Situation:
I'm currently working on a project that requires collision detection with complex shapes:
.
Now the shape as a whole (The black outline) is displayed to the user as a regular image (Using Graphics.DrawImage). The image is broken down into distinct disjoint parts saved and drawn using GraphicsPath. The user clicks on the section, and if the area is clicked then the path is filled in.
Problem:
My problem is that on average there is 338 sections for the image.
Example saved data for GraphicsPath for one section:
1:41,1:42,1:43,1:44,1:45,1:46,2:46,3:47,4:47,5:48,6:48,7:48,8:48,9:48,10:48,11:49,12:48,13:48,14:48,15:48,16:48,17:48,18:48,19:48,20:47,21:47,22:47,23:47,24:46,25:46,26:45,27:45,28:44,29:44,30:43,31:43,32:43,33:43,34:43,35:42,36:42,37:43,38:43,39:43,40:43,41:44,42:44,43:44,44:45,45:46,46:46,47:47,48:48,49:48,50:48,51:48,52:48,53:48,53:47,54:47,54:46,54:45,54:44,54:43,54:42,54:41,53:40,53:39,52:38,52:37,52:36,51:35,51:34,50:33,50:32,50:31,50:30,50:29,50:28,50:27,50:26,50:25,50:24,50:23,50:22,51:21,51:20,51:19,51:18,51:17,51:16,50:15,50:14,50:13,50:12,50:11,50:10,50:9,50:8,49:7,49:6,49:5,49:4,48:3,48:2,48:1,47:1,46:1,45:1,44:1,43:1,42:1,41:1,40:1,39:1,38:1,37:1,36:1,35:1,34:1,33:1,32:1,31:1,30:1,29:1,28:2,27:2,26:2,25:2,24:2,23:3,22:3,21:3,20:4,19:4,18:5,17:5,16:6,15:6,15:7,14:7,13:8,12:9,11:10,10:11,10:12,9:13,8:14,8:15,7:16,7:17,7:18,6:19,6:20,6:21,5:22,5:23,5:24,4:25,4:26,4:27,4:28,4:29,3:30,3:31,3:32,3:33,3:34,2:35,2:36,2:37,2:38,2:39,
which is a whole lot of data to save and load into GraphicsPath and then eventually drawn.
Format x:y,...
My question:
Now here is the question, which is really open and I do apologize for. But is there a more elegant solution to this problem? A more simplified version? My supervisor is not thrilled with the solution I've come up with and has instructed me to search for a better one. We're open to using new technology that is compatible with dot net 3.5
Thank-you everyone.
I ended up going with a manual solution. My solution requires the user to define the points. More points = smooth. Less points = more polygon like.
I have a C# application that has an existing WinForm that I now need to display upside down.
The application will be displayed on a touchscreen Windows 7 device. If two people are using the device, one person is viewing it right-side-up while another user will be simultaneously viewing it upside-down. I will need to have one control displayed right-side-up while another control is displayed upside-down, each duplicate forms. Both need to be functional. It is not necessary for the title bar and Windows close, maximize, and minimize to be rotated.
Is there a way to easily rotate this Form and all of its contents without having to rewrite it from scratch?
Unfortunately, rotating controls is not directly possible in WinForms.
At least, not if you want them to retain their functionality. It would be relatively simple to draw the control into a bitmap, rotate the bitmap, and then draw that back to the desired location on the form. But you would obviously lose the ability to interact with the controls. They would just be static representatives of their original selves.
But making functional upside-down controls just isn't going to happen. I mean, you could try to write a bunch of custom drawing code for owner-drawn controls, but you'll still run into a bunch of bugs, corner cases, and compatibility problems. The Win32 controls that WinForms is based on just don't support this. No big surprise, really, considering they were invented some 20–25 years before anyone thought of computer screens that you could carry around in your pocket and rotate in any direction. There is a good reason that UI technologies like WPF came out around the time that touch screens and tablets did.
There are some possibilities that can be explored when it comes to flipping the entire screen, but that's not going to help when you want different controls going different directions. (And I guess it betrays my vantage point as a desktop app guy when I say this, but that just sounds like an incredibly confusing UI.)
If you absolutely have to have this, someone else is going to have to give you another route to hack it, perhaps along the lines of Dhawalk's comment: hosting the WinForms control inside of a WPF app that does provide built-in support for rotated controls. I don't know enough about this to make any concrete suggestions down that path. From a few minutes of searching, it appears that WindowsFormsHost does not actually support rotation transforms, so this may be a non-starter anyway.
I have never written any silverlight apps but I am looking to write a 3d viewer for earthquakes and have it run from my web site.
I would like to create a simple viewer so the user can change the "camera" ie their perspective. The view could contain up to 10,000 objects in the 3d space.
I want the ability to quickly view this - I have seen this on a Power Basic application and want to do this for the web.
I have a current web site at http://canterburyquakelive.co.nz for earthquakes in Canterbury New Zeaalnd and I want to learn the basics so that it can be more interactive.
I want to say for example (to start) place 2 objects in a "space" that I can define and move the camera in real time.
The system must support up to 10,000 objects in the end of the day.
Each object can be a simple circle - no need for special pixel shaders
I am unsure of the exact functionallity of the system at the moment so if I can find a tutorial that allows me to place someone (a circle) into a 3d world (space) and change the camera that would be good.
Any ideas appreciated - there seems to be so much about 3d and silverlight that I may be getting lost in the "gloss" of new features where I need some basics and I can learn and adapt over time.
** Added comment + image **
Basically I am waiting to create a page that look like this using Silverlight. But I am open to any technology.
I've never done 3D in silverlight so I can't exactly answer your question as asked but in general to display geographic markers in a 'real' 3D terrain is quite involved. At a minimum you're probably looking at:
Obtaining binary height data files (last time I looked, NASA gives this away)
Reading and interpreting said files to get 'bitmap' height data
Choosing and dealing with projections (e.g. UTM)
Deciding how to tesselate your bitmap height data
If you want it textured you'll need to also obtain satellite data for that, again converting or processing it to account for projection.
You could ignore the terrain height, but that may not simplify things depending on how 'bumpy' your terrain is.
For a pre-defined small enough area, you could perhaps pre-author a 3d model of the terrain in some 3D package but displaying your markers will still require a projection from long/lat into your 3D space, and you'll still need to know terrain height (unless you do mesh collision with the static model).
Rendering the markers is pretty straightforward by comparison, choose from:
Use a 3D model e.g. a 'pin head' (simple but not always visible)
Render a regular n-gon with 'viewer facing' polygons (resolution independent but maybe ugly)
Render a quad with a circle texture on it (low poly but what size texture to choose?)
There are probably libraries that do some or all of this for you, so if you are set on rolling your own then some of the things I've mentioned could form the basis for your search.
However, given what you've described of your site and situation I suspect you'd be better off avoiding all that work by using a pre-existing solution. E.g. the Google Earth API.
You could consider 3D web plugins that -granted- take you away from Silverlight but that might speed up your development process. I'm thinking in particular of e.g. the Blender 3D web plugin. I can understand the need to write your own viewer, but think twice before you re-invent the wheel. Good luck!
I am making an object tracking application. I have used Emgucv 2.1.0.0
to load a video file
to a picturebox. I have also taken the video stream from a web camera.
Now, I want
to draw an unfilled square on the video stream using a mouse and then track the object enclosed
by the unfilled square as the video continues to stream.
This is what people have suggested so far:-
(1) .NET Video overlay drawing(DirectX) - but this is for C++ users, the suggester
said that there are .NET wrappers, but I had a hard time finding any.
(2) DxLogo sample
DxLogo – A sample application showing how to superimpose a logo on a data stream.
It uses a capture device for the video source, and outputs the result to a file.
Sadly, this does not use a mouse.
(3) GDI+ and mouse handling - this area I do not have a clue.
And for tracking the object in the square, I would appreciate if someone give me some research paper links to read.
Any help as to using the mouse to draw on a video is greatly appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Many Thanks
It sounds like you want to do image detection and / or tracking.
The EmguCV ( http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page ) library provides a good foundation for this sort of thing in .Net.
e.g. http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Tutorial#Examples
It's a pretty meaty subject with quite a few years and different branches of research associated with it so I'm not sure anyone can give the definitive guide to such things but reading up neural networks and related topics would give you a pretty good grounding in the way EmguCV and related libraries manage it.
It should be noted that systems such as EmguCV are designed to recognise predefined items within a scene (such as a licence plate number) rather than an arbitory feature within a scene.
For arbitory tracking of a given feature, a search for research papers on edge detection and the like (in combination with a library such a EmguCV) is probably a good start.
(You also may want to sneak a peek at an existing application such as http://www.pfhoe.com/ to see if it fits your needs)
Problem Overview
I am working on a game application and need to be able to implement scrollable maps in Silverlight similar to those found in Google Maps. However, I am unsure as to how to implement this effectively. The following paragraphs provide much additional detail. Any ideas or guidance is greatly appreciated!
Problem Detail
I have been working on a new MMOG (massively multi-player online game). The game will implement a coordinate (x,y) based map. Only a very small fraction (less than 0.1%) of the map will be displayed on the screen at any given time. The player should have the ability to click on the map and drag the mouse to scroll and view map areas which are not presently visible. (This is somewhat similar to Google Maps.)
The map background is made up of a series of stitched (repeating) images. These images are woven together to give the basic appearance of the game's "world". A standard set of additional graphics are then superimposed, as appropriate, on each of the coordinate locations . For example, point (0,0) might be a lake, (0,1) might be a city, and (0,2) might be a forest. The respective images for a lake, a city, and a forest would be superimposed on the background.
It is important to mention that the entire map is NOT stored on the local client machine. Rather, as a player scrolls to or opens a specific location, the appropriate map information is retrieved from the remote game server. It is infeasible for us to build the entire game world map ahead of time due to its size and the fact that portions of the map are constantly changing.
I have toyed with the idea of building a bitmap on-the-fly of the new map each time a player moves. However, I think there may be a much better way to add to the map as the player scrolls.
When scrolling, movement of the map should not, if possible, result in a "flickered" refresh of the screen. I believe recreating a bitmap each and every time a player moves even one or two pixels would almost certainly result in flicker.
I am open to 3rd party tools and solutions. However, to the degree possible, I would prefer to use standard Microsoft libraries or open source tools rather than commercial tools.
What are some ideas as to the best way to implement this functionality so that it performs well, is reliable, and transitions to new areas of the map appear seamless to the player?
Thank you in advance for all your help!
Update
Here are a few pieces of additional information that may prove helpful.
Since my initial post, I have been introduced to the concept of a "tile engine". (Many thanks to Michael and Paul for pointing me towards Bing and BruTile.)
My understanding is that a tile engine basically breaks larger images into sections and renders them side by side. As a user scrolls, additional tiles are rendered as others are removed from view. This is very much what I am looking for.
However, there may be a couple of wrinkles that affect my use of a standard tile engine. All of the graphics for the game, including the backgrounds which would be displayed on any tile, will already be downloaded on the client. It is important that the tile engine not retrieve the graphics from a server as this would consume significant unnecessary bandwidth.
Other graphics (e.g. a lake, forest, hill), which represent objects from the gameworld, must be superimposed when the tiles are rendered on the screen. Tile engines such as Bing appear to provide the ability to superimpose custom images. Whatever tile engine is used must not only support this feature but allow exact placement of these superimposed images.
Finally, there is a a requirement to support popup descriptions when the user mouses over one of the superimposed graphics. Unlike the graphics which are already stored on the client, the descriptions contain information which must be downloaded from the game server. BruTile, while excellent in many ways, does not appear to yet support these popup descriptions.
We are making great progress. Thanks for all your help so far!
For an open source solution you could look at BruTile. It too has all the features you describe. It can also be used on the Microsoft Surface and on Windows Phone (for your markeplace version).
Use the Bing Maps control or the MultiScaleImage (Deep Zoom) which it uses.
To seen an example, go here. You can use the Deep Zoom Composer to create maps or topologies using your own photos and images.
Here is the SDK for the control.