Hi, I am currently writing a raytacer and dont know whether to use gdi or gdi+ for the virtual frame buffer. The only thing I need it for is the dc and bitmap. Will gdi do? Also, how do you get gdi+, i''ve got xp and have found the gdiplus32.dll in my system folder but i need the gdiplus.h to put in msvc++. Do i have to d/l a huge windows platform sdk just for this small file? Any help with this would be great, Thanks

If you only need simple bitmaps, just use GDI. That works on all Windows versions and there''s no need to distribute the runtime and you don''t need any special headers, either.

Also, take this as a rumor, but I think gdi+ doesn''t use hw acceleration while gdi does. Gdi+ is very nice, I played with it before I switched to mfc and I didn''t need to use gdi+ then. Gdi+ has nice transparency while it''s broken in win9x. I use imagelists instead on win9x for transparency. I think msdn describes a way around that without using imglists but it''s kind of complex and probably slower. The gdi+ sdk is small so downloads are ok. Gdi+ is included in .net framework as well and it''s a first class citizen there. For your ray tracer I would use gdi because you don''t need much. Actually I would use opengl or ddraw for that instead of gdi. It''s probably faster.