Colour map implemented as a bitmap

[EARNEST]

Hello there,
I would like to create N x M colour map, pixel at location(a,b) would be of certain colour based on certain range of values of double/integer filters. The trick is that it would have like 70*50 pixels that would change their colors very fast (depending on those double filters). I implemented it as a bitmap.

for loop i
{
for loop j
{
myColorMap.SetPixel(i, j, Color);
}
}

Is it efficient? Are there any better implementations?

[GaryTexmo]

Honestly, I don't know how efficient this implementation is. I think a bitmap like that lives in memory so it shouldn't be terribly slow, but there's also a good chance it doesn't use your graphics card to handle the drawing, which may be slow.

You could give GDI+ a try (though I'm not sure how fast that is either), or you could look at embedding an XNA game object (google these terms :D) into your form and use that to draw, where you can either use a Texture2D object as your color map (manipulate the Texture2D data, which is a 2D array of Color) or use a 1x1 pixel texture with SpriteBatch.Draw to serve as a "pixel".

If it were me, I'd try a bunch of different methods to see what gave you the performance you were looking for :)

[EARNEST]

Hm, totally forgot about Sprites for 2d...thats a good idea. I'll give it a try, but need to do more research, not that good with CG and XNA. Thanks a lot.

[GaryTexmo]

I should add that manipulating the color data for a Texture2D object is probably no different than writing to an in-memory bitmap like you're already doing. It's just that the draw itself might be a little faster.