[FreePV-dev] Windows plugin

[Fulvio S. <ma...@fs...>]

Hello Pablo,

I have played a little with the source code and I have been able to 
remove the use of a timer from the Windows plugin. I found a simple way 
to use a flow of custom messages instead of timer events. In my opinion 
this is a better solution because what we need is not to receive message 
at a fixed rate, but to receive as many messages as possible. If you are 
interested you will find a patch file in the attachment: it is a very 
simple change. The diff file is long because I also commented out some 
code to see if it was used or not, but of course you can ignore it.

I made that change mainly because I hoped that it could have led to 
smoother panning, but I did not find any visible improvement. At least 
we know that the jerkiness is not caused by timer problems.

I also discovered another thing: not all panoramic images are shown with 
the same jerkiness, some are smoother than others.
Using your test pages, "test.html" shows the OutsideSionHillCampus.mov 
pano and it is very jerky.
I changed the file to show MichelThoby_tiled_qtvr.mov and panning was 
much smoother, even with a larger window.
Better yet, if I open a page that does not use a .mov file but it 
directly loads the six cubefaces like test_cube.html or the Beijing 
sample, panning is much smoother but there is a problem: after loading I 
can only see the last cubeface, the nadir one. Apart from this problem 
it seems that .mov files show in a jerkier way.

Another info: I tried my WWP submission "CastelloRivoli.mov" and it 
crashed the plugin almost immediately, while it worked very well in the 
standalone viewer.

Now a question: I have seen that you are using a lot of DEBUG_TRACE (and 
similar) macros in the source code. They are very useful but I cannot 
see the output while I run the plugin in the MSVC debugger. Nothing 
shows in the debug window.
Do you know if there is a way to have those macros writing to the the 
debug window? Running the plugin in the debugger is very useful, but I 
would like to be able to trace the execution somehow.

Another question: I have spent some time trying to understand the source 
code, but I find it rather difficult. I think that it would be useful to 
have a short document describing the purpose of the various objects and 
their interactions. It should make understanding the code much simpler, 
I think.

Fulvio