Week 18

16 Feb

I continued working on the multi-user function for the 3D visualisation application for the whole day. Trying to figure out what could be the problem that caused the models unable to load but still no answer to it. At around 5pm, Ming Hong came over and told me to change the patches that stores values to persistent memory as the logic patch will execute again when it receives an input.

Just I was about to leave the lab and head to school, I realised that it was using the same variable name for nested loop. However due to a meeting in school, I can only change it tomorrow.

17 Feb

I changed the variable name the moment I reached the lab but the problem still persisted. I could not find the source to the problem, so I duplicated a copy of the application for single-user and started changing it again. The 2nd time, at least the menu was working and was able to load to the "model view" screen but it there is no models shown on the screen. 

During lunch, I told Ming Hong the problems that I have encountered and he suggested that I should set all persistent variables to "false" and only set to true when needed. 

After lunch, I tried what Ming Hong had suggested but there was still no models on the screen. I realised that I broke the connection from the image path. But when I tried to load the second model, the screen seemed to be flickering and I found that the status set were not persistent.

When almost reaching to the end of the day, I could only managed to load the models supported with multi-user. The next problem was with the functions, I could not seemed to trigger the functions even though Lightdraw did detected the lasers. The passing of the values seemed to be slowed after the 2nd model was loaded. Kevin told us to redo the whole 3D application and forget about the single user version.

18 Feb

Went back to school for ITPS briefing and PSRP presentation.

19 Feb

We present what we had presented yesterday to Kevin. Soon after, we went back to our work while Kevin and Ming Hong discuss on what to do with the 3D application. After discussion, Kevin decided that I would work with Ming Hong to make the multi-user work.

After lunch, Ming Hong went over to the lab and take a look at the composition that I have edited and told me that that was too much processing, he deleted most of the patch and started to work only on the menu and soon, the functions. "Divide and conquer" is what I would use to describe the way he worked. He also told me that the reason that the functions that I have edited could not be done because I have missed out variables that were supposed to be persistent but was not and because, it was loop in the iterator, the functions basically died on me as there was too much processing power required.

Soon, the moving and scaling function worked and before we left the lab for the day, we updated Kevin on our progress.

20 Feb

Today''s task was to complete the rotation function of the 3D application. It is the most complication function as compared to the rest as we could not simply use the model patch to do rotation. The model patch had a "track mouse" into that tracks the mouse movement when rotating. However, if we are using the OSC mode, the mouse movement remains static and the model could not rotate as it only tracks the movement of the mouse.

So what we did was to code the rotation using Euler angles. It was really complicated as there were unfamiliar formulas and equation. Thanks to the help from Ming Hong, we had managed to let the models rotating using lasers.

After that, we updated Kevin about the program had also learn the differences between a 32-bit computer and 64-bit computer from Kevin which makes me think back of the drawing problems found while we were trying to get a video shoot for LightBoard. It was then, I found out that it was because of the difference in the graphics card. The graphics card that the Mac Pro was using was more precise than the MacBook Pro as the Mac Pro was able to read values that was really small.

Reflection:

This week was a really busy week as we had to prepare the presentations for the PSRP and also had to complete the 3D application. Thankfully, our hard work had paid off. We had to thank Dr. Eng and Kevin for their guidance. I had learned how differences in hardware would affect the performance of an application. We had also learn that often we are too used to having rules,  we tend to stop being wise. But that does not mean that there should not be rules, we should have rules but we should be flexible with in according to the situation.