Layered Custom Control Advice

[StevoSM]

I'm about to start working on a custom control which has a lot of graphical detail where part of it is updated in realtime. It's basically a relatively static background, a mostly transparent middle layer that is updated in realtime, and a mostly transparent and relatively static top layer. All the content is composed of basic 2D drawing - no need for a 3D pipeline. I'm looking for advice on how to approach implementing this control. Should I go for several layered Canvas views? On macOS, this control is implemented by a single NSView using multiple CALayers to leverage the GPU for performance. Should I be looking for a similar approach? Or are there other approaches I should be considering?

[HMO-SOUL]

Try Win2D, it's the recommended way for 2d graphics

[StevoSM]

@HMO-SOUL I have been looking at Win2D. The page indicates it's a work in progress and seems to be very little activity in the repo. Is this actually ready for production applications and can we rely on proper support for a decent length of time?

[HMO-SOUL]

@StevoSM
Win2D isn't part of WinUI, WinUI supports it but it doesn't cover all of Win2D functionalities, that the work in progress but Win2D is supported and works fine in WinUI
MS will never deprecates Win2D, many of their apps relies on it ,so no worries
I tried it in WinUI and it works well, especially the canvas control, so it's up to you to create a WinUI project and test the Win2D package to see if it fits your needs

[castorix]

All the content is composed of basic 2D drawing

Use a SwapChainPanel
I often use it to draw with Direct2D (interop in C#)