Detecting horizontal mouse motion with Glut/OpenGL - opengl

Question

I'm trying to detect horizontal mouse motion with OpenGL, so, when detected, execute a glutPostRedisplay(). Problem is that scene is also redrawed on vertical mouse movement.
This is the code of the registered callbacks (note mouse_inix and mouse_iniy are global (double) variables):
void mouse(int button, int state, int x, int y)
{
if (state == GLUT_DOWN) {
mouse_inix = (double)x;
mouse_iniy = (double)y;
}
}
void motion(int x, int y)
{
if (((double)x) != mouse_inix) {
angle += 20.0;
glutPostRedisplay();
}
}

Answer 1

Are you sure? It doesn't look like from the code you've posted that vertical mouse movement will trigger the glutPostRedisplay() call.
BUT, you've defined "horizontal mouse movement" very narrowly here. If you move the mouse up and down, you're almost sure to get a few pixels of horizontal movement. Maybe you could put a dead zone around the mouse to keep it from moving on every pixel. Something like:
void motion(int x, int y)
{
if ((abs(x - (int)mouse_inix) > 10) {
angle += 20.0;
glutPostRedisplay();
}
}
That's one thing that's going on here. Another is the use of "double". Since glut is returning mouse coordinates as ints, you're better off sticking with that. Trying to compare "(double)x != mouse_inix" will almost certainly be true because of the precision issues with doubles. You generally don't want to compare for exactly equal to or not equal to using floating point numbers. The use of the dead zone will negate that issue, but still, why convert to doubles if you don't need them?
I don't know if "20" is degrees or radians, but it could result in some pretty jumpy moves either way. Consider scaling the size of the move to the size of the mouse move:
void motion(int x, int y)
{
int deltaX = (abs(x - (int)mouse_inix);
if (deltaX > 10) {
angle += (double)deltaX; // or "deltaX/scaleFactor" to make it move more/less
glutPostRedisplay();
}
}
It will still only rotate one way. If you used the sign of "deltaX", you would be able to rotated both directions depending on how you moved the mouse.