Graphics

Choosing the right graphics framework

BlackBerry devices support many graphics frameworks. Before you start doing any graphics programming for BlackBerry devices, it’s important that you understand the frameworks that are available to you. By gaining an understanding of these frameworks, you can pick the one that best fits your application programming needs, while also taking into consideration possible future requirements of your application. Making a poor choice at the beginning could result in rework later.

The graphics frameworks supported by BlackBerry devices fall into three categories: hardware-accelerated APIs, web and vector graphics APIs, and canvas graphics APIs.

Hardware-accelerated APIs

OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 and OpenVG are the frameworks in this category. All BlackBerry 7 devices have dedicated graphics hardware. To realize the benefits of that hardware, you should use hardware-accelerated APIs.

You use OpenGL ES to create real-time, accelerated 3-D and 2-D graphics. If you’re creating a cutting-edge first-person shooter game, an amazing data visualization app, or a 3-D marker for your augmented reality application, you should be using OpenGL ES.

OpenVG produces hardware-accelerated vector graphics, which are described in the next section.