How to optimize point cloud rendering in Qt3D - c++

I'm trying to display large point clouds (~20M pts) with Qt3D.
I first found this library https://github.com/MASKOR/Qt3DPointcloudRenderer which is a good example, but I rewrote a minimalist example to load a specific LAS or PCD point cloud and display it with a subclass of Qt3DRender::QGeometry.
It works and the point cloud is nice, but it lags a lot. I think there is no optimization and all 20M points are displayed all the time.
What can I do to optimize this?
(The same point clouds is fluid on the same laptop with other softwares such as QuickTerrainReader, Pix4D or even VTK.)
Currently, at loading, the point cloud is serialized into 2 Qt3DRender::QBuffer, and I create 2 attributes from there:
Qt3DRender::QAttribute* vertexAttrib = new Qt3DRender::QAttribute(nullptr);
vertexAttrib->setName(Qt3DRender::QAttribute::defaultPositionAttributeName());
vertexAttrib->setVertexBaseType(Qt3DRender::QAttribute::Float);
vertexAttrib->setVertexSize(3);
vertexAttrib->setAttributeType(Qt3DRender::QAttribute::VertexAttribute);
vertexAttrib->setBuffer(m_vertexBuffer);
vertexAttrib->setByteStride(12);
vertexAttrib->setByteOffset(0);
vertexAttrib->setCount(m_pointcloud->size());
addAttribute(vertexAttrib);
setBoundingVolumePositionAttribute(vertexAttrib);
t3DRender::QAttribute* colorAttrib = new Qt3DRender::QAttribute(nullptr);
colorAttrib->setName(Qt3DRender::QAttribute::defaultColorAttributeName());
colorAttrib->setVertexBaseType(Qt3DRender::QAttribute::UnsignedByte);
colorAttrib->setVertexSize(3);
colorAttrib->setAttributeType(Qt3DRender::QAttribute::VertexAttribute);
colorAttrib->setBuffer(m_colorBuffer);
colorAttrib->setByteStride(3);
colorAttrib->setByteOffset(0);
colorAttrib->setCount(m_pointcloud->size());
addAttribute(colorAttrib);

Related

Loading Box2D b2World from .Dump() file

I am trying to save and load the state of b2World in order to resume a simulation at a later time, but with the states of the Collision Manager, etc being exactly maintained. What is the best way to do this (without getting into library internals, and having to use boost serialize while monitoring public/private members of every class)? Is there a way to repurpose the log file from b2World.dump function to construct the object again?
I think parsing Dump as-is is a dead end.
First, the output of Dump seems to be executable C++ code:
b2ChainShape chainShape;
b2Vec2 vertices[] = {b2Vec2(-5,0), b2Vec2(5,0), b2Vec2(5,5), b2Vec2(4,1), b2Vec2(-4,1), b2Vec2(-5,5)};
chainShape.CreateLoop(vertices, 6);
b2FixtureDef groundFixtureDef;
groundFixtureDef.density = 0;
groundFixtureDef.shape = &chainShape;
Secondly, there is the problem of dumping floating point values with enough precision to recreate the original object.
Finally, some objects don't seem to support Dumping at all.
Some alternatives:
Hack box2d and add your own state-preserving dumping mechanism
Keep all box2d objects in a specific memory area and use memory snapshotting and/or checkpointing techniques to restore that memory again on load. One such library I know of is Ken, but I'm sure there are other implementations.

OMNeT ++ direct message transmission visualizations in 3D

I am new to OMNeT++ and I'm trying to implement a drone network that communicate with each other using direct messages.
I want to visualize my drone network with the 3D visualization in OMNeT using the OsgVisualizer in inet.visualizer.scene package.
In the dronenetwork.ned file, I have used the IntegratedVisualizer and the OsgGeographicCoordinateSystem. Then in the omnetpp.ini file, the map file to be used is defined and so the map loading and mobility of the drones works fine in the 3D visualization of the simulation run.
However, the message transmissions between the drones are not visualized in 3D even though this is properly visualized in the 2D canvas mode.
I tried adding both NetworkNodeOsgVisualizer and NetworkConnectionOsgVisualizer to my drone module as visualization simple modules and also I have defined the drones as a #networkNode and #networkConnectionNode. But it still hasn't been able to visualize the message transmissions.
Any help or hint regarding this would be highly appreciated.
Code used for visualizations in the simple module drone is as follows
import inet.visualizer.scene.NetworkNodeOsgVisualizer;
import inet.visualizer.scene.NetworkConnectionOsgVisualizer;
module drone
{
parameters:
#networkNode;
#networkConnection;
submodules:
networkNodeOsgVisualizer: NetworkNodeOsgVisualizer {
#display("p=207,50");
displayModuleName = true;
visualizationTargetModule = "^.^";
visualizationSubjectModule = "wirelessInterface.^.^";
}
networkConnectionOsgVisualizer : NetworkConnectionOsgVisualizer{
visualizationTargetModule = "^.^";
visualizationSubjectModule = "wirelessInterface.^.^";
displayNetworkConnections = true;
}
Thank you
Message passing and direct message sending visualizations are special cases implemented by the Qtenv automatically for 2D (default) visualization only. You can add custom 2D message visualization (like the one in the aloha example). OMNeT++ does not provide any 3D visualization by default. All the code must be provided by the model (INET in this case). This is also true for any transient visualization. There is an example for this in the osg-earth omnet example where communication between cows are visualized by inflating bubbles.
So, you have to implement your own visualization effect. There is something in INET which is pretty close to what you want: DataLinkOsgVisualizer and PhysicalLinkOsgVisualizer which flashes an arrow if communication on data link or physical layer has occurred. This is not the same as message passing, but close enough. Or you can implement your own animation using these visualizers as a sample.

XTK - rendering volume in multiple renderers without .onShowtime()?

I'm wondering if someone can explain to me why I can't render the same volume in a 4 panel setup (3D, X, Y, Z) just like in XTK Tutorial 13, without the .onShowtime function. I tried altering the code to do this, rather than call the .onShowtimes function:
volume = new X.volume();
volume.file = 'http://x.babymri.org/?vol.nrrd';
sliceX.add(volume);
sliceX.render();
sliceY.add(volume);
sliceY.render();
sliceZ.add(volume);
sliceZ.render();
but when I do this, I get the load bars in the 3 display panels, but after loading, only the sliceX panel will display an image, the others remain black. Do I always have to have a main renderer and make the other renderers listen to it, as the tutorial suggests?
Thanks,
Dave
It is because the first call to 'render' is going to trigger the downloading of the data.
Once it has been downloaded 1 time and rendered the first time, we add/render it in the other renderers.
When we call 'render' on the next renderers, it will not try to download the data again since it has already been downloaded once.
If we call renderer as you are doing it right now, it tries to download the volume 3 times and it can mess up the internals of the object.
So long answer short, it is to avoid some race conditions but I agree we should improve that if possible.
Thanks
I have solved it temporaly replacing onShowTime with the JavaScript function setTimeout.You render the first renderer and after that you rend the others inside that function
volume = new X.volume();
volume.file = 'http://x.babymri.org/?vol.nrrd';
slice3D.add(volume);
slice3D.render();
setTimeout(function(){
sliceX.add(volume);
sliceX.render();
sliceY.add(volume);
sliceY.render();
sliceZ.add(volume);
sliceZ.render();
},600);
it worked for me.

OPENGL ARB_occlusion_query Occlusion Culling

for (int i = 0; i < Number_Of_queries; i++)
{
glBeginQueryARB(GL_SAMPLES_PASSED_ARB, queries[i]);
Box[i]
glEndQueryARB(GL_SAMPLES_PASSED_ARB);
}
I'm curious about the method suggested in GPU GEMS 1 for occlusion culling where a certain number of querys are performed. Using the method described you can't test individual boxes against each other so are you supposed to do the following?
Test Box A -> Render Box A
Test Box B -> Render Box B
Test Box C -> Render Box C
and so on...
I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but isn't this one of the drawbacks of the naive implementation of first rendering all boxes (and not writing to depth buffer) and then using the query results to check every object? But your suggestion to use the query result of a single box immediately is an even more naive approach as this stalls the pipeline. If you read this chapter (assuming you refer to chapter 29) further, they present a simple technique to overcome the disadvantages of both naive approaches (that is, just render everything normally and use the query results of the previous frame).
I think (it would have been good to link the GPU gems article...) you are confused about somewhat asynchronous queries as described in extensions like this:
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/opengl/specs/GL_NV_conditional_render.txt
If I recall correctly there were other extensions to check for the availability of a result without blocking also.
As Christian Rau points out doing just "query, wait for result, do stuff based on result" might stall and might not be any gain because of that, depending on how much work is in "do stuff". In fact, doing the query, waiting for it to round trip just to save a single draw call is most likely not going to help at all.

Draw a multiple lines set with VTK

Can somebody point me in the right direction of how to draw a multiple lines that seem connected? I found vtkLine and its SetPoint1 and SetPoint2 functions. Then I found vtkPolyLine, but there doesn't seem to be any add, insert or set function for this. Same for vtkPolyVertex.
Is there a basic function that allows me to just push some point at the end of its internal data and the simply render it? Or if there's no such function/object, what is the way to go here?
On a related topic: I don't like vtk too much. Is there a visualization toolkit, maybe with limited functionality, that is easier to use?
Thanks in advance
For drawing multiple lines, you should first create a vtkPoints class that contains all the points, and then add in connectivity info for the points you would like connected into lines through either vtkPolyData or vtkUnstructuredGrid (which is your vtkDataSet class; a vtkDataSet class contains vtkPoints as well as the connectivity information for these points). Once your vtkDataSet is constructued, you can take the normal route to render it (mapper->actor->renderer...)
For example:
vtkPoints *pts = vtkPoints::New();
pts->InsertNextPoint(1,1,1);
...
pts->InsertNextPoint(5,5,5);
vtkPolyData *polydata = vtkPolyData::New();
polydata->Allocate();
vtkIdType connectivity[2];
connectivity[0] = 0;
connectivity[1] = 3;
polydata->InsertNextCell(VTK_LINE,2,connectivity); //Connects the first and fourth point we inserted into a line
vtkPolyDataMapper *mapper = vtkPolyDataMapper::New();
mapper->SetInput(polydata);
// And so on, need actor and renderer now
There are plenty of examples on the documentation site for all the classes
Here is vtkPoints : http://www.vtk.org/doc/release/5.4/html/a01250.html
If you click on the vtkPoints (Tests) link, you can see the tests associated with the class. It provides a bunch of different sample code.
Also, the vtk mailing list is probably going to be much more useful than stack overflow.