From the first days of StitchBuddy I was looking for a way to make the look of displayed embroideries more realistic. Users should get an impression about the stitches, their directions and layers, with the drawing still fast enough to allow modifications. I don't like static 3D previews without any user interaction.

I faked a 3D display by drawing a black outline around each stitch, and an additional white one in its center: Good enough for overviews, but pretty rough at higher zoom levels. The last days I evaluated several other methods, looking for a faster display performance and a better look, and I succeeded. Here's a comparison between the current and the new approach:

With the next release StitchBuddy will use gradients to simulate 3D stitches, and as you can see the effect is quite impressive, with even a (slightly) faster performance.