Torsten Moeller (tmoeller++at++cgrg.ohio-state.edu)
Tue, 14 Mar 1995 01:59:17 -0500 (EST)
I've been messing around with the following problem(s) for a few
days now and don't seem to make any progress. Although it might look
kind of trivial it is not (at least not for me).
To build my application I basically use perfly as a guide.
I am building the following hierarchy:
scene -> sceneDCS(for Trackball) -> A: dataDCS -> B: sceneGroup
sceneGroup are a bunch of little objects which construct a
building. Now there are several weird things happening:
I included A to correct the building geometry I am working with (it's
tilted).
a) Since I couldn't use pfFlatten to increase performance (see previous
post) I am using a SCS/DCS and did some performance tests.
I found out, that a DCS is a little faster in performance.
So why would anybody ever use an SCS at all ?
Also there must be an error in the man page for pfSCS as well
as for pfDCS. To increase performance I of course set the
bounding box to PFN_BMODE_STATIC. To do that, the man page for
pfSCS suggests pfNodeBSphere(scs, PFN_BMODE_STATIC), but here
is the bsph argument in the middle missing. The man page for
pfDCS suggest (supported by the explanations in the man page
for pfNodeBSphere) pfNodeBSphere(scs, NULL, PFN_BMODE_STATIC).
But when I try that my data structure simply disappears.
I finally got it to work doing the following:
pfGetNodeBSphere(dcs, &bsphere);
pfNodeBSphere(dcs, &bsphere, PFN_BMODE_STATIC);
b) I also tried to change the order of A and B. To my surprise
the output on the screen was tilted. To get the same effect
on the screen I had to change coordinates from x to y and
from y to z and from z to x. Do I miss here something? Does
anybody know why this happens?
c) If I get my program to run, I can run it on a Crimson an Indigo
and an Personal Iris, but NOT on an Onyx. After reading the
database it just simply quits with a message:
"Performer Notice (9): Caught SIGCHLD. Exiting due to death of
child with pid xxxx"
Now I got former versions of my program to run on the Onyx,
as well as perfly and other demo programs.
Did anybody experienced similar behavior?
d) Sometimes the Gui will be totally wrong. First of all the entries for
x,y,z and h,p,r are totally wrong. Although lighting is set
to 'ON' it starts with 'OFF'. I will get buttons for Anti-
aliasing but the Crimson I am using does not have a Reality
Engine, and therefore shouldn't show this option etc.
I usually get rid of this problem, including a printf command
somewhere in the code and recompile or something like that.
It does sound like a badly used pointer error, but I looked
over my code a zillion times for such errors, but just can't
find anything.
Can anybody explain why this happens?
Well, I hope somebody is able to give me hints what I could check or
where I could look for errors in my program. At this point I just
get a little frustrated, because I don't know anymore where I could
look for an explanation (and possible) fixture of the 'phenomenas'
presented above. I hope I don't bother anybody with these questions,
but I am the only one in our lab dealing with Performer, so there is
nobody else to share ideas with.
Any help is greatly appreciated,
Torsten Moeller.
-- Research Assistant ACCAD tmoeller++at++cgrg.ohio-state.edu Ohio State University
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