The Software adaptation is an alternative renderer for Qt Quick 2 that uses the Raster paint engine to render the contents of the scene graph instead of OpenGL. As a result of not using OpenGL to render the scene graph, some features and optimizations are no longer available. Most Qt Quick 2 applications will run without modification though any attempts to use unsupported features will be ignored. By using the Software adaptation it is possible to run Qt Quick 2 applications on hardware and platforms that do not have OpenGL support.

The Software adaptation was previously known as the Qt Quick 2D Renderer. However, unlike the 2D Renderer, the new, integrated version supports partial updates. This means that the full update of the window or screen contents is now avoided, and only the changed areas get flushed. This can significantly improve performance for many applications.

Shader Effects

ShaderEffect components in QtQuick 2 can not be rendered by the Software adptation.

Qt Graphical Effects Module

Qt Graphical Effects uses ShaderEffect items to render effects. If you use graphical effects from this module, then you should not hide the source item so that the original item can still be rendered.

Particle Effects

It is not possible to render particle effects with the Software adaptation. Whenever possible, remove particles completely from the scene. Otherwise they will still require some processing, even though they are not visible.

Rendering Text

The text rendering with the Software adaptation is based on software rasterization and does not respond as well to transformations such as scaling as when using OpenGL. The quality is similar to choosing Text.NativeRendering with Text items.

Qt Multimedia VideoOutput

The VideoOutput item of the Qt Multimedia module is not supported with the software adaptation. This is because VideoOutput uses the QVideoRendererControl item which requires custom QSGGeometryNode behavior that is only present in the default OpenGL adaptation.