History: Mogre and WPF

WPF

WPF is a modern SDK created by Microsoft for building GUIs in Windows. Many powerful Windows applications today, including Visual Studio 2010 and later, are built using WPF. WPF makes it easy to create sophisticated GUI controls that are composed of other controls. It also has support for animation, styling, and data binding. It optionally supports a declarative UI layout through a XML format called XAML.

UI toolkits for games are often simpler and less featureful than desktop-grade UI toolkits. Incorporating WPF into a Mogre application allows a developer to have a sophisticated UI and leverage the vast wealth of WPF resources available.

Methods of Combining WPF and Mogre

There are several ways of using WPF and Mogre together. Note that most are in an experimental state.

Mogre In WPF

D3DImage is a WPF control that shows a Direct3D texture inside WPF. It can be set to use a texture that Mogre renders to.

Pros:

• The result is a fully interactive WPF application with all WPF features supported.
• The Mogre scene can be partially transparent, with WPF elements behind it. Partially transparent WPF elements can be placed on top of the Mogre scene.

Cons:

• WPF controls the rendering loop
• WPF's rendering loop is locked at Vsync (e.g. 60FPS)

Approaches to implementation:

• Single vs Double buffering
• Timing of Ogre rendering
  • CompositionTarget.Rendering event
  • DispatcherInactive event
  • DispatcherTimer
  • Timer
  • Loop in separate thread

WPF on Mogre

This approach takes two Windows windows: the top is mostly transparent and contains some WPF controls, while the bottom is a typical Mogre window. The positions of the two windows are synced, and input from the user can go to either window.

Pros:

• Mogre Rendering rate is not constrained to WPF rendering, as it is in the 'Mogre In WPF' approach.

Cons:

• It can be tricky to cleanly keep two windows in sync, with input working nicely between the two.

WPF in Mogre

Take a screenshot of individual WPF visuals, and render them as textures onto entities in Ogre or Mogre.

Pros:

• WPF is only rendered as often as you want, which can help performance.
• You can use Ogre to create GUIs in 3D space

Cons:

• It is up to you to arrange WPF controls on the screen. (Perhaps this is simpler if you capture an entire WPF window.)
• It is up to you to handle input to make the WPF elements interactive. (Not an issue if you only use WPF as a HUD that requires no input.)
• It is up to you to arrange widgets and program interactivity with WPF elements.
• No interactive open source implementation is known.

Interaction with Mogre

... how interaction works (Add both ways, which was describes by Hormis) ...

Example projects

• Mogre In WPF:
  • Article: Blend the OGRE Graphics Engine into your WPF projects
  • Project: MogreInWpf
  • Project: Double buffered D3DImage technique. D3DImage based Mogre and WPF interop at high FPS.
• Mogre On WPF: A WPF window is layered on top of a standard WinForms window.
  • Project: Windowsinput by Hormis
• WPF In Mogre:
  • Article: Use a screenshot of a WPF visual as a texture in Mogre

See also

Further information

• forum link 1
• forum link 2

GUI alternatives

• Miyagi - Pure C# GUI system
• MyGUI - This GUI system has a .NET wrapper, which can be used for Mogre
• GUI - An overview for Ogre GUI systems