C# DX or OpenGL to display large 2D image

[SoapSurgeon]

Hi,

I posted a few months back about slow redraw rates for my .net application. Ive managed to increase the speed of most forms now. There is one form left that still redraws slowly, one that contains a 2000x2000 image. I was told that using DirectX or OpenGL would improve performance and now i wish to look into using one.

DirectX looks more widely supported but I dont really want users to have to install DirectX 9 etc specifically for my application as its not that advanced.

OpenGL looks good and easy to distribute (i think) but im not sure how well supported it is.

So for all you graphics gurus which do you recommend and are there any 3rd party plugins or tutorials you can point me to that allow you to display an image (presumably as a textured polygon) in a particular part of my windows form.

Or should i just leave it up to .NET to render??

Matt

 

[happytechie]

if it's just 4,000,000 32 bit pixels and you have them all in memory then I would ahve thought that basic win32/MFC libraries should be able to do the job (or the .net layer over the top).

how are you drawing them now?

HT

 

[SoapSurgeon]

Well obviously the whole image cant be shown on screen at once and the PictureBox control doesnt allow scrolling so I have a panel with auto scroll set and a picturebox control, with the image loaded inside the panel.

However, ive tried removing the panel and just having a picture box displaying a portion of the image and the refresh rate is still as poor.