Steema Central

Narcis / Yeray,

First of all, happy new year!

Secondly, are you able to give us some information regarding developments in the VCL circular gauge. Specifically making it appear as visually impressive as the .NET version - as shown in the gallery.

Back in October you answered my posts on this issue by holding out some promise of improvements in future maintenance releases. You did offset this by mentioning that the .NET framework provides better features to support "visual polish", implying that the VCL would never match the .NET look and feel.

Are you now in a better position to give us a clearer picture of what we can expect in this area ? Are you going to be able to get a better look and feel to the VCL circular gauge etc ? And of course if you are, when !?

Prior to the new year, we showed an internal audience an application containing the circular guage. To be honest, they were not impressed - the .NET version had impressed them earlier when powerpointed though... Anything you can do to improve the look and feel, getting it closer to the .NET gallery shots would be appreciated. (Even posting the property settings necessary to obtain the VCL equivalent of the .NET gallery gauges would give me a better feel for how far appart the two frameworks are).

Regards,

Paul.

Hello Paul,

Thanks, likewise Happy New Year!

At the moment, status with the current TeeChart VCL version 8.02, is that the only outstanding logged difference to the NET rendered Gauges is the smoothing for Circular Gauges only. Linear and Numeric Gauge smoothing should be fine. Please let us know if there are other elements that you see to be below expected quality with respect to the NET version.

Other known difference NET/VCL is that the VCL version currently includes Vertical Linear Gauges, still pending for inclusion in the .NET version.

With respect to smoothing for Circular Gauges, it's inhand. We don't have a round-the-corner solution to that, it has been a little tricky to perfect due to rounding differences on anti-alias calculations but it is a priority for us. We can't commit to a date due to the intricacies involved but will try to get a resolution for it, or definitive answer, within the next few weeks.

Regards,
Marc Meumann

Marc,

Thanks for the detailed update. It helps to know that you are still working on improvements. Our application still has two major features to implement before it's first release and so we don't need an immediate resolution.

Just as an aside, the gauge size we are using can't be helping as they are by necessity quite small. There are three on screen, sharing the real estate with two pie charts , a bar chart and a data grid. On higher resolutions, the gauges could be larger, but I also need to cope with lower resolutions (1024x768 upwards) and so smooth rendering becomes even more important as the gauge size is reduced.

Given what you've said, I'll take a look at the vertical gauges as a possible fallback should the Circular gauge anti aliasing calculations proove insurmountable. Hopefully that won't be the case as the circular gauge provides a far better metaphor.

Regards,

Paul.

Marc,

Apologies for chasing over this, but can you give us an update on the progress (or not) of the circular gauge improvements in VCL.

As a company, we're now demoing our application to potential and existing customers with the current 8.02 release. At a key internal meeting this Friday, I will be asked again just when and if we can deliver improvements to the gauge look and feel.

It would be useful if I had some more upto date information, hopefully positive, but negative would also allow us to make decisions.

Regards,

Paul.

Hello Paul,

Sorry to keep you waiting on this. After further investigation it's become clearer that we're not going to be able to sufficiently modify the anti-aliasing on the current VCL Gauge for it to match the .NET version for output, certainly within the near-term future. We expect a quantum leap in output quality towards the end of the year when OpenGL rendering for the Gauge is expected for delivery.

Sorry not to have been able to give a more positive outlook for the short-term.

Regards,
Marc

Thanks for the update Marc. An OpenGL version would be most welcome at some point.

Regards,
Paul.