Deepzoom for WPF

Question

Are there any ports to WPF of Silverlight's MultiScaleImage (aka DeepZoom)? Have Microsoft road-mapped this at all for WPF?

I want to move from WinForms to WPF and require something like DeepZoom, using Silverlight isn't an option.

Answer 1

At the moment there is no port. However, DeepZoom is based on the technology found in the "World Wide Telescope" and the "Microsoft Photo Synth", so they have desktop versions of the technology running. I guess it would be safe to assume that Microsoft will be releasing a multi scale image control for WPF soon. If you just want the "panning and zooming", and don't care about the efficient breakdown of high resolution images you can certainly achieve the same effects in WPF. This post is one example on how to do zoom and pan.

Answer 2

Sad bit of news (or 'rumor'?)... in this List of features to track in WPF4 , Jaime says

"Note: At PDC, we said that DeepZoom would be in WPF4. Unfortunately that feature has been cut. We just could not squeeze it into the schedule. There are workarounds to it: you can host Silverlight inWPF using web browser control or using the Silverlight hosting APIs. "

I guess those hosting APIs might be useful if you're brave - but I'm guessing just putting a Silverlight object inside a WPF WebBrowser control would be simpler...

Answer 3

WPF has no such animal even though it was supposed to some time ago. In PDC 2008 Deep Zoom was mentioned. But alas it like many things was dropped.

I have been looking for a component like this for a while myself for handling very large images. (39,000 x 19,000 in my case) Is there a way you can use the tiles generated for DeepZoom? That would make generating tiles standard. Pan and zoom is no biggie but you when you have multiple images? I imagine you need to load and toss images out as you scroll and when you zoom? Alter the image group you use load and toss on the fly. Kind of a tough project. Keeping all the math straight is no small matter. Has anyone put thought into this already?