Re: [PyOpenGL-Devel] Display lists 30 times faster than VBOs ?

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just an idea.... the bottleneck could be in python and not in opengl, 
remember that function call is expensive in python

az., 2010.eko ekaren 30a 01:33(e)an, Eleftherios Garyfallidis(e)k idatzi 
zuen:
> Hello,
>
> We are trying to visualize some quite big brain white matter datasets
> with PyOpenGL. We have around a quarter of a million of trajectories
> where each trajectory consists of up to around 100 line segments. The
> goal application is to be able to pick/select and update some or all of
> the trajectories in real time in order to help practitioners find their
> way through the brain. We had quite a good progress selecting and
> picking trajectories using gluUnProject however we are not sure which
> design direction we should take from now on as far as vbos are
> concernced. According to the Red Book and the community blogs vertex
> buffer objects should be more preferable than display lists now and in
> the future and display lists have already being tagged as deprecated. We
> would very much like your thoughts and feedback about this.
>
> We are testing this software on a Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 and use
> PyOpenGL 3.0.1
>
> The following class shows what we tried to do. The input of the class as
> shown in __init__() is data which is a list of trajectories where every
> trajectory is represented by numpy arrays of shape (N,3) , colors is the
> similar but a list of arrays of shape (N,4) (where N is different from
> trajectory to trajectory) and if the lists parameter is True then we use
> display lists with vbo eitherwise we use vbos only.
>
> Surprisingly, when using lists=True we get more than 30fps and when
> lists=False we get between 1-2 fps. Any ideas what is the reason for
> this dramatic change? Shouldn't vbos be the same or faster than dls?
>
> class Tracks():
>
>      def __init__(self,data,colors,line_width=3.,lists=False):
>
>          Actor.__init__(self)
>
>          self.data=data
>          self.cdata=None
>          self.colors=colors
>          self.line_width=line_width
>          self.list_index = None
>          self.vbo = None
>          self.lists = lists
>
>      def init(self):
>          self.init_default()
>
>      def init_default(self):
>
>          self.counts=[len(d) for d in self.data]
>          cdata=np.concatenate(self.data)
>          first=np.array(self.counts).cumsum()
>          self.first=list(np.hstack((np.array([0]),first[:-1])))
>          ccolors=np.concatenate(self.colors)
>          self.min=np.min(cdata,axis=0)
>          self.max=np.max(cdata,axis=0)
>          self.mean=np.mean(cdata,axis=0)
>          cdata = cdata - self.mean
>          self.cdata = cdata
>
>          stack=np.hstack((cdata,ccolors))
>          stack=stack.astype('float32')
>          self.vbo = vbo.VBO(stack,usage='GL_STATIC_DRAW')
>          #self.vbo =
> vbo.VBO(np.hstack((cdata,ccolors)),usage=gl.GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW)
>
>          if self.lists:
>
>              self.list_index = gl.glGenLists(1)
>              gl.glNewList( self.list_index,gl.GL_COMPILE)
>              self._execute_vbos()
>              gl.glEndList()
>
>
>      def _execute_vbos(self):
>
>          gl.glDisable(gl.GL_LIGHTING)
>          gl.glDisable(gl.GL_DEPTH_TEST)
>          gl.glEnable(gl.GL_BLEND)
>          gl.glBlendFunc(gl.GL_SRC_ALPHA,gl.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA)
>          gl.glLineWidth(self.line_width)
>
>          self.vbo.bind()
>          try:
>              gl.glEnableClientState(gl.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY)
>              gl.glEnableClientState(gl.GL_COLOR_ARRAY)
>              #gl.glVertexPointerf(cdata)
>              gl.glVertexPointer(3, gl.GL_FLOAT, 28, self.vbo )
>              gl.glColorPointer(4, gl.GL_FLOAT, 28, self.vbo+12 )
>              gl.glMultiDrawArrays(gl.GL_LINE_STRIP,\
>                                   self.first,self.counts,len(self.counts))
>          finally:
>              self.vbo.unbind()
>
>          gl.glDisableClientState(gl.GL_COLOR_ARRAY)
>          gl.glDisableClientState(gl.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY)
>          gl.glDisable(gl.GL_BLEND)
>          gl.glEnable(gl.GL_LIGHTING)
>          gl.glEnable(gl.GL_DEPTH_TEST)
>
>
>      def display(self):
>
>          gl.glPushMatrix()
>          x,y,z = self.position
>          gl.glTranslatef(x,y,z)
>
>          if self.lists:
>              gl.glCallList(self.list_index)
>          else:
>              self._execute_vbos()
>
>          gl.glPopMatrix()
>
>
> The Tracks.display function is called from glutDisplayFunc from another
> file after the object has been initialized using the init function.  We
> would be very happy to hear about your ideas to make this visualization
> better and ideas about how to update the datasets using the vbo from
> OpenGL.arrays or a different method in a nice efficient way.
>
> We would be more than happy to continue using PyOpenGL and contribute to
> the list in the future. PyOpenGL fits very well with a new project we
> have created found at nipy.org/dipy <http://nipy.org/dipy> .We are more
> than eager at the moment to switch from python-vtk or mayavi to pyopengl
> for all our visualization needs as we think that it can deal better with
> big datasets.
>
> Best wishes,
> Eleftherios & Ian
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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