The basic loop
public void MainLoop() { // Hook the application's idle event System.Windows.Forms.Application.Idle += new EventHandler(OnApplicationIdle); System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(myForm); }
private void OnApplicationIdle(object sender, EventArgs e) { while (AppStillIdle) { // Render a frame during idle time (no messages are waiting) UpdateEnvironment(); Render3DEnvironment(); } } private bool AppStillIdle { get { NativeMethods.Message msg; return !NativeMethods.PeekMessage(out msg, IntPtr.Zero, 0, 0, 0); } }
And the declarations for those two native methods members:
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public struct Message { public IntPtr hWnd; public WindowMessage msg; public IntPtr wParam; public IntPtr lParam; public uint time; public System.Drawing.Point p; } [System.Security.SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity] // We won't use this maliciously [DllImport("User32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)] public static extern bool PeekMessage(out Message msg, IntPtr hWnd, uint messageFilterMin, uint messageFilterMax, uint flags);
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Simple, elegant, effective. No extra allocations, no extra collections, it just works.. The Idle event fires when there's no messages in the queue, and then the handler keeps looping continuously until a message does appear, in which case it stops.. Once all the messages are handled, the idle event is fired again, and the process starts over.