[SDL] 2D API evolution (SDL 1.3/2.0)

[Stephane Marchesin]

David Olofson wrote:
> Although the latest Windows version doesn't have to run on the latest 
> hardcore gaming hardware, I don't think people would be willing to 
> run Vista on anything that doesn't have rather serious 3D 
> acceleration - so we can probably assume that anything running Vista 
> will be quite fast enough for any "sensible" applications.
>   
Well, even if there was some significant overhead in the OpenGL wrapper, 
I don't think that'd matter much. The overhead of an API wrapper is 
usually related to the number of calls made. And in the case of 2D 
rendering, the number of API calls will be very low for each drawn pixel 
(recall that in the 2D case, surfaces cover up a bigger number of pixels 
than the typical 3D triangle, which is exactly the opposite of using the 
API for 3D, which typically draws lots of small triangles, with lots of 
overdraw).

So in the end, I don't think the overhead introduced by the wrapper 
matters much if at all for 2D, only the card fill rate and texture 
upload speeds count. And that does not depend on having a wrapper or not.

Stephane