Swap Chains

A Surface identifies a window and its drawable size. SwapChain.Drawable returns the texture to render for the current frame.

Create a Surface

Create the surface that matches the application's window system and native handles, such as Surface.Win32(hwnd, width, height).

Zenith.NET provides Win32, Wayland, Xlib, Android, and Apple surface factories. Select the factory that corresponds to the handles supplied by the window host. Use a View integration when a supported UI framework should manage the surface.

Create a Swap Chain

Create the swap chain from the same context used for rendering:

SwapChain swapChain = context.CreateSwapChain(new()
{
    Surface = surface,
    Format = PixelFormat.B8G8R8A8UNorm
});

The graphics pipeline color format must match the swap-chain format.

Render and Present

Borrow a graphics command buffer for each frame, record the current drawable, and wait for the submission to complete before presentation:

CommandBuffer commandBuffer = context.GraphicsQueue.CommandBuffer();

commandBuffer.Transition(swapChain.Drawable, default, TextureLayout.Undefined, TextureLayout.ColorAttachment);
commandBuffer.BeginRenderPass([ColorAttachment.Clear(swapChain.Drawable, default)], null);

commandBuffer.SetPipeline(pipeline);
commandBuffer.SetVertexBuffer(buffer, 0, 0);
commandBuffer.Draw(vertexCount, 1, 0, 0);

commandBuffer.EndRenderPass();
commandBuffer.Transition(swapChain.Drawable, default, TextureLayout.ColorAttachment, TextureLayout.Present);

commandBuffer.Submit().Wait();
swapChain.Present();

Wait for the graphics submission before calling Present(). Do not dispose or retain the command buffer or drawable; borrow both again for the next frame.

Resize

Skip rendering while either dimension is zero. Dispose and recreate application-owned size-dependent textures, then call swapChain.Resize(width, height) before rendering again.

Recreate a pipeline only when its attachment formats or sample count change.

Refresh a Surface

If the window system replaces its surface handle, create a new Surface and pass it to swapChain.Refresh(...).