Find 'view' co-ordinates in vis.js - javascript

I'm working on a modification to vis.js's Graph3d to do a filled line graph, like this:
The hard part - unsurprisingly - is working out the rendering order for the polygons. I think I can do this by checking whether a ray from the viewer to a given line B crosses line A:
In this example, since line A is "in the way" of line B, we should draw line A first. I'll use a snippet of code from How do you detect where two line segments intersect? to check whether the lines cross.
However, I haven't figured how to find the position of the user's view. I kind of assumed this would be the camera object, so wrote a little bit of debug code to draw the camera on the graph:
var camera = this._convert3Dto2D(this.camera.getCameraLocation());
ctx.strokeStyle = Math.random()>0.5 ? 'ff0000' : '00ff00';
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.moveTo(camera.x, camera.y);
ctx.lineTo(camera.x, camera.y+5);
ctx.stroke();
In fact, the camera co-ordinates as measured by this are always at 0,0,0 on the graph (which would be the far top right on the above screengrab). What I need, I think, is effectively the bottom of the screen.
How can I find this? Or is there a better way to achieve what I'm trying to do?

I don't know if this is still an active issue, but FWIW, Graph3D has internal handling of the sort ordering.
All graph points are sorted with respect to the viewpoint, using a representative coordinate called point.bottom. The rendering is then done using this ordering, with the most distant elements drawn first. This works fine as long as none of the elements intersect; in that case, you can expect artefacts.
Basically, all you need to do, is define point.bottom per graph polygon, and Graph3D will then pick it up from there.
If you are still interested in working on this:
This happens in Graph3d.js, method Graph3d.prototype._calcTranslations(). For an example, have a look at how the Grid and Surface graph elements are initialized in Graph3d.prototype._getDataPoints(). The relevant code is:
obj = {};
obj.point = point3d;
obj.trans = undefined;
obj.screen = undefined;
obj.bottom = new Point3d(x, y, this.zRange.min);

Related

Drawing plots interactively in a web app

I am looking for a library preferably in JavaScript, that will allow a user to draw a plot (simple one consisting of vertical and horizontal steps) like this one:
The idea is that when the user is done with the plot I can generate data points from the graph and process them.
I don't know where to start, I am looking to start learning to do this within a JS based framework (meteor) but I can't find a library that allows for something like this. The closest library I found is d3.js but I couldn't find any example that allows for this.
Would anyone be able to point out to me a sample example to start from? Would you know of a better suited library to accomplish what I am asking for?
Here is a relatively simple fiddle which accomplishes some of what you asked for, excluding axis (which are relatively easy and has plenty of examples). It uses D3 for all the drawing and mouse event handling. On click it simply executes svg.append("circle").attr("r", 5), and if it's not the first click (i.e. linking points) then it also will create a path element using the previous mouse click coordinates:
svg.insert("path", "circle").attr("d", function () {
return [
"M", prevClickLoc[0], prevClickLoc[1],
"L", prevClickLoc[0], y,
"L", x, y].join(" ");
})
Where x and y are the current mouse coordinates. Also has an export button that will output a list in the form of cx,cy,cx,cy,... :: d,d,d,d,.... On import, you could easily split this array into two using indexOf("::") or whatever you choose if you want to change the formatting. Then just exectue for (x in circles) {svg.append("circle").attr("cx", function...).attr("cy", function...);} and do something similar for paths for (y in paths) {svg.append("path").attr("d", function(){return paths[y];});}. It would be even easier if on export you made the cxcy array in the format cx;cy,cx;cy since then you could simply split the array at each comma and then split each index of the resulting array at the semicolon for a nice nested array.
Small update in this version, you can only place points if the current mouse x is greater than the previous x coordinate, and it also has the line d3.event.stopPropagation(); which prevents accidental highlighting of the page.

d3.v3 scatterplot with all circles the same radius

Every example I have found shows all of the scatter plot points to be of random radii. Is it possible to have them all the same size? If I try to statically set the radius all of the circles will be very small (I'm assuming the default radius). However, if I use Math.random() as in most examples there are circles large and small. I want all the circles to be large. Is there a way to do that? Here's the code snippet forming the graph data using Math.random() (this works fine for some reason):
function scatterData(xData, yData)
{
var data = [];
for (var i = 0; i < seismoNames.length; i++)
{
data.push({
key: seismoNames[i],
values: []
});
var xVals=""+xData[i];
xVals=xVals.split(",");
var yVals=""+yData[i];
yVals=yVals.split(",");
for (var j = 0; j < xVals.length; j++)
{
data[i].values.push({
x: xVals[j],
y: yVals[j],
size: Math.random()
});
}
}
return data;
}
Math.random() spits out values between 0 and 1 such as 0.164259538891095 and 0.9842195005008699. I have tried putting these as static values in the 'size' attribute, but no matter what the circles are always really small. Is there something I'm missing?
Update: The NVD3 API has changed, and now uses pointSize, pointSizeDomain, etc. instead of just size. The rest of the logic for exploring the current API without complete documentation still applies.
For NVD3 charts, the idea is that all adjustments you make can be done by calling methods on the chart function itself (or its public components) before calling that function to draw the chart in a specific container element.
For example, in the example you linked too, the chart function was initialized like this:
var chart = nv.models.scatterChart()
.showDistX(true)
.showDistY(true)
.color(d3.scale.category10().range());
chart.xAxis.tickFormat(d3.format('.02f'));
chart.yAxis.tickFormat(d3.format('.02f'));
The .showDistX() and .showDistY() turn on the tick-mark distribution in the axes; .color() sets the series of colours you want to use for the different categories. The next too lines access the default axis objects within the chart and set the number format to be a two-digit decimal. You can play around with these options by clicking on the scatterplot option from the "Live Code" page.
Unfortunately, the makers of the NVD3 charts don't have a complete documentation available yet describing all the other options you can set for each chart. However, you can use the javascript itself to let you find out what methods are available.
Inspecting a NVD3.js chart object to determine options
Open up a web page that loads the d3 and nvd3 library. The live code page on their website works fine. Then open up your developer's console command line (this will depend on your browser, search your help pages if you don't know how yet). Now, create a new nvd3 scatter chart function in memory:
var testChart = nv.models.scatterChart();
On my (Chrome) console, the console will then print out the entire contents of the function you just created. It is interesting, but very long and difficult to interpret at a glance. And most of the code is encapsulated so you can't change it easily. You want to know which properties you can change. So run this code in the next line of your console:
for (keyname in testChart){console.log(keyname + " (" + typeof(testChart[keyname]) + ")");}
The console should now print out neatly the names of all the methods and objects that you can access from that chart function. Some of these will have their own methods and objects you can access; discover what they are by running the same routine, but replacing the testChart with testChart.propertyName, like this:
for (keyname in testChart.xAxis){console.log(keyname + " (" + typeof(testChart.xAxis[keyname]) + ")");}
Back to your problem. The little routine I suggested above doesn't sort the property names in any order, but skimming through the list you should see three options that relate to size (which was the data variable that the examples were using to set radius)
size (function)
sizeDomain (function)
sizeRange (function)
Domain and range are terms used by D3 scales, so that gives me a hint about what they do. Since you don't want to scale the dots, let's start by looking at just the size property. If you type the following in the console:
testChart.size
It should print back the code for that function. It's not terribly informative for what we're interested in, but it does show me that NVD3 follows D3's getter/setter format: if you call .property(value) you set the property to that value, but if you call .property() without any parameters, it will return back the current value of that property.
So to find out what the size property is by default, call the size() method with no parameters:
testChart.size()
It should print out function (d) { return d.size || 1}, which tells us that the default value is a function that looks for a size property in the data, and if it doesn't exist returns the constant 1. More generally, it tells us that the value set by the size method determines how the chart gets the size value from the data. The default should give a constant size if your data has no d.size property, but for good measure you should call chart.size(1); in your initialization code to tell the chart function not to bother trying to determine size from the data and just use a constant value.
Going back to the live code scatterplot can test that out. Edit the code to add in the size call, like this:
var chart = nv.models.scatterChart()
.showDistX(true)
.showDistY(true)
.color(d3.scale.category10().range())
.size(1);
chart.xAxis.tickFormat(d3.format('.02f'));
chart.yAxis.tickFormat(d3.format('.02f'));
Adding that extra call successfully sets all the dots to the same size -- but that size is definitely not 1 pixel, so clearly there is some scaling going on.
First guess for getting bigger dots would be to change chart.size(1) to chart.size(100). Nothing changes, however. The default scale is clearly calculating it's domain based on the data and then outputting to a standard range of sizes. This is why you couldn't get big circles by setting the size value of every data element to 0.99, even if that would create a big circle when some of the data was 0.01 and some was 0.99. Clearly, if you want to change the output size, you're going to have to set the .sizeRange() property on the chart, too.
Calling testChart.sizeRange() in the console to find out the default isn't very informative: the default value is null (nonexistent). So I just made a guess that, same as the D3 linear scale .range() function, the expected input is a two-element array consisting of the max and min values. Since we want a constant, the max and min will be the same. So in the live code I change:
.size(1);
to
.size(1).sizeRange([50,50]);
Now something's happening! But the dots are still pretty small: definitely not 50 pixels in radius, it looks closer to 50 square pixels in area. Having size computed based on the area makes sense when sizing from the data, but that means that to set a constant size you'll need to figure out the approximate area you want: values up to 200 look alright on the example, but the value you choose will depend on the size of your graph and how close your data points are to each other.
--ABR
P.S. I added the NVD3.js tag to your question; be sure to use it as your main tag in the future when asking questions about the NVD3 chart functions.
The radius is measured in pixels. If you set it to a value less than one, yes, you will have a very small circle. Most of the examples that use random numbers also use a scaling factor.
If you want all the circles to have a constant radius you don't need to set the value in the data, just set it when you add the radius attribute.
Not sure which tutorials you were looking at, but start here: https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Tutorials
The example "Three little circles" does a good step-by-step of the different things you can do with circles:
http://mbostock.github.io/d3/tutorial/circle.html

Detecting irregular Shape

Leading up from this question Detecting mouse coordinates with precision, I have learnt quite a bit in the past few days. Here are what I picked as best learning resources on this topic:
http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/tutorials/implementation/quick-tip-use-quadtrees-to-detect-likely-collisions-in-2d-space/
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/graphics-programming-and-theory/quadtrees-r1303
http://jsfiddle.net/2dchA/2/
The code in (3) works in JSFiddle but breaks at this section in my testing environment (VS2012):
var myTree = new Quadtree({
x: 0,
y: 0,
width: 400,
height: 300
});
with the message Quadtree is undefined in IE. FF & Chrome just gloss over it and display an empty page. I couldn't sort it out. Question 1: Can someone help out with that?
My main question:
I have a region (parcels of land like a map) with about 1500 parcels drawn in html5, not jpg or png images. It is a lot of lines of code to complete that but the rendering is great, so I am keeping it that way. I intend to have a mouseover event tell me which parcel I am standing on when the mouse stops. As you will see in the previous question referred my previous attempts were not impressive. Based on the learning I have been doing, and thanks to Ken J's answer/comments, I would like to go with this new approach of slicing up my canvas into say 15 quads of 100 objects each. However, I would like some guidance before I take another wild dive the wrong way.
Question 2: Should I slice it up at creation or should the slicing happen when the mouse is over a region, ie, trail the mouse? The latter sounds better to me but I think I can do with some advice and, if possible, some start out code. The quadtree concept is completely new to me. Thanks.
Can't help with question 1.
You should definitely build the tree as early as possible, given that the objective is to get the page to respond as quick as possible once the user clicks somewhere.
Keep the tree for as long as the user interacts with the 2d area. Updating a quad tree shouldn't be too hard, so even if the area changes contents, you should be able to reuse the existing tree (just update it).
Given the fact that your draw area is well know i see no advantage in a QuadTree over a spacial hash function. This function will give you an integer out of an (x,y) point.
var blocWidth = 20;
var blocHeight = 20;
var blocsPerLine = ( 0 | ( worldWidth / blocWidth) ) + 1 ;
function hashPoint(x,y) {
return ( 0 | (x/blocWidth)) + blocsPerLine*(0|(y/blocHeight));
}
once you built that, hash all your parcels within an array :
parcelHash = [];
function addHash(i,p) {
if (!parcelHash[i]) { parcelHash[i]=[ p ]; return; }
if (parcelHash[i].indexOf(p) != -1 ) return;
parcelHash[i].push(p);
}
function hashParcel (p) {
var thisHash = hashPoint(p.x,p.y); // upper left
addHash( thisHash, p);
thisHash = hashPoint(p.x+width, p.y); // upper right
addHash(thisHash, p);
thisHash = hashPoint(p.x, p.y+p.height); // lower left
addHash(thisHash, p);
thisHash = hashPoint(p.x+width, p.y+p.height); // lower right
addHash(thisHash, p);
};
for (var i=0; i<allParcels.length; i++) { hashParcel(allParcels[i]) };
now if you have a mouse position, you can retrieve all the parcels in the
same block with :
function getParcels(x,y) {
var thisHash = hashPoint(x,y);
return parcelHash[thisHash];
}
I'll just give you few tips in addition to what others have said.
... have a mouseover event tell me which parcel I am standing on ...
From your other messages I conclude that parcels will have irregular shapes. Quadtrees in general work with rectangles, so you'd have to calculate the bounding rectangle around the shape of the parcel and insert that rectangle in the quadtree. Then are when you want to determine whether mouse is over a parcel, you'll query the quadtree which will give you a set of parcels that might be under the mouse, but you'll have to then do a more precise check on your own to see if it indeed is.
... when the mouse stops.
From your other questions I saw that you try to detect when the mouse has "stopped". Maybe you should look at it this way: mouse cursor is never moving, it's teleporting around the screen from previous point to next. It's always stopped, never moving. This might seem a bit philosophical, but it'll keep your code simpler. You should definitely be able to achieve what you intended without any setTimeout checks.
... slicing up my canvas into say 15 quads of 100 objects each.
... Should I slice it up at creation or should the slicing happen when the mouse is over a region
You won't (and can't) do slicing, quadtree implementation does that automatically (that's its purpose) when you insert or remove items from it (note that moving the item is actually removing then re-inserting it).
I didn't look into the implementation of quadtree that you're using, but here are two MX-CIF quadtree implementations in case that one doesn't work out for you:
https://github.com/pdehn/jsQuad
https://github.com/bjornharrtell/jsts/tree/master/src/jsts/index/quadtree
The problem in question 1 probably happens because jsfiddle (http) page is trying access quadtree.js which is on https

Javascript physics engine and simulated infinite curve

I'm trying to do a Tiny Wings like in javascript.
I first saw a technique using Box2D, I'm using the closure-web version (because of the memory leaks fix).
In short, I explode the curve into polygons so it looks like that:
I also tried with Chipmunk-js and I use the segment shape to simulate my ground like that:
In both cases, I'm experiencing some "crashes" or "bumps" at the common points between polygons or segments when a circle is rolling.
I asked about it for Chipmunk and the author said he implemented a radius property for the segment to reduce this behavior. I tried and it indeed did the trick but it's not perfect. I still have some bumps(I had to set to 30px of radius to get a positive effect).
The "bumps" append at the shared points between two polygons :
Using, as illandril suggested to me, the edging technique (he only tested with polygon-polygon contact) to avoid the circle to crash on an edge:
Also tried to add the bullet option as Luc suggested and nothing seems to change.
Here the demo of the issue.
You can try to change the value to check :
bullet option
edge size
iterations count
the physics
(only tested on latest dev Chrome)
Be patient (or change the horizontal gravity) and you'll see what I mean.
Here the repo for the interested.
The best solution is edge shapes with ghost vertices, but if that's not available in the version/port you're using, the next best thing is like the diagram in your question called 'edging', but extend the polygons further underground with a very shallow slope, like in this thread: http://www.box2d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7917
I first thought the problem could come from the change of slope between two adjacent segments, but since on a flat surface of polygons you still have bumps I think the problem is rather hitting the corner of a polygon.
I don't know if you can set two sets of polygons, overlapping each other ? Just use the same interpolation calculations and generate a second set of polygons just like in the diagram hereafter : you have the red set of polygons built and add the green set by setting the left vertices of a green polygon in the middle of a red polygon, and its right vertices in the middle of the next red polygon.
![diagram][1]
This should work on concave curves and... well you should be flying over the convex ones anyway.
If this doesn't work try setting a big number of polygons to build the slope. Use a tenth of the circle's radius for the polygon's width, maybe even less. That should reduce your slope discontinuities.
-- Edit
In Box2D.js line 5082 (in this repo at least) you have the PreSolve(contact, manifold) function that you can override to check if the manifolds (directions in which the snowball are impulsed when colliding the polygons) are correct.
To do so, you would need to recover the manifold vector and compare it to the normal of the curve. It should look like that (maybe not exactly) :
Box2D.Dynamics.b2ContactListener.prototype.PreSolve = function (contact, oldManifold) {
// contact instanceof Box2D.Dynamics.Contacts.b2Contact == true
var localManifold, worldManifold, xA, xB, man_vect, curve_vect, normal_vect, angle;
localManifold = contact.GetManifold();
if(localManifold.m_pointCount == 0)
return; // or raise an exception
worldManifold = new Box2D.Collision.b2WorldManifold();
contact.GetWorldManifold( worldManifold );
// deduce the impulse direction from the manifold points
man_vect = worldManifold.m_normal.Copy();
// we need two points close to & surrounding the collision to compute the normal vector
// not sure this is the right order of magnitude
xA = worldManifold.m_points[0].x - 0.1;
xB = worldManifold.m_points[0].x + 0.1;
man_vect.Normalize();
// now we have the abscissas let's get the ordinate of these points on the curve
// the subtraction of these two points will give us a vector parallel to the curve
var SmoothConfig;
SmoothConfig = {
params: {
method: 'cubic',
clip: 'mirror',
cubicTension: 0,
deepValidation: false
},
options: {
averageLineLength: .5
}
}
// get the points, smooth and smooth config stuff here
smooth = Smooth(global_points,SmoothConfig);
curve_vect = new Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2(xB, smooth(xB)[1]);
curve_vect.Subtract(new Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2(xA, smooth(xA)[1]));
// now turn it to have a normal vector, turned upwards
normal_vect = new Box2D.Common.Math.b2Vec2(-curve_vect.y, curve_vect.x);
if(normal_vect.y > 0)
normal_vect.NegativeSelf();
normal_vect.Normalize();
worldManifold.m_normal = normal_vect.Copy();
// and finally compute the angle between the two vectors
angle = Box2D.Common.Math.b2Math.Dot(man_vect, normal_vect);
$('#angle').text("" + Math.round(Math.acos(angle)*36000/Math.PI)/100 + "°");
// here try to raise an exception if the angle is too big (maybe after a few ms)
// with different thresholds on the angle value to see if the bumps correspond
// to a manifold that's not normal enough to your curve
};
I'd say the problem has been tackled in Box2D 2.2.0 , see its manual, section 4.5 "Edge Shapes"
The thing is it's a feature of the 2.2.0 version, along with the chainshape thing, and the box2dweb is actually ported from 2.2.1a - don't know about box2dweb-closure.
Anything I've tried by modifying Box2D.Collision.b2Collision.CollidePolygonAndCircle has resulted in erratic behaviour. At least a part of the time (e.g. ball bumping in random directions, but only when it rolls slowly).

How would you create a particle SURFACE emitter based on a created canvas shape? HTMLS CANVAS JS

I have a shape (a quarter circle) that I've created using the html canvas function:
moveTo
LineTo
QuadraticCurveTo
How do I go about exploding the shape into particles and then return them to form a circle?
I'm not going to write the code for you because it will take some time, and I'm sure you can find examples on the web, but I'll tell you the theory you need to know in order to make such a thing.
Create an in-memory canvas (using document.createElement('canvas')) that will never be seen on the page. This canvas must be at least as large as your object. I'm going to assume it is exactly as large as your object. We'll call this tempCanvas and it has tempCtx
Draw your object to tempCtx.
There will be some event that you didn't mention exactly but I'm sure you have in mind. Either you press a button or click on the object and it "explodes". For the sake of picking something I'll assume you want it to explode on click.
So to do the explosion:
Draw the object onto your normal context: ctx.drawImage(tempCanvas, x, y) so the user sees something
You're going to want to have an array of pixels for the location of each pixel in tempCanvas. So if tempCanvas is 20x30 you'll want an array of [20][30] to correspond.
You have to keep data for each of those pixels. Specifically, their starting point, which is easy, because pixel [2][4]'s starting point is (2,4)! And also their current location, which is identical to starting point at first but will change on each frame.
When the explosion event occurs keep track of the original mouse x and y position.
At this point for every single pixel you have a vector which means you have a direction. If you clicked in the middle of the object you'll want to save the mouse coordinates of (10,15) (see note 1). So now all of the pixels of the to-be-exploded image have their trajectory. There's a bit of math here that I'm taking for granted, but if you search separate topics either on SO or on the internet you'll find out how to find the slope/etc of these lines and continue them.
For every frame hereafter you must take each pixel [x][y] and use ctx.drawImage(tempCanvas, x, y, 1, 1, newX, newY, 1, 1) where x and y are the same as the pixel's [x][y] and the newX and newY are calculated using the vector and finding what the next point would be along its line.
The result will be each pixel of the image being drawn in a location that is slightly more away from the original click point. If you continue to do this frame after frame it will look as if the object has exploded.
That's the general idea, anyway. Let me know if any of it is unclear.
note 1: Most likely your normal canvas won't be the same size as the to-explode object. Maybe the object is placed at 100,100 so you really clicked on 110, 115 instead of 10,15. I'm omitting that offset just for the sake of simplicity.

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