. The latest, closed-source version of Smoke is even more 
capable, being able to render hugely detailed vector graphics in real-time. 
This functionality is great for cartography, for example, and I believe it 
will underpin the next generation of GUIs.

The SVGL crew were aiming more at SVG compliance (which I quickly gave up on!) 
and, consequently, SVGL is better suited to rendering SVG but, most notably, 
is not very suitable for real-time panning, zooming and animation. In 
particular, SVGL lacks the ability to retesselate adaptively and efficiently.

Cheers,
Jon.


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