[API Review] RT-28129: event coordinates with perspective camera

[Pavel Safrata]

Hi Jim,

On 2.2.2013 5:25, Jim Graham wrote:
> Would a 3D program need to know the direction the pick ray came into 
> the object from?  Knowing the xyz of the location on your surface 
> tells you where they hit your object, and I'm not sure how much they 
> get from the distance, but the direction could tell them whether to, 
> say, apply english to a cue ball as it spins away from the touch/click...

I'll let people with more 3D background decide. From the technical point 
of view, it can be added quite easily.

>
> Also, perhaps it goes without saying, but I'm guessing that if you 
> have a regular 2D node then the getZ() would be 0 because it 
> represents the touch point that was transformed into your local 
> coordinate system which is a plane?

It will be 0 when delivered to the event target. However, not 
necessarily during the capturing/bubbling phases. For example, if you 
have a rectangle in a group, and the rectangle has setTranslateZ(10), 
the event will have z=0 when delivered to the rectangle, but z=10 when 
delivered to the group.

Pavel

>
>             ...jim
>
> On 2/1/13 8:51 AM, Pavel Safrata wrote:
>> Hello,
>> this is related to the 3D support planned for FX8, yet it is a bugfix of
>> an existing issue.
>>
>> With perspective camera, events delivered to any node that's not lying
>> flat on the XY plane contain wrong local coordinates - they ignore the
>> projection transformations. It's enough to rotate a rectangle along X
>> axis and the coordinates become useless.
>>
>> http://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-28129
>>
>> Solution to this problem requires API changes, because we need to
>> compute in 3D to get proper numbers. So I propose to add a "double
>> getZ()" method to all picking-based events, with the following
>> semantics: the event's getSceneX(), getSceneY() values still represent
>> the 2D coordinates of the mouse in the window content pixels (screen
>> coordinates minus window position and decorations); the getX(), getY(),
>> getZ() represent the hit point in the local 3D space (which may now be
>> different even for scene because of the perspective transform). If no
>> node is picked, the hit point with the scene will be found on the
>> projection plane. Note that nothing changes for the 2D case, for the 3D
>> case we now have correct 3D coordinates instead of a complete nonsense.
>>
>> There is one more issue - how to pass the correct coordinates to the
>> event constructors. Instead of creating more construrctors with the
>> three additional coordinates, I propose to use a concept called
>> PickResult which was briefly discussed earlier and will soon be part of
>> a 3D API review. In short, it is an object that contains information
>> about the pick for the event - the picked node, local coordinates of the
>> hit and some 3D-specific stuff. For proper 3D support, it will anyway be
>> necessary to pass the PickResult to the events and allow access to it;
>> once this is done, the event can compute the coordinates from it. So I
>> propose adding PickResult to the event constructors. Note that they've
>> not been released yet, so we can modify them instead of adding new ones.
>> Also note that for convenience of 2D use-cases, the constructors will
>> accept a null PickResult and in this case compute PickResult values
>> based on the passed event target and scene coordinates (which is
>> sufficient for 2D case).
>>
>> Side note for those who remember the previous 3D API discussion: the
>> PickResult is no longer restricted to 3d shapes, it is present always,
>> with the 3D-specific fields having null values where not applicable.
>>
>>
>> Summary of this proposal:
>> Affected classes: MouseEvent, MouseDragEvent, DragEvent, GestureEvent,
>> ContextMenuEvent and TouchPoint
>> new methods: getZ(), getPickResult() (and extended semantics of event
>> local coordinates for 3D case)
>> modified methods: added PickResult to all constructors
>>
>> Concrete description of the PickResult and the proposed picking API can
>> be found here:
>> https://wikis.oracle.com/display/OpenJDK/Picking3dAPI
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Pavel
>>