Question

I’ve seen a similar post about this subject here, however, my question is a little bit different.

I have a 2D plot which will be comprised of circles at varying locations with varying sizes. Currently, my rendering scheme uses a display list to store a pre-drawn circle which can be actively re-sized and translated by the user using glScalef/glTranslatef. However, because I am rendering thousands of circles, the resize and drawing becomes extremely slow. Each circle can have a different radius and color so these things must be done within the loop.

What would be some things I could try to improve the speed of circle rendering when the user changes say the size of the circles? I’ve looked into VBO like the above link says but it was ambiguous to how much of a performance gain I would receive for this type of application where my object is constantly changing in size.

Answer 1

because I am rendering thousands of circles, the resize and drawing becomes extremely slow

With just vertex arrays this is getting about 60ms per frame on an Intel HD Graphics 3000 with 10,000 circles:

// g++ -O3 circles.cpp -o circles -lglut -lGL
#include <GL/glut.h>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
using namespace std;

// returns a GL_TRIANGLE_FAN-able buffer containing a unit circle
vector< float > glCircle( unsigned int subdivs = 20 )
{
    vector< float > buf;

    buf.push_back( 0 );
    buf.push_back( 0 );
    for( unsigned int i = 0; i <= subdivs; ++i )
    {
        float angle = i * ((2.0f * 3.14159f) / subdivs);
        buf.push_back( cos(angle) );
        buf.push_back( sin(angle) );
    }

    return buf;
}

struct Circle
{
    Circle()
    {
        x = ( rand() % 200 ) - 100;
        y = ( rand() % 200 ) - 100;
        scale = ( rand() % 10 ) + 4;
        r = rand() % 255;
        g = rand() % 255;
        b = rand() % 255;
        a = 1;
    }

    float x, y;
    float scale;
    unsigned char r, g, b, a;
};

vector< Circle > circles;
vector< float > circleGeom;
void init()
{
    srand( 0 );
    for( size_t i = 0; i < 10000; ++i )
        circles.push_back( Circle() );
    circleGeom = glCircle( 100 );
}

void display()
{
    int beg = glutGet( GLUT_ELAPSED_TIME );

    glClear( GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT );

    glMatrixMode( GL_PROJECTION );
    glLoadIdentity();
    double w = glutGet( GLUT_WINDOW_WIDTH );
    double h = glutGet( GLUT_WINDOW_HEIGHT );
    double ar = w / h;
    glOrtho( -100 * ar, 100 * ar, -100, 100, -1, 1);

    glMatrixMode( GL_MODELVIEW );
    glLoadIdentity();

    glEnableClientState( GL_VERTEX_ARRAY );
    glVertexPointer( 2, GL_FLOAT, 0, &circleGeom[0] );

    for( size_t i = 0; i < circles.size(); ++i )
    {
        Circle& c = circles[i];
        c.scale = ( rand() % 10 ) + 4;

        glPushMatrix();
        glTranslatef( c.x, c.y, 0 );
        glScalef( c.scale, c.scale, 0 );
        glColor3ub( c.r, c.g, c.b );
        glDrawArrays( GL_TRIANGLE_FAN, 0, circleGeom.size() / 2 );
        glPopMatrix();
    }

    glDisableClientState( GL_VERTEX_ARRAY );

    glutSwapBuffers();

    int end = glutGet( GLUT_ELAPSED_TIME );
    double elapsed = (double)( end - beg );
    cout << elapsed << "ms" << endl;
}

void timer(int extra)
{
    glutPostRedisplay();
    glutTimerFunc(16, timer, 0);
}

int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
    glutInit( &argc, argv );
    glutInitDisplayMode( GLUT_RGBA | GLUT_DOUBLE );
    glutInitWindowSize( 600, 600 );
    glutCreateWindow( "Circles" );

    init();

    glutDisplayFunc( display );
    glutTimerFunc(0, timer, 0);
    glutMainLoop();
    return 0;
}