Silverlight 5, WPF or XNA for 2d/3d NUI visualization app?

I'm currently in the early stages of a project and have difficulty deciding which framework to use. I hear people say WPF is dead, yet it seems to be the (only?) way to program a Microsoft Surface app. This is one of the possible future aims of the project, but not the main focus.

The main focus however is: both 2d and 3d objects in the same view (and kinect/voice support). Some of the 2d objects are SVG files. From what I have read online so far it's not easy to render SVG graphics in XNA (nor Silverlight 5 3D for that matter). I've seen some SVG to XAML converters, but could the result of this be used in a 3d view? Or vice versa?

Considering it's not going to be a game, but a business application I'm tempted to rule out XNA, but then again I also require good performance as there will be quite some graphical stuff going on and if possible support for high resolutions/video wall. Taking a video wall into consi开发者_Python百科deration would maybe rule out WPF as I've read that it will only use hardware acceleration if the resolution is lower than the texture size limit of the GPU.

There is no intend to run the application in the browser or phone, as such i'm tempted to rule out Silverlight 5.

Any tips would be greatly be appreciated. Thanks!

I wouldn't rule out XNA on the basis that it's "for games". You can simply use only the parts required for hardware-accelerated 3D rendering and ignore the rest. This is in fact what Silverlight 5 does!

So you may find that your 3D rendering code is the same between XNA and SL5 in any case.

Here is a question about SVG in XNA. Basically answer is: you have to write your own hardware-accelerated SVG renderer - a stupidly difficult task. But if your SVG files never change, you could just use an existing software renderer to render them to a texture.

If you converted your SVG to XAML, you would have to render it to a texture to use it in a SL5 3D view anyway (unless it's an overlay). So there is no big win there. I don't know how 2D-3D compositing works in WPF.

Your decision really depends on whether you would find the built-in functionality that SL5 or WPF provides for user interfaces useful? Seeing as you are basically making your own user interface, you probably would not get much use from the provided 2D interface.

The 3D API that SL5 provides is basically a cut-down version of XNA. The 3D API for WPF looks like it just renders models for you - it does not seem to buy you much over XNA. If you have a compelling reason to use XAML, then WPF may be a good choice. Otherwise I'd go with XNA.