Question

I’m working with some OpenGL code for scientific visualization and I’m having issues getting its rubber banding working on newer hardware. The code is drawing a “Zoom Window” over an existing scene with one corner of the “Zoom Window” at the stored left-click location, and the other under the mouse as it is moved. On the second left-click the scene zooms into the selected window.

The symptoms I am seeing as the mouse is moved across the scene are:

1. Rubber banding artefacts appearing which are the lines used to create the “Zoom Window” not being removed from the buffer by the second “RenderLogic” pass (see code below)
2. I can clearly see the contents of the previous buffer flashing up and disappearing as the buffers are swapped

The above problem doesn’t happen on low end hardware such as the integrated graphics on a netbook I have. Also, I can’t recall this problem ~5 years ago when this code was written.

Here are the relevant code sections, trimmed down to focus on the relevant OpenGL:

// Called by every mouse move event
// Makes use of current device context (m_hDC) and rendering context (m_hRC)
void MyViewClass::DrawLogic()
{
    BOOL bSwapRv = FALSE;

    // Make the rendering context current
    if (!wglMakeCurrent(m_hDC, m_hRC))
        // ... error handling

    // Perform the logic rendering
    glLogicOp(GL_XOR);
    glEnable(GL_COLOR_LOGIC_OP);
    // Draws the rectangle on the buffer using XOR op
    RenderLogic();
    bSwapRv = ::SwapBuffers(m_hDC);
    // Removes the rectangle from the buffer via a second pass
    RenderLogic();
    glDisable(GL_COLOR_LOGIC_OP);

    // Release the rendering context
    if (!wglMakeCurrent(NULL, NULL))
        // ... error handling
}

void MyViewClass::RenderLogic(void)
{
    glLineWidth(1.0f);
    glColor3f(0.6f,0.6f,0.6f);
    glEnable(GL_LINE_STIPPLE);
    glLineStipple(1, 0x0F0F);
    glBegin(GL_LINE_LOOP);
        // Uses custom "Point" class with Coords() method returning double*
        // Draw rectangle with corners at clicked location and current location
        glVertex2dv(m_pntClickLoc.Coords());
        glVertex2d(m_pntCurrLoc.X(), m_pntClickLoc.Y());
        glVertex2dv(m_pntCurrLoc.Coords());
        glVertex2d(m_pntClickLoc.X(), m_pntCurrLoc.Y());
    glEnd();
    glDisable(GL_LINE_STIPPLE);
}

// Setup code that might be relevant to the buffer configuration
bool MyViewClass::SetupPixelFormat()
{
    PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR pfd = {
        sizeof(PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR),
        1,                      // Version number (?)
        PFD_DRAW_TO_WINDOW      // Format must support window
        | PFD_SUPPORT_OPENGL    // Format must support OpenGL
        | PFD_DOUBLEBUFFER,     // Must support double buffering
        PFD_TYPE_RGBA,          // Request an RGBA format
        32,                     // Select a 32 bit colour depth
        0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,       // Colour bits ignored (?)
        8,                      // Alpha buffer bits
        0,                      // Shift bit ignored (?)
        0,                      // No accumulation buffer
        0, 0, 0, 0,             // Accumulation bits ignored
        16,                     // 16 bit Z-buffer
        0,                      // No stencil buffer
        0,                      // No accumulation buffer (?)
        PFD_MAIN_PLANE,         // Main drawing layer
        0,                      // Number of overlay and underlay planes
        0, 0, 0                 // Layer masks ignored (?)
    };
    PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR chosen_pfd;

    memset(&chosen_pfd, 0, sizeof(PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR));
    chosen_pfd.nSize = sizeof(PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR);

    // Find the closest match to the pixel format
    m_uPixelFormat = ::ChoosePixelFormat(m_hDC, &pfd);

    // Make sure a pixel format could be found
    if (!m_uPixelFormat)
        return false;
    ::DescribePixelFormat(m_hDC, m_uPixelFormat, sizeof(PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR), &chosen_pfd);

    // Set the pixel format for the view
    ::SetPixelFormat(m_hDC, m_uPixelFormat, &chosen_pfd);

    return true;
}

Any pointers on how to remove the artefacts will be much appreciated.

@Krom – image below

Answer 1

With OpenGL it’s canonical to redraw the whole viewport if just anything changes. Consider this: Modern system draw animates complex scenes at well over 30 FPS.

But I understand, that you may want to avoid this. So the usual approach is to first copy the frontbuffer in a texture, before drawing the first rubberband. Then for each rubberband redraw “reset” the image by drawing a framebuffer filling quad with the texture.