Fix wobbling of fixed sources during manual transform

[tpietzsch]

During manual transformation, the fixed sources visibly wobble when the transforming sources are moved somewhat fast.

Explanation

The reason for this lies in how manual transformation mode is implemented:

Actually, it is kind of a visual fake. TransformedSource has an incrementalTransform and a fixedTransform. Both are concatenated to the transform of the underlying Source.

During manual transformation, the incrementalTransform of the fixed sources is update whenever the viewer transform changes: It is set to the inverse of the incremental viewer transform wrt when the manual transform was started. This leads to the fixed sources appearing as if they are not moving, but actually they are moving wrt the global coordinate frame. The transforming sources are fixed wrt to the global coordinate frame, but appear to be moving (with the viewer transform).

When the manual transform is ended, everything is baked into the fixedTransform of the moving sources, the incremental transforms are set to identity, and the viewer transform is reset to what it was at the start of the manual transform.

Now, this reversal of incremental viewer transform into the incremental transforms follows the viewer transform, which is moving faster than the rendering can catch up. Basically, every frame is rendered with a snapshot of the viewer transform at the start of the frame. Some time into the rendering, the actual viewer transform may have already moved on. Therefore, the incrementalTransform of the fixed sources may not match the viewer transform snapshot used for rendering.

Possible solutions:

1.) Tell the TransformedSource the viewer transform snapshot during painting, so that it can invert it right there. This must be done carefully, because incrementalTransform maybe used by others for other purposes (I think by BigStitcher, for example?). So probably: allow to set frozenTransform. If that is null, incrementalTransform is used. Otherwise, the on-the-spot inversion is done.

2.) Add another type of transformListener to ViewerPanel. Currently there are transformListeners and renderTransformListeners. We could add preRenderTransformListeners. I like this better.

3.) Actually, I fear that both above solutions will fall short when the TransformedSource is shown in multiple viewers at the same time. For example to implement orthogonal views with multiple ViewerPanels. The current way of faking fixed vs moving sources will probably wreak absolute havoc there. So the best solution is probably to completely revise how that works. But how?

[tischi]

During manual transformation, the incrementalTransform of the fixed sources is update whenever the viewer transform changes: It is set to the inverse of the incremental viewer transform wrt when the manual transform was started.

This is what happens here, right?

Allow me to ask the obvious question: why was this not implemented such that, during manual transform editing mode, the keys that would normally change the viewer transform now change the transforms for the moving sources?

For example, during transform editing mode, remove the actionMap that would change the viewer transform and replace it with an actionMap that would change the moving sources?

Or.... I guess TransformEventHandler3D is where the viewer transform is modified upon keyboard actions, is it? Would it be an option to add a method setTargetTransform( AffineTransform3D ) to TransformEventHandler3D where on would temporarily put the incremental transform of the sources to be modified during the manual transform editing, and then once done, one puts back the viewer transform?

So something like:

• TransformEventHandler3D.setTargetTransform( incrementalTransform )
• ..do the manual editing...
• TransformEventHandler3D.setTargetTransform( viewerTransform )

[tpietzsch]

Allow me to ask the obvious question: why was this not implemented such that, during manual transform editing mode, the keys that would normally change the viewer transform now change the transforms for the moving sources?

Hmm, because that seemed least intrusive. There is no complexity added to the "normal" BDV transform + rendering flow(which is already complicated enough). Now it looks like it's time to add something, after all, but at least I tried :-)

Regarding your suggestion with the TransformEventHandler3D: Maybe something like that would be good. However, there are a few things to consider: There is also TransformEventHandler2D. In general this is user-configurable. You can specify a custom TransformEventHandlerFactory with ViewerOptions or BdvOptions. So the TransformEventHandler interface would need to be changed. And there should be default implementations for the new methods, so that user implementations don't break. But yes, this may be the best way to do it.