The recent announcement that Draupner Graphics has been acquired by STMicroelectronics has put users of their TouchGFX software in serious jeopardy. The issue is that TouchGFX will no longer support any other SoC platforms other than ST’s chips. So, most TouchGFX users must now find an alternative platform for creating multimedia content.
TouchGFX users who are targeting the NXP i.MX6/8 series chips should take a look at the Lightwing platform as an alternative for creating multimedia content for embedded devices with rich user interfaces. Lightwing has most of the features of TouchGFX for compositing 3D assets, images, text fonts and touch controls, and like TouchGFX, Lightwing is cross-platform, for creating content on Windows for deployment to embedded Linux devices. But, Lightwing also has features that go way beyond TouchGFX, such as integrated support for animations, video, GLSL shader effects, live RSS web feeds, multi-panel video walls and even camera vision and motion tracking features are coming.
The other advantage of Lightwing as a TouchGFX alternative is that Lightwing directly exploits the GPU and VPU features of NXP’s i.MX6/8 series SoCs much more efficiently. TouchGFX can utilize GPUs, but its design has a lowest-common-denominator approach that attempts to support a large range of chips, and most SoCs have poor to no GPU at all. And rather than a single, proprietary GUI for creating content, Lightwing uses a suite of open tools, including editors for images and scripts, Blender for 3D assets and animations and ffmpeg for video. So, Lightwing is a great alternative to TouchGFX and costs less too with no per-seat licensing or maintenance fees.