PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection #2632

emackey · 2015-04-13T17:54:14Z

This PR adds two new classes PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection. It does not make any changes to the Entity.point API, however the back end of Entity.point is now connected to the new PointPrimitive system instead of billboards. This means that existing Entity and CZML points will automatically make use of the new system, with no changes.

PointPrimitive and its collection are similar to Billboard and its collection, with the following differences:

PointPrimitive uses glPointSize instead of textured quads (for 1/4th the vertices and no indicies).
PointPrimitive does not have any image or texture atlas system at all.
PointPrimitive does not support EyeOffset, PixelOffset, or PixelOffsetScaleByDistance.
PointPrimitive directly supports concepts from Entity.point, such as outline color/width.
PointPrimitiveCollection uses a single draw call, as opposed to BillboardCollection's 16k billboards per draw due to 16-bit indicies (64k verts per draw, at 4 verts per billboard).
PointPrimitiveCollection does not suffer from a scale value being mismatched with a raster image of a circle of the wrong size.
The point's edges and outlines are visually clearer.

That last claim is perhaps subjective, so I'll attach some screenshots of a CZML file from SatelliteViewer. Here it is in master, with Billboards, followed by the same with PointPrimitives from this PR:

Additional performance testing of this branch is most welcome. The biggest gains seen thus far are mostly in the creation of points, although the rendering does appear to yield a small percentage gain in FPS as well.

Here is a Gist of a Sandcastle demo that will create arbitrary numbers of PointPrimitives or Billboards, based on a number and a flag at the top of the file. Generally I find that creating PointPrimitives is an order of magnitude or so faster than creating the same number of Billboards. My machine will crash a Chrome tab if I ask for more than about 400k Billboards, but will let me render about 800k PointPrimitives at the high end.

pjcozzi · 2015-04-13T18:10:14Z

Thanks for this. I've also thought about introducing something like this since there is a cost for how general billboards are. I'd like to look at this before it's merged - just a heads up that I won't be able to until next week.

emackey · 2015-04-13T18:12:36Z

No rush. This is large and changes existing behavior, so it needs thorough review.

mramato · 2015-04-13T20:05:09Z

Source/DataSources/PointVisualizer.js

+            pointPrimitive.color = Property.getValueOrDefault(pointGraphics._color, time, defaultColor, color);
+            pointPrimitive.outlineColor = Property.getValueOrDefault(pointGraphics._outlineColor, time, defaultOutlineColor, outlineColor);
+            pointPrimitive.outlineWidth = Property.getValueOrDefault(pointGraphics._outlineWidth, time, defaultOutlineWidth);
+            pointPrimitive.pixelSize = Property.getValueOrDefault(pointGraphics._pixelSize, time, defaultPixelSize);


We probably need to add a scene.clampPointSize similar to scene.clampLineWidth to avoid assigning a size the card/drivers don't support. I also assume all cards have fairly large maximums?

Thanks. I've added this to the vertex shader, where in the most recent version this takes place after outline width and scale-by-distance effects have been included in the total glPointSize.

The typical size limits are shown on the very bottom chart on webglstats.com. Looks like the availability of extra-large (1023px) points has grown substantially in just the past year. Typical CZML point size real-world uses are far below 63 pixels, so they read as above 99% availability on this chart.

mramato · 2015-04-14T15:43:05Z

The point's edges and outlines are visually clearer.

Just an FYI, the main reason for the visual difference is #2130, once that is fixed, the points should look equally good in both cases (though this will probably be in master before then, so the point is moot).

emackey · 2015-04-14T16:56:56Z

Another demo: 1 million pointPrimitives scaled by distance. Give it time to load, and keep an eye on the Sandcastle console tab.

Conflicts: CHANGES.md

pjcozzi · 2015-04-22T23:59:59Z

just a heads up that I won't be able to until next week.

Sorry @emackey, it will be this weekend, really.

pjcozzi · 2015-04-24T20:30:50Z

PointPrimitiveCollection uses a single draw call, as opposed to BillboardCollection's 16k billboards per draw due to 16-bit indicies (64k verts per draw, at 4 verts per billboard).

The billboard collection could also use a single draw call. I actually wrote it so long ago that OES_element_index_uint was not available. Pull request welcome. :) #797

pjcozzi · 2015-04-24T20:39:45Z

@emackey did you run code coverage? What is it? I'm on Mac.

pjcozzi · 2015-04-24T20:40:35Z

Source/Scene/PointPrimitive.js

+        '../Core/Cartesian3',
+        '../Core/Cartesian4',
+        '../Core/Color',
+        '../Core/createGuid',


This isn't used.

pjcozzi · 2015-04-28T00:11:50Z

If we want this to make 1.9, I would want to merge it by Wednesday. 1.10 would also be fine for this.

Conflicts: Source/Scene/BillboardCollection.js

emackey · 2015-05-04T18:43:49Z

This has 1.9 merged into it now, and is ready to go.

pjcozzi · 2015-05-04T22:40:56Z

I added point/terrain clamping to #2685.

pjcozzi · 2015-05-04T22:50:14Z

Source/Shaders/PointPrimitiveCollectionVS.glsl

+varying vec4 v_pickColor;
+#endif
+
+float getNearFarScalar(vec4 nearFarScalar, float cameraDistSq)


Could you make this a czm_ function that is shared with billboards and has a unit test?

Sure. Is there any way to unit test a czm function directly? I don't see tests for any of the other czm_ functions. PointPrimitiveCollectionSpec does contain tests for scaleByDistance and translucencyByDistance which will make use of this once it's shared.

Separate question, is there any way to build documentation that includes czm?

pjcozzi · 2015-05-04T22:52:11Z

@emackey what is test coverage for PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection? I imagine they are high.

pjcozzi · 2015-05-04T22:55:04Z

That's all I got. This looks good otherwise. Thanks for all the work, @emackey.

emackey · 2015-05-05T15:44:47Z

Test coverage is fairly complete, actually I just found and fixed a hole in PointPrimitiveCollection and the corresponding holes in BillboardCollection. There are some untested "required parameter" debug statements, and both collections lack testing for computing screen space positions during the middle of a morph sequence (there's no right answer there).

emackey · 2015-05-05T16:04:10Z

As far as I can tell, we have tests for Automatic Uniforms, but no tests for Shaders/Builtin/Functions. I searched for several existing functions like czm_getSpecular and got no hits from the Specs folder.

The functionality of the new czm_nearFarScalar is tested, for both rendering and picking, by several different tests in different collections.

This is ready.

bagnell · 2015-05-05T17:30:53Z

We don't have tests for all of the builtin functions, but the ones we do have can be found in BuiltinFunctionsSpec.js

emackey · 2015-05-05T18:29:19Z

Thanks @bagnell. Test added. Ready.

pjcozzi · 2015-05-05T22:30:36Z

Looks great, thanks again @emackey.

PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection

emackey added 14 commits April 7, 2015 17:36

Started work on a point primitive.

86e94c7

Specify PrimitiveType.POINTS.

30c968d

Added some shaders for PointPrimitiveCollection.

bca313c

First sign that it's working!

a9ba911

Tweak anti-aliasing.

92820a4

Remove cruft.

7221af4

Rename 2 parameters to match entity.point, rearrange attributes.

4adcff3

Upgrade VAF to not split up un-indexed verts into 64k chunks.

1bdcab5

Copy fix from #2630.

d9ed942

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

1a5923d

Add unit tests for PointPrimitive and its collection.

887213a

Switch PointVisualizer to use PointPrimitives instead of Billboards.

6d0389f

Make the point sizes match the old behavior.

7bfd1be

Update CHANGES.md.

7ccd504

mramato reviewed Apr 13, 2015
View reviewed changes

emackey added 3 commits April 14, 2015 09:30

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

1b847ad

Add clamps for min/max point sizes. Add browser-zoom scale.

ad5d2bf

Fix problems with point size clamping logic.

0bbf178

emackey added 2 commits April 15, 2015 12:20

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

3c462a6

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

95d4943

Conflicts: CHANGES.md

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

91b3e91

pjcozzi reviewed Apr 24, 2015
View reviewed changes

Some updates after review. More to come.

22f0cd4

emackey added 2 commits April 28, 2015 10:17

Destructor cleanup.

ae10cad

Refactor pointPrimitive specs to use Specs/createScene.

cbdbf2c

emackey mentioned this pull request Apr 28, 2015

Billboard and Label tweaks #2669

Merged

emackey added 5 commits April 29, 2015 13:30

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

6cd15fa

Conflicts: Source/Scene/BillboardCollection.js

CHANGES.md - Pushed to v1.10.

62a4593

Incorporate some changes from Billboards in #2669.

31c7920

Doc tweak.

d38ff18

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into point-primitive

5dc4195

Tweak CHANGES.md

f073a28

Tweak doc

36e3c20

pjcozzi reviewed May 4, 2015
View reviewed changes

emackey added 4 commits May 5, 2015 10:32

Make czm_nearFarScalar a shared function.

773cc50

Tweak tests.

fe63450

Improve coverage by adding missing tests.

6f7fb55

Test name grammar cleanup.

698839d

Added test for czm_nearFarScalar.

8bd5dc9

pjcozzi added a commit that referenced this pull request May 5, 2015

Merge pull request #2632 from AnalyticalGraphicsInc/point-primitive

96d432f

PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection

pjcozzi merged commit 96d432f into master May 5, 2015

pjcozzi deleted the point-primitive branch May 5, 2015 22:30

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PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection #2632

PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection #2632

emackey commented Apr 13, 2015

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PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection #2632

PointPrimitive and PointPrimitiveCollection #2632

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