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Visual effects for item states

(EDIT: it turned out to be that this doesn't necessarily has anything to do with OpenGL. Visual distinctions between different kind of states (highlighted, selected, cross-probed, suggested for clarification...) of items can still be useful.)

Description

KiCad has many kinds of items (in the schematic view and the layout view) which can have different states when doing the design: highlighted, selected, crossprobe-highlighted. Especially in the layout the view can be very crowded and look pretty messy, no matter how you try to define the colors.

I have been wondering if KiCad could utilize OpenGL better. It should be a basic task even with old OpenGL to add some kinds of animated visual effects to items. I don't mean moving animation, but rendering the color or "surface". What would be especially useful yet simple would be pulsating color. Let's take a highlighted net in the layout for an example. Depending on the color scheme and items on the board it may be very difficult to see what is highlighted and what is not. But imagine how easy it would be if the items would pulsate between the basic color and highlighted (bright) color within a second.

KiCad Version

Application: Pcbnew

Version: (5.99.0-2820-g96f4e8f6f), debug build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.0.4
	libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Linux 5.4.0-42-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK

Build Info:
	Date: Aug 18 2020 08:35:08
	wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.71.0
	OCE: 6.9.1
	Curl: 7.68.0
	Compiler: GCC 9.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
	KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=ON
	KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
	BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=OFF
	KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
	KICAD_SPICE=OFF
	KICAD_STDLIB_DEBUG=OFF
	KICAD_STDLIB_LIGHT_DEBUG=OFF
	KICAD_SANITIZE=OFF
Edited by Eeli Kaikkonen