Generate an evenly spaced point grid - c++

I currently have an algorithm that generates a point grid. It takes input from the user in the form of a length of x (lx) and a length of y (ly), and what increment, or delta, (dx and dy) to space the points by. I need the points to always start and finish on the edges of the bounding square defined by lx and ly. I've tried a few methods:
The start edge of the bounding square is defined as:
double startx = lx / -2.0, starty = ly / -2.0;
My first method determines the number of points and rounds:
int numintervalx = round(lx / dx), numintervaly = round(ly / dy);
My second method determines the number of points and uses the closest integer greater than the number of points:
int numintervalx = ceil(lx / dx), numintervaly = ceil(ly / dy);
My third method determines the number of points and uses the closest integer less than the number of points:
int numintervalx = floor(lx / dx), numintervaly = floor(ly / dy);
The delta is then recalculated to fit the bounding box:
dx = lx / double(numintervalx);
dy = ly / double(numintervaly);
These are then fed into a for loop that generates the points themselves:
for (int i = 0; i <= numintervaly; i++)
for (int j = 0; j <= numintervalx; j++)
{
double point[3] = {startx + dx * j, starty + dy * i, 0};
}
Is there another, more accurate, method that would make the actual grid closer to the user specified grid that still always starts and finishes on the edges?

Think of the integer conversion as adding error. In that case, the way to minimize the error added when converting to an integer is rounding. The worst case is if the user inputs values such that lx/dx is something.5, which means a rounding error of 0.5. Given your problem, this is the best you can do.
Consider renaming numpoints to numintervals or something, as you actually create one more point than numpoints, which is strange.

Require the users to give you values of lx and ly that are multiples of dx and dy, respectively. This will, of course, require some basic input validation, but it will guarantee the actual grid will be exactly the same as the user-specified grid, with points always starting and finishing on the edges.

your input is obviously not guaranteed to be compatible with lx being an integer multiple of dx, hence your problems. You must therefore require inputs that are compatible, ideally by taking nx as input and either dx or lx, whatever makes more sense in your application.
Alternatively, you can treat the user input as guide only, i.e. take
nx = int(ceil(lx/dx)); // get suitable number of points
dx = lx/nx; // set suitable spacing to fit range exactly

Related

Using Standard Cartesian Circle formula to draw circle in graphics mode (C++)

I wanted to draw a circle using graphics.h in C++, but not directly using the circle() function. The circle I want to draw uses smaller circles as it's points i.e. The smaller circles would constitute the circumference of the larger circle. So I thought, if I did something like this, it would work:
{
int radius = 4;
// Points at which smaller circles would be drawn
int x, y;
int maxx = getmaxx();
int maxy = getmaxy();
// Co-ordinates of center of the larger circle (centre of the screen)
int h = maxx/2;
int k = maxy/2;
//Cartesian cirle formula >> (X-h)^2 + (Y-k)^2 = radius^2
//Effectively, this nested loop goes through every single coordinate on the screen
int gmode = DETECT;
int gdriver;
initgraph(&gmode, &gdriver, "");
for(x = 0; x<maxx; x++)
{
for(y = 0; y<maxy; y++)
{
if((((x-h)*(x-h)) + ((y-k)*(y-k))) == (radius*radius))
{
circle(x, y, 5) //Draw smaller circle with radius 5
} //at points which satisfy circle equation only!
}
}
getch();
}
This is when I'm using graphics.h on Turbo C++ as this is the compiler we're learning with at school.
I know it's ancient.
So, theoretically, since the nested for loops check all the points on the screen, and draw a small circle at every point that satisfies the circle equation only, I thought I would get a large circle of radius as entered, whose circumference constitutes of the smaller circles I make in the for loop.
However, when I try the program, I get four hyperbolas (all pointing towards the center of the screen) and when I increase the radius, the pointiness (for lack of a better word) of the hyperbolas increase, until finally, when the radius is 256 or more, the two hyperbolas on the top and bottom intersect to make a large cross on my screen like : "That's it, user, I give up!"
I came to the value 256 as I noticed that of the radius was a multiple of 4 the figures looked ... better?
I looked around for a solution for quite some time, but couldn't get any answers, so here I am.
Any suggestions???
EDIT >> Here's a rough diagram of the output I got...
There are two issues in your code:
First: You should really call initgraph before you call getmaxx and getmaxy, otherwise they will not necessarily return the correct dimensions of the graphics mode. This may or may not be a contributing factor depending on your setup.
Second, and most importantly: In Turbo C++, int is 16-bit. For example, here is circle with radius 100 (after the previous initgraph order issue was fixed):
Note the stray circles in the four corners. If we do a little debugging and add some print-outs (a useful strategy that you should file away for future reference):
if((((x-h)*(x-h)) + ((y-k)*(y-k))) == (radius*radius))
{
printf(": (%d-%d)^2 + (%d-%d)^2 = %d^2\n", x, h, y, k, radius);
circle(x, y, 5); //Draw smaller circle with radius
} //at points which satisfy circle equation only!
You can see what's happening (first line is maxx and maxy, not shown in above snippet):
In particular that circle at (63, 139) is one of the corners. If you do the math, you see that:
(63 - 319)2 + (139 - 239)2 = 75536
And since your ints are 16-bit, 75536 modulo 65536 = 10000 = the value that ends up being calculated = 1002 = a circle where it shouldn't be.
An easy solution to this is to just change the relevant variables to long:
maxx, maxy
x, y
h, k
So:
long x, y;
...
initgraph(...);
...
long maxx = getmaxx();
long maxy = getmaxy();
...
long h = maxx / 2;
long k = maxy / 2;
And then you'll end up with correct output:
Note of course that like other answers point out, since you are using ints, you'll miss a lot of points. This may or may not be OK, but some values will produce noticeably poorer results (e.g. radius 256 only seems to have 4 integer solutions). You could introduce a tolerance if you want. You could also use a more direct approach but that might defeat the purpose of your exercise with the Cartesian circle formula. If you're into this sort of thing, here is a 24-page document containing a bunch of discussion, proofs, and properties about integers that are the sum of two squares.
I don't know enough about Turbo C++ to know if you can make it use 32-bit ints, I'll leave that as an exercise to you.
First of all, maxx and maxy are integers, which you initialize using some functions representing the borders of the screen and then later you use them as functions. Just remove the paranthesis:
// Co-ordinates of center of the larger circle (centre of the screen)
int h = maxx/2;
int k = maxy/2;
Then, you are checking for exact equality to check whether a point is on a circle. Since the screen is a grid of pixels, many of your points will be missed. You need to add a tolerance, a maximum distance between the point you check and the actual circle. So change this line:
if(((x-h)*(x-h)) + ((y-k)*(y-k)) == radius*radius)
to this:
if(abs(((x-h)*(x-h)) + ((y-k)*(y-k)) - radius*radius) < 2)
Introduction of some level of tolerance will solve the problem.
But it is not wise to check all the points in graphical window. Would you change an approach? You can draw needed small circles without checks at all:
To fill all big circle circumference (with RBig radius), you need NCircles small circles with RSmall radius
NCircles = round to integer (Pi / ArcSin(RSmall / RBig));
Center of i-th small circle is at position
cx = mx + Round(RBig * Cos(i * 2 * Pi / N));
cy = my + Round(RBig * Sin(i * 2 * Pi / N));
where mx, my - center of the big circle

Dividing an interval into n equal parts in C++

I'm having an issue with floating point arithmetic in c++ (using doubles) that I've never had before, and so I'm wondering how people usually deal with this type of problem.
I'm trying to represent a curve in polar coordinates as a series of Point objects (Point is just a class that holds the coordinates of a point in 3D). The collection of Points representing the curve are stored in a vector (of Point*). The curve I'm representing is a function r(theta), which I can compute. This function is defined on the range of theta contained in [0,PI]. I am representing PI as 4.0*atan(1.0), storing it as a double.
To represent the surface, I specify the desired number of points (n+1), for which I am currently using n=80, and then I determine the interval in theta required to divide [0,PI] into 80 equal intervals (represented by n+1=81 Points). So dTheta = PI / n. dTheta is a double. I next assign coordinates to my Points. (See sample code below.)
double theta0 = 0.0; // Beginning of inteval in theta
double thetaF = PI; // End of interval in theta
double dTheta = (thetaF - theta0)/double(nSegments); // segment width
double theta = theta0; // Initialize theta to start at beginning of inteval
vector<Point*> pts; // Declare a variable to hold the Points.
while (theta <= thetaF)
{
// Store Point corresponding to current theta and r(theta) in the vector.
pts.push_back(new Point(theta, rOfTheta(theta), 0.0));
theta += dTheta; // Increment theta
}
rofTheta(theta) is some function that computes r(theta). Now the problem is that the very last point somehow doesn't satisfy the (theta <= thetaF) requirement to enter the loop one final time. Actually, after the last pass through the loop, theta is very slightly greater than PI (it's like PI + 1e-15). How should I deal with this? The function is not defined for theta > PI. One idea is to just test for ((theta > PI) and (theta < (PI+delta))) where delta is very small. If that's true, I could just set theta=PI, get and set the coordinates of the corresponding Point, and exit the loop. This seems like a reasonable problem to have, but interestingly I have never faced such a problem before. I had been using gcc 4.4.2, and now I'm using gcc 4.8.2. Could that be the problem? What is the normal way to handle this kind of problem? Thanks!
Never iterate over a range with a floating point value (theta) by adding increments if you have the alternative of computing the next value by
theta = theta0 + idx*dTheta.
Control the iteration using the integer number of steps and compute the float as indicated.
If dTheta is small compared to the entire interval, you'll accumulate errors.
You may not insert the computed last value of the range[theta0, thetaF]. That value is actually theta = theta0 + n * (dTheta + error). Skip that last calculated value and use thetaF instead.
What I might try:
while (theta <= thetaF)
{
// Store Point corresponding to current theta and r(theta) in the vector.
pts.push_back(new Point(theta, rOfTheta(theta), 0.0));
theta += dTheta; // Increment theta
}
if (theta >= thetaF) {
pts.push_back(new Point(thetaF, rOfTheta(thetaF), 0.0));
}
you might want to cehck the if statement with pts.length() == nSegments, just experiment and see which produces the better results.
If you know that there would be 81 values of theta, then why not run a for loop 81 times?
int i;
theta = theta0;
for(i = 0; i < nSegments; i++) {
pts.push_back(new Point(theta, rOfTheta(theta), 0.0));
theta += dTheta;
}
First of all: get rid of the naked pointer :-)
You know the number of segments you have, so instead of using the value of theta in the while-block:
for (auto idx = 0; idx != nSegments - 1; ++idx) {
// Store Point corresponding to current theta and r(theta) in the vector.
pts.emplace_back(theta, rOfTheta(theta), 0.0);
theta += dTheta; // Increment theta
}
pts.emplace_back(thetaF, /* rOfTheta(PI) calculated exactly */, 0.0);
for (int i = 0; i < nSegments; ++i)
{
theta = (double) i / nSegments * PI;
…
}
This:
produces the correct number of iterations (since the loop counter is maintained as an integer),
does not accumulate any error (since theta is calculated freshly each time), and
produces exactly the desired value (well, PI, not π) in the final iteration (since (double) i / nSegments will be exactly one).
Unfortunately, it contains a division, which is typically a time-consuming instruction.
(The loop counter could also be a double, and this will avoid the cast from to double inside the loop. As long as integer values are used, the arithmetic for it will be exact, until you get beyond 253 iterations.)

Getting all intersection points between a line segment and a 2^n grid, in integers

I have a line going from (x0, y0) to (x1, y1) through a grid made of square tiles 2^n wide. I not only need to find the tiles the line intersects, but also the corresponding entry and exit points. All the SO questions on this I can find deal with "1x1" tiles without caring where the intersections occur within the tile.
The points won't always be precisely on an integer, and in some cases I'll use the natural floor and others I'll want to round up. But letting it naturally floor in all cases for this is fine for now.
I found an example that eventually gets to a very simple case of raytracing with integers, but it doesn't keep track of the intersection points and also isn't adapted for anything but lines going through the center (assumed 0.5, 0.5 offset) of 1x1 tiles.
void raytrace(int x0, int y0, int x1, int y1)
{
int dx = abs(x1 - x0);
int dy = abs(y1 - y0);
int x = x0;
int y = y0;
int n = 1 + dx + dy;
int x_inc = (x1 > x0) ? 1 : -1;
int y_inc = (y1 > y0) ? 1 : -1;
int error = dx - dy;
dx *= 2;
dy *= 2;
for (; n > 0; --n)
{
visit(x, y);
if (error > 0)
{
x += x_inc;
error -= dy;
}
else
{
y += y_inc;
error += dx;
}
}
}
How can it be adapted to find the intersected 2^n x 2^n grid tiles while also grabbing the 2 relevant intersection points? It seems the ability to start "anywhere" in a tile really mucks up this algorithm, and my solutions end up using division and probably setting things up to accumulate error over each iteration. And that's no good...
Also I think for the first and last tile, the endpoint can be assumed to be the "other" intersection point.
There is useful article "Fast Voxel Traversal Algorithm..." by Woo, Amanatides.
Look at the practical implementation (grid traversal section) too.
I've used this method with good results.
You can reduce your 2^n X 2^n tile size to 1 X 1 by dividing the entire coordinate system by 2^n.
Precisely, in our case that would mean that you divide the coordinates of the start point and end point of the line by 2^n. From now on, you can treat the problem as a 1X1 sized tile problem. At the end of the problem, we'll multiply 2^n back into our solution so get the answer for 2^n X 2^n solution.
Now the part of finding the entry and exit points in each tile.
Suppose the line starts at (2.4, 4.6 ) and ends at (7.9, 6.3)
Since the x-coordinates of the start and end point of the line are 2.4 and 7.9, hence, all integer values between them will be intersected by our line, i.e. tiles with x-coordinates of 3,4,5,6,7 will be intersected. We can calculate the corresponding y-coordinates of these x-coordinates using the equation of the input line.
Similarly, all integers between the y-coordinates of the start and end point of the line, will lead to another set of intersection points between the line and the tiles.
Sort all these points on the basis of their x - coordinates. Now pick them in pairs, the first will be the entry point, the second will be the exit.
Multiply these points back with 2^n to get solution for the original problem.
Algorithm Complexity : O(nlog n ) where n is the range of integers between the start and end coordinates of the line. Through minor modifications, this can further be reduced to O(n).
Plug in each integer value of x in the range x0..x1, and solve for each y.
That will give you the locations of the intersections on the sides of the tiles.
Plug in each integer value of y in the range y0..y1, and solve for x.
That will give you the locations of the intersections on the top/bottom of the tiles.
EDIT
The code gets a little uglier when dealing with different tile sizes and starting inside of a tile, but the idea is the same. Here is a solution in C# (runs as-is in LINQPad):
List<Tuple<double,double>> intersections = new List<Tuple<double,double>>();
int tile_width = 4;
int x0 = 3;
int x1 = 15;
int y0 = 1;
int y1 = 17;
int round_up_x0_to_nearest_tile = tile_width*((x0 + tile_width -1)/tile_width);
int round_down_x1_to_nearest_tile = tile_width*x1/tile_width;
int round_up_y0_to_nearest_tile = tile_width*((y0 + tile_width -1)/tile_width);
int round_down_y1_to_nearest_tile = tile_width*y1/tile_width;
double slope = (y1-y0)*1.0/(x1-x0);
double inverse_slope = 1/slope;
for (int x = round_up_x0_to_nearest_tile; x <= round_down_x1_to_nearest_tile; x += tile_width)
{
intersections.Add(new Tuple<double,double>(x, slope*(x-x0)+y0));
}
for (int y = round_up_y0_to_nearest_tile; y <= round_down_y1_to_nearest_tile; y += tile_width)
{
intersections.Add(new Tuple<double,double>(inverse_slope*(y-y0)+x0, y));
}
intersections.Sort();
Console.WriteLine(intersections);
The downside to this method is that, when the line intersects a tile exactly on a corner (i.e. the x and y coordinates of the intersection are both integers), then the same intersection point will be added to the list from each of the 2 for loops. In that case, you would want to remove the duplicate intersection points from your list.

Two points rotating around same center but distance grows

I want to achieve that two points are rotating around each other. I therefore use a rotation matrix. However I now get the problem that the distance between the points is growing (see atached video 1). The distance however should stay constant over my whole simulation.
Here is my code I use for calculating the speed:
Where p1 and p2 are the two points.
double xPos = p0.x+p1.x;
double yPos = p0.y+p1.y;
//The center between p1 and p2
xPos /=2;
yPos /=2;
//the rotating angle
double omega = 0.1;
//calculate the new positions
double x0new = xPos + (p0.x-xPos)*std::cos(omega) - (p0.y-yPos)*std::sin(omega);
double y0new = yPos + (p0.x-xPos)*std::sin(omega) + (p0.y-yPos)*std::cos(omega);
double x1new = xPos + (p1.x-xPos)*std::cos(omega) - (p1.y-yPos)*std::sin(omega);
double y1new = yPos + (p1.x-xPos)*std::sin(omega) + (p1.y-yPos)*std::cos(omega);
//the speed is exatly the difference as I integrate one timestep
p0.setSpeed(p0.x-x0new, p0.y-y0new);
p1.setSpeed(p1.x-x1new, p1.y-y1new);
I then integrate the speed exactly one timestep. What is wrong in my calculation?
Update
It seems that my integration is wrong. If I set the positions direct it works perfect. However I do not now what is wrong with this integration:
setSpeed(ux,uy){
ux_=ux;
uy_=uy;
}
// integrate one timestep t = 1
move(){
x = x + ux_;
y = y + uy_;
}
Video of my behaviour
There's nothing clearly wrong in this code, but the "speed" integration that isn't shown, suggests that you might be integrating linearly between old and new position, which would make the orbits expand when speed > nominal speed and to contract when speed < nominal_speed.
As I suspected. The integration is actually extrapolation at the line segment between point p0 and p1 which are supposed to be at a fixed distance from origin (a physical simulation would probably make the trajectory elliptical...)
Thus if the extrapolation factor would be 0, the new position would be on the calculated perimeter. If it was < 0 (and > -1), you'd be interpolating inside the expected trajectory.
O This beautiful ascii art is trying to illustrate the integration
/ x is the original position, o is the new one and O is the
/ ___----- "integrated" value and the arc is a perfect circle :)
o-- Only at the calculated position o, there is no expansion.
--/
/ /
/ /
| /
x
At the first glance, the main reason is that you update p0 and p1 coordinates in the each iteration. That would accumulate inaccuracies, which are possibly coming from setSpeed.
Instead, you should use the constant initial coordinates p0 and p1, but increase omega angle.

Create sine lookup table in C++

How can I rewrite the following pseudocode in C++?
real array sine_table[-1000..1000]
for x from -1000 to 1000
sine_table[x] := sine(pi * x / 1000)
I need to create a sine_table lookup table.
You can reduce the size of your table to 25% of the original by only storing values for the first quadrant, i.e. for x in [0,pi/2].
To do that your lookup routine just needs to map all values of x to the first quadrant using simple trig identities:
sin(x) = - sin(-x), to map from quadrant IV to I
sin(x) = sin(pi - x), to map from quadrant II to I
To map from quadrant III to I, apply both identities, i.e. sin(x) = - sin (pi + x)
Whether this strategy helps depends on how much memory usage matters in your case. But it seems wasteful to store four times as many values as you need just to avoid a comparison and subtraction or two during lookup.
I second Jeremy's recommendation to measure whether building a table is better than just using std::sin(). Even with the original large table, you'll have to spend cycles during each table lookup to convert the argument to the closest increment of pi/1000, and you'll lose some accuracy in the process.
If you're really trying to trade accuracy for speed, you might try approximating the sin() function using just the first few terms of the Taylor series expansion.
sin(x) = x - x^3/3! + x^5/5! ..., where ^ represents raising to a power and ! represents the factorial.
Of course, for efficiency, you should precompute the factorials and make use of the lower powers of x to compute higher ones, e.g. use x^3 when computing x^5.
One final point, the truncated Taylor series above is more accurate for values closer to zero, so its still worthwhile to map to the first or fourth quadrant before computing the approximate sine.
Addendum:
Yet one more potential improvement based on two observations:
1. You can compute any trig function if you can compute both the sine and cosine in the first octant [0,pi/4]
2. The Taylor series expansion centered at zero is more accurate near zero
So if you decide to use a truncated Taylor series, then you can improve accuracy (or use fewer terms for similar accuracy) by mapping to either the sine or cosine to get the angle in the range [0,pi/4] using identities like sin(x) = cos(pi/2-x) and cos(x) = sin(pi/2-x) in addition to the ones above (for example, if x > pi/4 once you've mapped to the first quadrant.)
Or if you decide to use a table lookup for both the sine and cosine, you could get by with two smaller tables that only covered the range [0,pi/4] at the expense of another possible comparison and subtraction on lookup to map to the smaller range. Then you could either use less memory for the tables, or use the same memory but provide finer granularity and accuracy.
long double sine_table[2001];
for (int index = 0; index < 2001; index++)
{
sine_table[index] = std::sin(PI * (index - 1000) / 1000.0);
}
One more point: calling trigonometric functions is pricey. if you want to prepare the lookup table for sine with constant step - you may save the calculation time, in expense of some potential precision loss.
Consider your minimal step is "a". That is, you need sin(a), sin(2a), sin(3a), ...
Then you may do the following trick: First calculate sin(a) and cos(a). Then for every consecutive step use the following trigonometric equalities:
sin([n+1] * a) = sin(n*a) * cos(a) + cos(n*a) * sin(a)
cos([n+1] * a) = cos(n*a) * cos(a) - sin(n*a) * sin(a)
The drawback of this method is that during this procedure the round-off error is accumulated.
double table[1000] = {0};
for (int i = 1; i <= 1000; i++)
{
sine_table[i-1] = std::sin(PI * i/ 1000.0);
}
double getSineValue(int multipleOfPi){
if(multipleOfPi == 0) return 0.0;
int sign = 1;
if(multipleOfPi < 0){
sign = -1;
}
return signsine_table[signmultipleOfPi - 1];
}
You can reduce the array length to 500, by a trick sin(pi/2 +/- angle) = +/- cos(angle).
So store sin and cos from 0 to pi/4.
I don't remember from top of my head but it increased the speed of my program.
You'll want the std::sin() function from <cmath>.
another approximation from a book or something
streamin ramp;
streamout sine;
float x,rect,k,i,j;
x = ramp -0.5;
rect = x * (1 - x < 0 & 2);
k = (rect + 0.42493299) *(rect -0.5) * (rect - 0.92493302) ;
i = 0.436501 + (rect * (rect + 1.05802));
j = 1.21551 + (rect * (rect - 2.0580201));
sine = i*j*k*60.252201*x;
full discussion here:
http://synthmaker.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6457&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
I presume that you know, that using a division is a lot slower than multiplying by decimal number, /5 is always slower than *0.2
it's just an approximation.
also:
streamin ramp;
streamin x; // 1.5 = Saw 3.142 = Sin 4.5 = SawSin
streamout sine;
float saw,saw2;
saw = (ramp * 2 - 1) * x;
saw2 = saw * saw;
sine = -0.166667 + saw2 * (0.00833333 + saw2 * (-0.000198409 + saw2 * (2.7526e-006+saw2 * -2.39e-008)));
sine = saw * (1+ saw2 * sine);