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Asked: 2026-05-31T03:57:26+00:00

EDIT: it was an uninitialized variable… :( Explanation: The PointLLA constructor I used only

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EDIT: it was an uninitialized variable… 🙁

Explanation:
The PointLLA constructor I used only passed through Latitude and Longitude, but I never explicitly set the internal Altitude member variable to 0. Rookie mistake…

Original Question:
I’m having a pretty horrible time with a bug in my code. I’m calculating distances between a single point and the corners of a rectangle. In this case, the point is centered over the rectangle so I should get four equal distances. I get three equal distances, and one almost equal distance value that’s inconsistent (different every time it runs).

If I have a few key debug statements (pretty much just a std::cout call) that explicitly print out the location of each rectangle corner, I get the expected value for the distance and the inconsistency disappears. Here’s the relevant code:

// calculate the minimum and maximum distance to
// camEye within the available lat/lon bounds
Vec3 viewBoundsNE;   convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(maxLat,maxLon),viewBoundsNE);
Vec3 viewBoundsNW;   convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(maxLat,minLon),viewBoundsNW);
Vec3 viewBoundsSW;   convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(minLat,minLon),viewBoundsSW);
Vec3 viewBoundsSE;   convLLAToECEF(PointLLA(minLat,maxLon),viewBoundsSE);

// begin comment this block out, and buggy output
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: NE (" << viewBoundsNE.x
         << "  " << viewBoundsNE.y
         << "  " << viewBoundsNE.z << ")";
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: NW (" << viewBoundsNW.x
         << "  " << viewBoundsNW.y
         << "  " << viewBoundsNW.z << ")";
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: SE (" << viewBoundsSW.x
         << "  " << viewBoundsSW.y
         << "  " << viewBoundsSW.z << ")";
OSRDEBUG << "INFO: SW (" << viewBoundsSE.x
         << "  " << viewBoundsSE.y
         << "  " << viewBoundsSE.z << ")";
// --------------- end

// to get the maximum distance, find the maxima
// of the distances to each corner of the bounding box
double distToNE = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsNE);
double distToNW = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsNW); // <-- inconsistent
double distToSE = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsSE);
double distToSW = camEye.DistanceTo(viewBoundsSW);

std::cout << "INFO: distToNE: " << distToNE << std::endl;
std::cout << "INFO: distToNW: " << distToNW << std::endl; // <-- inconsistent
std::cout << "INFO: distToSE: " << distToSE << std::endl;
std::cout << "INFO: distToSW: " << distToSW << std::endl;

double maxDistToViewBounds = distToNE;

if(distToNW > maxDistToViewBounds)
{   maxDistToViewBounds = distToNW;   }

if(distToSE > maxDistToViewBounds)
{   maxDistToViewBounds = distToSE;   }

if(distToSW > maxDistToViewBounds)
{   maxDistToViewBounds = distToSW;   }

OSRDEBUG << "INFO: maxDistToViewBounds: " << maxDistToViewBounds;

So if I run the code shown above, I’ll get output as follows:

INFO: NE (6378137  104.12492  78.289415)
INFO: NW (6378137  -104.12492  78.289415)
INFO: SE (6378137  -104.12492  -78.289415)
INFO: SW (6378137  104.12492  -78.289415)
INFO: distToNE: 462.71851
INFO: distToNW: 462.71851
INFO: distToSE: 462.71851
INFO: distToSW: 462.71851
INFO: maxDistToViewBounds: 462.71851

Exactly as expected. Note that all the distTo* values are the same. I can run the program over and over again and I’ll get exactly the same output. But now, if I comment out the block that I noted in the code above, I get something like this:

INFO: distToNE: 462.71851
INFO: distToNW: 463.85601
INFO: distToSE: 462.71851
INFO: distToSW: 462.71851
INFO: maxDistToViewBounds: 463.85601

Every run will slightly vary distToNW. Why distToNW and not the other values? I don’t know. A few more runs:

463.06218
462.79352
462.76194
462.74772
463.09787
464.04648

So… what’s going on here? I tried cleaning/rebuilding my project to see if there was something strange going on but it didn’t help. I’m using GCC 4.6.3 with an x86 target.

EDIT: Adding the definitions of relevant functions.

void MapRenderer::convLLAToECEF(const PointLLA &pointLLA, Vec3 &pointECEF)
{
    // conversion formula from...
    // hxxp://www.microem.ru/pages/u_blox/tech/dataconvert/GPS.G1-X-00006.pdf

    // remember to convert deg->rad
    double sinLat = sin(pointLLA.lat * K_PI/180.0f);
    double sinLon = sin(pointLLA.lon * K_PI/180.0f);
    double cosLat = cos(pointLLA.lat * K_PI/180.0f);
    double cosLon = cos(pointLLA.lon * K_PI/180.0f);

    // v = radius of curvature (meters)
    double v = ELL_SEMI_MAJOR / (sqrt(1-(ELL_ECC_EXP2*sinLat*sinLat)));
    pointECEF.x = (v + pointLLA.alt) * cosLat * cosLon;
    pointECEF.y = (v + pointLLA.alt) * cosLat * sinLon;
    pointECEF.z = ((1-ELL_ECC_EXP2)*v + pointLLA.alt)*sinLat;
}

    // and from the Vec3 class defn
    inline double DistanceTo(Vec3 const &otherVec) const
    {
        return sqrt((x-otherVec.x)*(x-otherVec.x) +
                    (y-otherVec.y)*(y-otherVec.y) +
                    (z-otherVec.z)*(z-otherVec.z));
    }
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The inconsistent output suggests that either you’re making use of an uninitialized variable somewhere in your code, or you have some memory error (accessing memory that’s been deleted, double-deleting memory, etc). I don’t see either of those things happening in the code you pasted, but there’s lots of other code that gets called.

    Does the Vec3 constructor initialize all member variables to zero (or some known state)? If not, then do so and see if that helps. If they’re already initialized, take a closer look at convLLAToECEF and PointLLA to see if any variables are not getting initialized or if you have any memory errors there.

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