inconsistent output fixed by debug statement placement - c++

Question

EDIT: it was an uninitialized variable... :(
Explanation:
The PointLLA constructor I used only passed through Latitude and Longitude, but I never explicitly set the internal Altitude member variable to 0. Rookie mistake...
Original Question:
I'm having a pretty horrible time with a bug in my code. I'm calculating distances between a single point and the corners of a rectangle. In this case, the point is centered over the rectangle so I should get four equal distances. I get three equal distances, and one almost equal distance value that's inconsistent (different every time it runs).
If I have a few key debug statements (pretty much just a std::cout call) that explicitly print out the location of each rectangle corner, I get the expected value for the distance and the inconsistency disappears. Here's the relevant code:
// calculate the minimum and maximum distance to
// camEye within the available lat/lon bounds
Vec3 viewBoundsNE; convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(maxLat,maxLon),viewBoundsNE);
Vec3 viewBoundsNW; convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(maxLat,minLon),viewBoundsNW);
Vec3 viewBoundsSW; convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(minLat,minLon),viewBoundsSW);
Vec3 viewBoundsSE; convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(minLat,maxLon),viewBoundsSE);
// begin comment this block out, and buggy output
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: NE (" << viewBoundsNE.x
<< " " << viewBoundsNE.y
<< " " << viewBoundsNE.z << ")";
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: NW (" << viewBoundsNW.x
<< " " << viewBoundsNW.y
<< " " << viewBoundsNW.z << ")";
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: SE (" << viewBoundsSW.x
<< " " << viewBoundsSW.y
<< " " << viewBoundsSW.z << ")";
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: SW (" << viewBoundsSE.x
<< " " << viewBoundsSE.y
<< " " << viewBoundsSE.z << ")";
// --------------- end
// to get the maximum distance, find the maxima
// of the distances to each corner of the bounding box
double distToNE = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsNE);
double distToNW = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsNW); // <-- inconsistent
double distToSE = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsSE);
double distToSW = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsSW);
std::cout << "INFO: distToNE: " << distToNE << std::endl;
std::cout << "INFO: distToNW: " << distToNW << std::endl; // <-- inconsistent
std::cout << "INFO: distToSE: " << distToSE << std::endl;
std::cout << "INFO: distToSW: " << distToSW << std::endl;
double maxDistToViewBounds = distToNE;
if(distToNW > maxDistToViewBounds)
{ maxDistToViewBounds = distToNW; }
if(distToSE > maxDistToViewBounds)
{ maxDistToViewBounds = distToSE; }
if(distToSW > maxDistToViewBounds)
{ maxDistToViewBounds = distToSW; }
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: maxDistToViewBounds: " << maxDistToViewBounds;
So if I run the code shown above, I'll get output as follows:
INFO: NE (6378137 104.12492 78.289415)
INFO: NW (6378137 -104.12492 78.289415)
INFO: SE (6378137 -104.12492 -78.289415)
INFO: SW (6378137 104.12492 -78.289415)
INFO: distToNE: 462.71851
INFO: distToNW: 462.71851
INFO: distToSE: 462.71851
INFO: distToSW: 462.71851
INFO: maxDistToViewBounds: 462.71851
Exactly as expected. Note that all the distTo* values are the same. I can run the program over and over again and I'll get exactly the same output. But now, if I comment out the block that I noted in the code above, I get something like this:
INFO: distToNE: 462.71851
INFO: distToNW: 463.85601
INFO: distToSE: 462.71851
INFO: distToSW: 462.71851
INFO: maxDistToViewBounds: 463.85601
Every run will slightly vary distToNW. Why distToNW and not the other values? I don't know. A few more runs:
463.06218
462.79352
462.76194
462.74772
463.09787
464.04648
So... what's going on here? I tried cleaning/rebuilding my project to see if there was something strange going on but it didn't help. I'm using GCC 4.6.3 with an x86 target.
EDIT: Adding the definitions of relevant functions.
void MapRenderer::convLLAToECEF(const PointLLA &pointLLA, Vec3 &pointECEF)
{
// conversion formula from...
// hxxp://www.microem.ru/pages/u_blox/tech/dataconvert/GPS.G1-X-00006.pdf
// remember to convert deg->rad
double sinLat = sin(pointLLA.lat * K_PI/180.0f);
double sinLon = sin(pointLLA.lon * K_PI/180.0f);
double cosLat = cos(pointLLA.lat * K_PI/180.0f);
double cosLon = cos(pointLLA.lon * K_PI/180.0f);
// v = radius of curvature (meters)
double v = ELL_SEMI_MAJOR / (sqrt(1-(ELL_ECC_EXP2*sinLat*sinLat)));
pointECEF.x = (v + pointLLA.alt) * cosLat * cosLon;
pointECEF.y = (v + pointLLA.alt) * cosLat * sinLon;
pointECEF.z = ((1-ELL_ECC_EXP2)*v + pointLLA.alt)*sinLat;
}
// and from the Vec3 class defn
inline double DistanceTo(Vec3 const &otherVec) const
{
return sqrt((x-otherVec.x)*(x-otherVec.x) +
(y-otherVec.y)*(y-otherVec.y) +
(z-otherVec.z)*(z-otherVec.z));
}

Answer 1

The inconsistent output suggests that either you're making use of an uninitialized variable somewhere in your code, or you have some memory error (accessing memory that's been deleted, double-deleting memory, etc). I don't see either of those things happening in the code you pasted, but there's lots of other code that gets called.
Does the Vec3 constructor initialize all member variables to zero (or some known state)? If not, then do so and see if that helps. If they're already initialized, take a closer look at convLLAToECEF and PointLLA to see if any variables are not getting initialized or if you have any memory errors there.

Answer 2

Seems to me like the DistanceTo function is bugged in some way. If you cannot work out what is up, experiment a bit, and report back.
Try reordering the outputs to see if it's still NW that is wrong.
Try redoing the NW point 2-3 times into different vars to see if they are even consistent in one run.
Try using a different camEye for each point to rule out statefulness in that class.

Answer 3

As much as I hate it, have you stepped through it in a debugger? I usually bias towards stdout based debugging, but it seems like it'd help. That aside, you've got side effects from something nasty kicking around.
My guess is that the fact that you expect (rightfully of course) all four values to be the same is masking a "NW/SW/NE/SE" typo someplace. First thing I'd do is isolate the block you've got here into it's own function (that takes the box and point coordinates) then run it with the point in several different locations. I think the error should likely expose itself quickly at that point.

Answer 4

See if the problem reproduces if you have the debug statements there, but move them after the output. Then the debug statements could help determine whether it was the Vec3 object that was corrupted, or the calculation from it.
Other ideas: run the code under valgrind.
Pore over the disassembly output.