SciChart v3.2 now in BETA to Source-Code Customers

We are pleased to announce that SciChart v3.2 has been released as a BETA to SciChart Source-Code customers. If you are a source-code customer and your support is active, you will have been emailed a download URL to get the source. If not, please contact us with your OrderID and we can get it sent out to you 🙂

We’re still wrapping up our licensing/activation server, as soon as we are done, v3.2 will be released to the masses!

So What’s new in SciChart v3.2?

Performance improvements

Complete re-write to rendering core. SciChart v3.2 is significantly faster in the rendering core – where transformation between Data-values and pixel coordinates was made. A shorter, leaner pipeline positively affects overall rendering speed in all cases, but is particularly noticeable in the following scenarios:

• Many renderable line series (10 to 100 series) each with a few hundred to a few thousand points
• Scatter series
• When rendering unsorted data
• When rendering with ResamplingMode.None

It is less noticeable in the following cases

• Where you have fewer data series with many millions of points
• Where you are using complex visual effects, such as gradient brushes

You should notice the speed difference immediately. If you are using the DirectX renderer, the performance improvement in the above cases is even more noticeable, as the DirectX drawing is no longer bounded by the core rendering pipeline.

For more information, see our related article on SciChart v3.2 performance enhancements.

New Polar Chart Types!

See Dashboard Style Polar Charts, Simple Polar Chart and Multiple Axis Polar Chart examples. Polar charts support most series in SciChart, including:

• Polar Line
• Polar Mountain/Area
• Polar Band
• Polar Bubble
• Polar Scatter chart
• Multiple (circular) axis polar charts

Limitations with polar charts – not all the modifiers work, so zooming, panning is limited. Annotations support is limited. The feature is still in flux, so we invite your feedback if Polar charts are of interest to you.

New Stacked Chart Types!

See Dashboard Style Charts, Stacked Column Side by Side examples.

• Now allows columns Stacked Side-by-side
• Improvements to stacked column, stacked mountain logic
• Added 100% Stacked Column chart type
• Added 100% Stacked Mountain chart type
• Ability to render labels (values) on columns
• Supports adjustable data-point and stacked group width

New Scrollbars API!

See the Axis Scrollbars example, Custom Overview example and XAML Styling Example

• Per axis scrollbars
• Supports vertical (YAxis) and horizontal (XAxis) scrollbars
• Scrollbars are Templatable, stylable and have Start/End range of available data
• Ability to fully customize image or chart behind a Scrollbar, e.g. making your own SciChartOverview with unlimited series

Custom themeing API

Ability to create and save custom themes. Just a handful of brushes in a Resource Dictionary gives SciChart a beautiful new look :/

Centered Axis

See the Shifted Axis Example.

Ability to have axes cross over in the centre of a chart not just Top, Left, Bottom, Right. This resolves long-standing issue where centred axis workaround did not work in SciChart v3.x

Extended PaletteProvider

PaletteProvider now works with FastMountainRenderableSeries, FastBubbleRenderableSeries, XyScatterRenderableSeries.

Failover Handling for DirectX Renderer

Events have been added to allow you to handle DirectX failures and gracefully downgrade to software renderer. We suggest handling these events and setting SciChartSurface.RenderSurface = new HighSpeedRenderSurface() for problematic cases. Failure to handle the event will result in an exception being reported in the renderer. Set SciChartSurface.DebugWhySciChartDoesntRender = True to see these exceptions in the Visual Studio console window.

[csharp]
public class Direct3D10RenderSurface : RenderSurfaceBase, IRenderSurface3D
{
/// <summary>
/// This event handler will fire if the directx intialization fails
/// </summary>
public EventHandler<EventArgs> InitializationFailedHandler;

/// <summary>
/// Event handler to be used when rendering fails..
/// </summary>
public EventHandler<EventArgs> RenderingFailedHandler;
// …
}
[/csharp]

New Licensing Wizard

SciChart v3.2 requires activation per developer machine, and separate runtime license set using SciChartSurface.SetRuntimeLicense(). This will allow you to activate once on your computer and any SciChart applications, including our own examples, will work on that machine indefinitely (no more recompiling the examples when you download a new version!). It will also enable design time license.

We have also made a change to which renderers are licensed to which tiers:

• The DirectX Renderer is now licensed to the SciChart Source-Code product tier
• SciChart Professional customers may continue to use the High Quality and High Speed Renderers
• SciChart Basic customers will be limited to the High Speed Software Renderer only

Activation won’t be necessary for the current source-release, but a heads up, we will be changing our licensing implementation significantly on full release.  We will give you full instructions on how to license-scichart when the full release is out.

#WhensItGonnaBeDone?

So, I know what you’re going to ask – WhensItGonnaBeDone?! We are in the final stages of testing and developing and hope to go to full release very shortly. It is our aim to release stable software as frequently as possible. Once released, we would advise testing out the upgrade as there have been significant changes to the SciChart core in this release. Any bugs reported will be fixed as soon as possible, and deployed to a nightly v3.2 build.

Best regards
[SciChart HQ]