Question regarding Silt.NET.Windowing multi-threaded behavior?

[XiaochaoYan]

 /// <summary>
    /// Calls the Render event. On a multi-threaded window, this will run on an internally managed thread.
    /// </summary>
    void DoRender();

    /// <summary>
    /// Calls the Update event. On a multi-threaded window, this can run on any thread.
    /// </summary>
    void DoUpdate();

This is what I found in src/Windowing/Silk.NET.Windowing.Common/Interfaces/IView.cs . Does this mean we can assume Silk.NET itself will create thread to boost performance when it is possbile or do we need to manually start a seperate render thread for Silk.NET?

I am also curious about the default refresh rate and v-sync related behavior.

[Perksey]

This functionality was removed in 2.0 and I guess the doc comment wasn't updated.

[XiaochaoYan]

Apologize in advance for asking an impatient question, but is there any schedule on when will documentation or any similiar support material be online? I mean clearly Silk.NET team are working hard but I can hardly say without documentaion it's near for actual production usage.

[Perksey]

No.

[cyraid]

I have successfully implemented a render thread approach and put DoRender() and DoUpdate() in it, to solve the hanging while dragging a window deal. Works pretty nice.

[CeSun]

Your way is doable, thank you again!
I have confirmed that it is not feasible on the glfw backend, and only the sdl backend works, and it works fine on windows, ubuntu22.04(wsl2.0), Android 14(MEIZU20 Pro).

Here is a simple code example for other developers to learn from:

using Silk.NET.OpenGL;
using Silk.NET.Windowing;
using Silk.NET.Windowing.Sdl;
using System.Drawing;

var options = WindowOptions.Default;
SdlWindowing.RegisterPlatform();
SdlWindowing.Use();

var window = Window.Create(options);

window.Load += () =>
{
    var gl = GL.GetApi(window);
    window.ClearContext();
    new Thread(() =>
    {
        window.MakeCurrent();
        int i = 0;
        while (window.IsClosing == false)
        {
            
            gl.ClearColor(Color.FromArgb(i % 256, 0, 0));
            gl.Clear(ClearBufferMask.ColorBufferBit);

            i++;
            window.SwapBuffers();
        };
    }).Start();


};

window.Run();

[cyraid]

I was able to get mine working with both GLFW and SDL. You'll have some issues when you wanna resize the window and do something as it'll be on the main thread. But hopefully you'll be able to extract as much as you can from my post. :) Glad it helped, and anyone else coming here!

The End Rendering Event and such is nice for when you want to clean up resources correctly when the main window is closed.

[CeSun]

Hello, sorry to bother you again, could you give me some help using angle on the desktop

[cyraid]

TL;DR -> Using OpenGLES with SDL should automatically use ANGLE when available, but will default to trying native graphics drivers EGL/GLES first.

Hi @CeSun, you can look at the above code (initializing with OpenGLES), and if you use the ANGLE packages, it should ship along libEGL.dll and libGLESv2.dll. Though SDL by default uses native GLES support from your native Graphics Drivers, if you really want SDL to force using ANGLE, you can do:

var sdl = Sdl.GetApi();
sdl.SetHint(Sdl.HintOpenglESDriver, "1");

(If you do force it you can use environment variables SDL_VIDEO_EGL_DRIVER for libEGL and SDL_VIDEO_GL_DRIVER for libGLESv2 locations)

There has been some issues I've noticed with the nuget shipped ANGLE native drivers, so you can just grab a Chrome installation one. By looking a bit into it, #2024 might explain a bit why.

So for now just use the Chrome Installation drivers?

[cyraid]

@CeSun Btw, you'll probably have better luck using GLFW and ANGLE.

var glfw = GlfwProvider.GLFW.Value;

glfw.InitHint(InitHint.AnglePlatformType, (int)AnglePlatformType.OpenGLES);
glfw.WindowHint(WindowHintContextApi.ContextCreationApi, ContextApi.EglContextApi);

Silk.NET.Windowing.Glfw.GlfwWindowing.RegisterPlatform();
Silk.NET.Windowing.Glfw.GlfwWindowing.Use();
Silk.NET.Input.Glfw.GlfwInput.RegisterPlatform();

Just keep in mind though, ANGLE is not thread safe, so make sure to only use one window (unless you combine rendering of all views into a single thread).