2D graphics with C#

Question

I see a lot of 3D graphics tech out there, but no real 2D graphics tech, nor books etc.. Any tips as to where to start for digging into 2D graphics programming in C#?

I've been fiddling with GDI+ for a while now (see demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvqPHfWCWSM).. I however want to switch to something that's faster - but for 2D: Direct2D (Dx), OpenGl, come to mind, but are they suited for 2D?

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UPDATE 08/03/2016: I now use MonoGame a cross-platform XNA implementation.

Thanks, Y

Answer 1

XNA is a great choice because you have all the rendering power of DirectX with managed code. If you want to use DirectX or OpenGL you have to use unmanaged C++ code (low level) which is far harder to learn/use. As for books there are a lot of great ones:

-Beginning DirecX11 Game Programming by Allen Sherrod and Wendy Jones(Course Technology)

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

For C# you always have XNA, still does the job.

Answer 3

Since you obviously know how to use the GDI to render 2D graphics (impressing demo!), you should have seen that this is already rather fast. GDI+ uses the graphics card to support rendering, so normally you don't need anything more for 2D. Direct2D is more or less dead nowadays and one would use Direct3D also to render 2D. (DirectX 10 and later interfaces don't even have special support for 2D any more.) You would just render stuff in screen space to achieve 2D rendering.