bgfx - Cross-platform rendering library

What is it?

Cross-platform rendering library.

Supported rendering backends:

Supported HMD:

Supported platforms:

Supported compilers:

Languages:

Who is using it?

http://airmech.com/ AirMech is a free-to-play futuristic action real-time strategy video game developed and published by Carbon Games.

http://theengine.co/ Loom Game Engine developed by The Engine Company. Loom is a powerful 2D game engine with live reloading of code and assets, a friendly scripting language, and an efficient command-line workflow. Here is video where they explain why they choose bgfx over alternatives:
Why did you choose bgfx?

https://github.com/dariomanesku/cmftStudio cmftStudio - cubemap filtering tool.
cmftStudio

https://github.com/taylor001/crown Crown is a general purpose data-driven game engine, written from scratch with a minimalistic and data-oriented design philosophy in mind.

https://github.com/emoon/ProDBG - ProDBG is a new debugger under development that will support a variety of targets and operating systems. Currently it's in very early development and primary focusing on Mac as primary target. This is how it currently looks.
mac_screenshot

Examples

Most of the examples require shader/texture/mesh data to be loaded. When running examples your current directory should be examples/runtime.

<bgfx_path>/examples/runtime $ ../../.build/<config>/bin/example-00-helloworldDebug

00-helloworld

Initialization and debug text.

example-00-helloworld

01-cubes

Rendering simple static mesh.

example-01-cubes

02-metaballs

Rendering with transient buffers and embedding shaders.

example-02-metaballs

03-raymarch

Updating shader uniforms.

example-03-raymarch

04-mesh

Loading meshes.

example-04-mesh

05-instancing

Geometry instancing.

example-05-instancing

06-bump

Loading textures.

example-06-bump

07-callback

Implementing application specific callbacks for taking screen shots, caching OpenGL binary shaders, and video capture.

08-update

Updating textures.

09-hdr

Using multiple views and render targets.

example-09-hdr

10-font

Use the font system to display text and styled text.

example-10-font

11-fontsdf

Use a single distance field font to render text of various size.

example-11-fontsdf

12-lod

Mesh LOD transitions.

example-12-lod

13-stencil

Stencil reflections and shadows.

example-13-stencil

14-shadowvolumes

Shadow volumes.

example-14-shadowvolumes

15-shadowmaps-simple

example-15-shadowmaps-simple

16-shadowmaps

example-16-shadowmaps

17-drawstress

60Hz

Draw stress is CPU stress test to show what is the maximimum number of draw calls while maintaining 60Hz frame rate. bgfx currently has limit of maximum 64K draw calls per frame.

| CPU | Renderer | GPU |Compiler| Arch | OS | Dim | Calls | |:-------------|:-------------|:----------|:------:|:----:|:----------:|----:|------:| | i5-3570 3.8 | NV 331.49 | GTX560Ti | GCC | x64 | Linux | 40 | 64000+| | i7-920 2.66 | GL2.1 | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x64 | Windows7 | 38 | 54872 | | i7-920 2.66 | GL2.1 | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x86 | Windows7 | 38 | 54872 | | i7-920 2.66 | DX9 | GTX650Ti | GCC | x64 | Windows7 | 32 | 32768 | | i7-920 2.66 | DX9 | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x64 | Windows7 | 32 | 32768 | | i7-920 2.66 | DX9 | GTX650Ti | GCC | x86 | Windows7 | 30 | 27000 | | i7-920 2.66 | DX9 | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x86 | Windows7 | 30 | 27000 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | GL2.1 | HD5000 | Clang | x64 | OSX 10.9 | 28 | 21852 | | Q8200 2.33 | NV 319.32 | GTX260 | GCC | x64 | Linux | 27 | 19683 | | i7-2600K 3.4 | DX9 | AMD6800 | VS2012 | x64 | Windows7 | 27 | 19683 | | i7-2600K 3.4 | GL2.1 | AMD6800 | VS2012 | x64 | Windows7 | 26 | 17576 | | i7-4770R 3.2 | Mesa 10.0.1 | HD5200 | GCC | x64 | SteamOS | 25 | 15625 | | i7-4750HQ 2.0| Mesa 10.0.1 | HD5200 | GCC | x64 | Linux | 22 | 10648 | | i7-4750HQ 2.0| Mesa 10.1.3 | HD5200 | GCC | x64 | Linux | 21 | 9261 | | i7-920 2.66 | ES2-ANGLE | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x86 | Windows7 | 21 | 9261 | | Q8200 2.33 | Gallium 0.4 | AMD5770 | GCC | x64 | Linux | 21 | 9261 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | ES2 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | PNaCl 31 | 21 | 9261 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | ES2 | HD5000 | GCC | x86 | NaCl 31 | 20 | 8000 | | Q8200 2.33 | Gallium 0.4 | GTX260 | GCC | x64 | Linux | 19 | 6859 | | i5-2450M 2.5 | Mesa 10.2.0 | HD3000 | GCC | x64 | Linux | 19 | 6859 | | i7-920 2.66 | ES2-PowerVR | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x86 | Windows7 | 18 | 5832 | | i7-920 2.66 | FF27-GL | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 17 | 4913 | | i7-4750HQ 2.0| Mesa 8.0.5 | LLVMPIPE | GCC | x64 | Linux | 16 | 4096 | | i7-920 2.66 | ES2-Qualcomm | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x86 | Windows7 | 15 | 3375 | | i7-920 2.66 | ES2 | GTX650Ti | GCC | x64 | NaCl 31 | 15 | 3375 | | i7-920 2.66 | ES2 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | PNaCl 31 | 15 | 3375 | | Q8200 2.33 | NV 319.32 | GTX260 | GCC | x64 | NaCl 31 | 15 | 3375 | | Q8200 2.33 | NV 319.32 | GTX260 | GCC | x64 | PNaCl 31 | 15 | 3375 | | '12 Nexus 7 | ES2 | Tegra3 | GCC | ARM | Android | 15 | 3375 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | ES2-FF27 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-asm.js | 15 | 3375 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | Chrome33 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-asm.js | 15 | 3375 | | iPad mini 2 | ES2 | PVR G6430 | Clang | ARM64| iOS7 | 15 | 3375 | | i7-920 2.66 | Chrome33 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 14 | 2744 | | i7-920 2.66 | FF27-ANGLE | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 12 | 2744 | | '13 Nexus 10 | ES2 | Mali T604 | GCC | ARM | Android | 13 | 2197 | | iPhone 5 | ES2 | PVR SGX543| Clang | ARM | iOS7 | 13 | 2197 | | '13 Nexus 7 | ES2 | S4 Pro | GCC | ARM | Android | 12 | 1728 | | iPad 2 | ES2 | PVR SGX543| Clang | ARM | iOS6 | 12 | 1728 | | Xperia Z | ES2 | Adreno320 | GCC | ARM | Android | 11 | 1331 | | iPod 4 | ES2 | PVR SGX535| Clang | ARM | iOS6 | 7 | 343 | | i7-920 2.66 | ES2-Mali | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x86 | Windows7 | 6 | 216 | | RaspberryPi | ES2 | VC IV | GCC | ARM | Raspbian | 6 | 216 |

To test browsers in 60Hz mode following changes were made:

30Hz (test for browsers)

By default browsers are using vsync, and don't have option to turn it off programatically.

| CPU | Renderer | GPU |Compiler| Arch | OS | Dim | Calls | |:-------------|:---------|:----------|:------:|:----:|:------------:|----:|------:| | i7-920 2.66 | GL2.1 | GTX650Ti | VS2008 | x64 | Windows7 | 38 | 64000+| | i5-4250U 1.3 | GL2.1 | HD5000 | Clang | x64 | OSX 10.9 | 36 | 46656 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | Chrome34 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-PNaCl 31 | 28 | 21952 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | Chrome33 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-PNaCl 31 | 27 | 19683 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | FF28 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-asm.js | 25 | 15625 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | FF27 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-asm.js | 20 | 8000 | | i7-920 2.66 | Chrome33 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-PNaCl 31 | 20 | 8000 | | i7-920 2.66 | Chrome34 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 18 | 5832 | | i7-920 2.66 | Chrome33 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 18 | 5832 | | i7-920 2.66 | FF28 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 18 | 5832 | | i7-920 2.66 | FF27 | GTX650Ti | Clang | JIT | W7-asm.js | 18 | 5832 | | i5-4250U 1.3 | Safari7 | HD5000 | Clang | JIT | OSX-asm.js | 15 | 3375 |

18-ibl

Image based lighting.

example-18-ibl

19-oit

Weighted, Blended Order-Independent Transparency

example-19-oit

20-nanovg

NanoVG is small antialiased vector graphics rendering library.

example-20-nanovg

21-deferred

MRT rendering and deferred shading.

example-21-deferred

22-windows

Rendering into multiple windows.

23-vectordisplay

Rendering lines as oldschool vectors.

example-23-vectordisplay

Dependencies

https://github.com/bkaradzic/bx

Building

Prerequisites

Windows users download GnuWin32 utilities from:
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/make.htm
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libiconv.htm
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libintl.htm

Getting source

git clone git://github.com/bkaradzic/bx.git
git clone git://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx.git
cd bgfx
make

After calling make, .build/projects/* directory will be generated. All intermediate files generated by compiler will be inside .build directory structure. Deleting .build directory at any time is safe.

Prerequisites for Android

Download AndroidNDK from:
https://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

setx ANDROID_NDK_ROOT <path to AndroidNDK directory>
setx ANDROID_NDK_ARM <path to AndroidNDK directory>\toolchains\arm-linux-androideabi-4.7\prebuilt\windows-x86_64
setx ANDROID_NDK_MIPS <path to AndroidNDK directory>\toolchains\mipsel-linux-android-4.7\prebuilt\windows-x86_64
setx ANDROID_NDK_X86 <path to AndroidNDK directory>\toolchains\x86-4.7\prebuilt\windows-x86_64

Prerequisites for Linux

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev

Prerequisites for Native Client

Download Native Client SDK from:
https://developers.google.com/native-client/sdk/download

setx NACL_SDK_ROOT <path to Native Client SDK directory>

Prerequisites for Windows

When building on Windows, you have to set DXSDK_DIR environment variable to point to DirectX SDK directory.

setx DXSDK_DIR <path to DirectX SDK directory>

If you're building with Visual Studio 2008, you'll need TR1 support from:
Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack Release

If you're building with MinGW/TDM compiler on Windows make DirectX SDK directory link to directory without spaces in the path.

mklink /D c:\dxsdk <path to DirectX SDK directory>
setx DXSDK_DIR c:\dxsdk

Apply this patch to DXSDK from June 2010 to be able to use it with MinGW/TDM.

Building

Visual Studio 2008 command line:

make vs2008-release64

Visual Studio 2008 IDE:

start .build/projects/vs2008/bgfx.sln

Xcode 5 IDE:

open .build/projects/xcode4/bgfx.xcworkspace

Due to inability to set working directory for an Xcode project from premake configuration file, it has to be set manually for each example project:

  1. Open "Edit scheme..." dialog for a given project.
  2. Select "Run" settings.
  3. Check "Use custom working directory" and enter following path: ${PROJECT_DIR}/../../../examples/runtime.

Linux 64-bit:

make linux-release64

WinRT / Windows Phone 8.1:

../bx/tools/bin/windows/genie --vs=winphone81 vs2013

Build the resulting solution and deploy to device. Note that shaders will need to be compiled with the appropriate target profile for your platform.

Other platforms:

make <configuration>

Configuration is <platform>-<debug/release>[32/64]. For example:

linux-release32, nacl-debug64, nacl-arm-debug, pnacl-release, 
android-release, etc.

OculusVR integration

OculusVR support is currently experimental, and only DX11 is tested. To build with OculusVR HDM support enabled you must set OVR_DIR enviroment variable:

set OVR_DIR=<path to OculusSDK>

And generate project files with --with-ovr option:

genie --with-ovr vs2012

In LibOVR/Include create trampoline headers OVR_D3D.h and OVR_GL.h.

OVR_D3D.h should contain:

#include "../Src/OVR_CAPI_D3D.h"

OVR_GL.h should contain:

#include "../Src/OVR_CAPI_GL.h"

Internals

bgfx is using sort-based draw call bucketing. This means that submission order doesn't necessarily match the rendering order, but on the low-level they will be sorted and ordered correctly. On the high level this allows more optimal way of submitting draw calls for all passes at one place, and on the low-level this allows better optimization of rendering order. This sometimes creates undesired results usually for GUI rendering, where draw order should usually match submit order. bgfx provides way to enable sequential rendering for these cases (see bgfx::setViewSeq).

Internally all low-level rendering draw calls are issued inside single function Context::rendererSubmit. This function exist inside each renderer backend implementation.

More detailed description of sort-based draw call bucketing can be found at:
Order your graphics draw calls around!

Customization

By default each platform has sane default values. For example on Windows default renderer is DirectX9, and on Linux it is OpenGL 2.1. On Windows platform all rendering backends are available. For OpenGL ES on desktop you can find more information at:- OpenGL ES 2.0 and EGL on desktop

If you're targeting specific mobile hardware, you can find GLES support in their official SDKs: Adreno SDK, Mali SDK, PowerVR SDK.

All configuration settings are located inside src/config.h.

Every BGFX_CONFIG_* setting can be changed by passing defines thru compiler switches. For example setting preprocessor define BGFX_CONFIG_RENDERER_OPENGL=1 will change backend renderer to OpenGL 2.1. on Windows. Since rendering APIs are platform specific, this obviously won't work nor make sense in all cases. Certain platforms have only single choice, for example the Native Client works only with OpenGL ES 2.0 renderer, using anything other than that will result in build errors.

Debugging and Profiling

RenderDoc

Loading of RenderDoc is integrated in bgfx when using DX11 renderer. You can drop in renderdoc.dll from RenderDoc distribution into working directory, and it will be automatically loaded during bgfx initialization. This allows frame capture at any time by pressing F11.

Download: RenderDoc

IntelGPA

Right click Intel GPA Monitor tray icon, choose preferences, check "Auto-detect launched applications" option. Find InjectionList.txt in GPA directory and add examples-* to the list.

Download: IntelGPA

Other debuggers:

| Name | OS | DX9 | DX11 | GL | GLES | Source | |:----------|:--------------|:----:|:----:|:----:|:----:|:------:| | APITrace | Linux/OSX/Win | x | x | x | x | x | | CodeXL | Linux/Win | | | x | | | | IntelGPA | Linux/OSX/Win | x | x | | x | | | Nsight | Win | x | x | x | | | | PerfHUD | Win | x | x | | | | | RenderDoc | Win | | x | x | | x | | vogl | Linux | | | x | | x |

Download:
APITrace
CodeXL
Nsight
PerfHUD
vogl

SDL, GLFW, etc.

It is possible to use bgfx with SDL, GLFW and similar cross platform windowing libraries. The main requirement is that windowing library provides access to native window handle that's used to create Direct3D device or OpenGL context.

Using bgfx with SDL example:

#include <SDL.h>
#include <bgfxplatform.h> // it must be included after SDL to enable SDL
                          // integration code path.

#include <bgfx.h>
...

int main(...
{
    SDL_window* window = SDL_CreateWindow(...
    bgfx::sdlSetWindow(window);

    ...
    bgfx::init();

NOTE You can use --with-sdl when runnning GENie to enable SDL2 integration with examples:

genie --with-sdl vs2012

Tools

Shader Compiler (shaderc)

bgfx cross-platform shader language is based on GLSL syntax. It's uses ANSI C preprocessor to transform GLSL like language syntax into HLSL. This technique has certain drawbacks, but overall it's simple and allows quick authoring of cross-platform shaders.

Some differences between bgfx's shaderc flavor of GLSL and regular GLSL:

For more info see shader helper macros.

Texture Compiler (texturec)

This tool doesn't currently exist. To produce DDS, KTX or PVR textures use:

.dds - nVidia Texture Tools - DDS Utilities
.ktx - Mali GPU Texture Compression Tool
.pvr - PowerVR Insider SDK

Geometry Compiler (geometryc)

Converts Wavefront .obj mesh file to format optimal for using with bgfx.

Todo

Contact

@bkaradzic

Project page
https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx

3rd Party Libraries

All required 3rd party libraries are included in bgfx repository in 3rdparty/ directory.

Blendish (MIT)

Blendish - Blender 2.5 UI based theming functions for NanoVG.

https://bitbucket.org/duangle/oui-blendish

edtaa3 (MIT)

Contour Rendering by Distance Fields

https://github.com/OpenGLInsights/OpenGLInsightsCode/tree/master/Chapter%2012%202D%20Shape%20Rendering%20by%20Distance%20Fields

fcpp (BSD)

Frexx C preprocessor

https://github.com/bagder/fcpp

Forsyth Triangle Order Optimizer (Public Domain)

http://gameangst.com/?p=9

FreeType

http://www.freetype.org/

glsl-optimizer (MIT)

GLSL optimizer based on Mesa's GLSL compiler. Used in Unity for mobile shader optimization.

https://github.com/aras-p/glsl-optimizer

NanoVG (ZLIB)

NanoVG is small antialiased vector graphics rendering library.

https://github.com/memononen/nanovg

SDF (MIT)

Sweep-and-update Euclidean distance transform of an antialised image for contour texturing.

https://github.com/memononen/SDF

stbimage, stbtruetype (Public Domain)

http://nothings.org

Assets

Bunny
Stanford University Computer Graphics Laboratory

Uffizi
Light Probe Image Gallery

Wells
Bernhard Vogl Light probes

Pisa, Ennis, Grace
High-Resolution Light Probe Image Gallery

Droid Sans Font
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/license/Droid-Sans

Bleeding Cowboys Font
http://www.dafont.com/bleeding-cowboys.font

Cheap Fire Font
http://www.dafont.com/cheap-fire.font

Five Minutes Font
http://www.fonts2u.com/fiveminutes.font

Mias Scribblings Font
http://www.dafont.com/mias-scribblings.font

Ruritania Font
http://www.dafont.com/ruritania.font

Signika Font
http://fontfabric.com/signika-font/

Visitor Font
http://www.dafont.com/visitor.font

Special-Elite Font
http://www.fontspace.com/astigmatic-one-eye-typographic-institute/special-elite

FontAwesome Font
http://fontawesome.io/

Sherlock Holmes text
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661

Tree Pack 1
http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free-obj-mode-tree-pack/506851

Getting involved

Everyone is welcome to contribute to bgfx by submitting bug reports, testing on different platforms, writing examples, improving documentation, profiling and optimizing, etc.

When contributing to the bgfx project you must agree to the BSD 2-clause licensing terms.

Contributors

Garett Bass (@gtbass) - OSX port.
Jeremie Roy (@jeremieroy) - Font system and examples.
Milos Tosic (@milostosic) - 12-lod example.
Dario Manesku (@dariomanesku) - 13-stencil, 14-shadowvolumes, 15-shadowmaps-simple, 16-shadowmaps, 18-ibl
James Gray (@james4k) - Go language API bindings.
p0nce (@p0nce) - D language API bindings.
Mike Popoloski (@MikePopoloski) - C#/VB/F# language API bindings, WinRT/WinPhone support.
Kai Jourdan (@questor) - 23-vectordisplay example

License (BSD 2-clause)

Copyright 2010-2014 Branimir Karadzic. All rights reserved.

https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
      and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY COPYRIGHT HOLDER ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO
EVENT SHALL COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE
OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.