Aurora Graphics Library Initial Design Discussion

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2014-01-19 04:38, Adam Wilson wrote:

> Since Aurora has a pluggable backend for rendering I feel that it will
> be prudent to use the low-level API's that are best suited to each
> platform. This will Aurora to support each platform as best as possible.
> As I currently can tell the following list represents
>
> System         2D API   / 3D API
> Linux          X11      / OpenGL 4.3
> Android        Canvas     / OpenGL ES 3.0
> OSX            Quartz2D / OpenGL 4.3

OS X 10.9 supports up to OpenGL 4.1. OS X 10.8 and 10.7 support up to 
OpenGL 3.2. It would be very nice if Aurora would work on OS X older 
than 10.9. Here are two lists indicating the support of OpenGL in OS X:

https://developer.apple.com/graphicsimaging/opengl/capabilities/index.html

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5942 (10.9)

> iOS            Quartz2D / OpenGL ES 3.0

OpenGL ES 3.0 is only supported on iOS 7 on some deceives. Here's a list 
for iOS:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/DeviceInformation/Reference/iOSDeviceCompatibility/OpenGLESPlatforms/OpenGLESPlatforms.html

> The reason for targeting relatively new low-level API versions is that
> by the time we actually complete the bulk of the work, they won't be new
> anymore.

I think you need to lower your requirements a bit. At minimum we need to 
support something that works today. OpenGL 4.3 doesn't work on OS X 
today. Preferably it would be nice to support OpenGL 3.2, to be able to 
run on OS X 10.8 and 10.7 as well.

> I've noticed that Android and iOS seem to have many
> options for 2D graphics, none of which I've had a chance to evaluate
> rigorously, any recommendations would be appreciated.

Talking about iOS, as far as I know it has only one library, Quartz2D. 
Here are a couple of libraries/terms that can be confusing:

* Core Graphics - a framework that Quartz2D is part of
* Quartz Extreme - a term for hardware accelerated graphics
* Core Image - library used to apply effects on images and videos

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg