Hi Adam,
Happy New Year to you too!
Go for OpenGL. If you choose something else, you might run into
problems along the road.
I know OpenGL can handle both 2D and 3D, and you get a fairly good
support from samples on the Web.
-Take a look at the CocoaGLView at http://developer.apple.com/
samplecode, you're up and running in a few minutes.
The advantage of using OpenGL is that you can...
* Make cross-platform development.
* Start out easy without any texture-fancy stuff, and then, if you
like to, you can add textures later on.
* Get the graphics card to do the work, rather than making the CPU
burn hot.
A last thing: Never use NSBezierPath, unless you're writing a program
like Illustrator. ;)
...First time I tried to make 200 pixels with NSBezierPath, I had 1
FPS; I quickly found out that NSRectFill was faster.
Love,
Jens
On Jan 1, 2009, at 04:19, Adam Foltzer wrote:
Hello everyone,
I've been lurking here for a while as I've been learning the Cocoa
ropes,
and I'm at the point where I need to put the (excellent) Hillegass
theory
into practice. My app is an interactive particle swarm optimization (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_swarm_optimization for the
curious)
that generates N-dimensional coordinates representing individuals in
a very
compelling, organic way. For visualization, of course, I'm mainly
concerned
with two- and three-dimensional instances of these swarms.
My trouble is in deciding which graphics framework to pursue for the
visualization. Since all I need are representations of points, the
path of
least resistance for 2-D visualization seems to be using a simple
loop with
calls to [NSBezierPath fillrect:]. However, I suspect this pattern
would not
extend well to rendering a scene with 3-D instances of the swarms.
Beyond the use of Bezier paths, my knowledge falls short pretty
quickly. I
often hear people sing the praises of Core Animation, but the
emphasis on
layering in the documentation makes me doubt its capability to draw
such a
3-D scene.
I also see Quartz mentioned as a friendlier wrapper for OpenGL, but
again I
get the impression that it's more geared toward 2-D rendering than
anything
else. Is a straight dive into full OpenGL the way to go here? I
realize that
these frameworks have similarities, and that picking the "wrong" one
won't
at all be a waste of my time, but I'd be thrilled to hear thoughts
on their
comparative virtues before I take the plunge either way.
Cheers, and a Happy New Year to you all,
Adam
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