Layered SurfaceViews in a FrameLayout in Android

Question

I am attempting to build an augmented reality application for Android and have come across the problem of layering surface views. I need a surface view to display the camera

Answer 1

I think a lot of people have tried this. A Google Enginee stated (here) clearly, that you should avoid stacking Surface Views. Even if somebody has found some trick to do it, it is probably incompatible and will lead to problems.

I think this gives three options, depending on your requirements:

• View(s) on Top of Surface View

Use a Surface View for the Camera preview and stack Views on top of it. The disadvantage of this approach is that drawing on "normal" Views a) is slower and b) takes place in the UI thread. You can get around b) if you implement the threads yourself. But generally, that is probably the way to go if your overlays contain something like UI elements or a few Drawables that don't need to be updated too often.

• Do everything in a SurfaceView

This will give yo better performance and less overhead during runtime. You have just one SurfaceView. Composite the overlays on your SurfaceView and and draw everything there. Of course, you can combine both approaches.

• Do everything in a GLSurfaceView

This is probably the way to go for real performance. Like above, but with the camera view rendering to a OpenGL texture in a GLSurfaceView.

Answer 2

I got this working having 2 transparent views above the camera's SurfaceView using the following approach:

My activity sets up all its views in the onCreate() method, I make no use of any layout file for that. It looks as follows:

protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(null); //savedInstanceState);

    requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
    getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN, WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);

    cameraPreview = new CameraPreview(this);
    addContentView(cameraPreview, new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT));

    animationView = new AnimationView(this);
    addContentView(animationView, new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT));

    crosslinesView = new CrosslinesView(this);
    addContentView(crosslinesView, new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT));
}

cameraPreview is of type SurfaceView, animationView and crosslinesViews are of type View. The onDraw() of the 2 latter views looks as follows:

protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
    // Have the view being transparent
    canvas.drawARGB(0, 0, 0, 0);
    // Your drawing code goes here
    // ...
}

Good luck!