Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

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audiomath
Posts: 2
Joined: Aug 04, 2018 19:08

Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by audiomath »

Hi folks,
First posting. BASIC user since TRS-80 Model 1 and CP/M MBASIC, but nowadays primarily C/C#/C++ .
I love the idea and execution of FreeBASIC - having written (many) millions of lines of BASIC code in the past it's like "coming home" somehow. :-)

I do audio and RF DSP design work, and FreeBASIC looks like simple-but-fast way to plot inputs to and outputs from algorithms I'm working on. That leads me to my question:

Is there a way to create and draw to a persistent bitmap, then create and draw to a non-persistent bitmap that overlays it? The idea is to be able to place a reticule and markers "behind" the data to be plotted. Another way to express it would be overlaying a bitmap with a 32-bit bitmap that has an alpha channel - let's say "0" is the transparent color.

I know I could draw the reticule and then plot the data in the same bitmap, but since this will be happening at hopefully a flicker-free refresh rate, I'd rather not use the cycles required to re-draw or copy the persistent bitmap every time.

After expressing it, I'm thinking that it sounds unlikely, but I'm going to ask anyway. Thanks!
MrSwiss
Posts: 3910
Joined: Jun 02, 2013 9:27
Location: Switzerland

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by MrSwiss »

Hi,

any which way you'll approach it, it can be done!
First read would be: How to solve flickering ...
Then, you can take it from there.

Note: don't be fooled, it'll take some time, to get used to FB's new syntax ...
Dinosaur
Posts: 1478
Joined: Jul 24, 2005 1:13
Location: Hervey Bay (.au)

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by Dinosaur »

Hi All

Firstly welcome to the forum.
Don't know if this may give you some ideas, but....

Many years ago I built a machine that weighed diamonds as they slid down a tube.
The background screen was black with a graticule dividing the X,Y axis.
The weight signal was plotted onto the screen as individual white pixels.
By selecting an area of the trace that was reasonably stable (read flat) I could get the weight within a few milligrams.

By remembering which pixels were changed, I could very quickly return these pixels back to black
and start a new trace. The only coordinates I had to remember was the Y, as the X was incremented in mSec.

Additionally I also allowed the colour to increment, which put one trace over the other if I wanted to see a trend, but then it
became harder to remember the pixels and I had to redraw the screen.

This was done in QuickBasic and Assembly, although the pixel routines were QuickBasic.

Hope this gives you some idea.

Regards
audiomath
Posts: 2
Joined: Aug 04, 2018 19:08

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by audiomath »

Thanks for the replies.

I did some tinkering yesterday, and using Paint to clear the plot area between plots I was able to draw 1020 lines of up to 400 pixels height for a histogram. (1020x400 plot area) With 100ms Sleep between each plotting loop, the CPU usage actually stayed at 0% on the test machine. (i7 6700K @ 4 gHz) I was impressed. :-)

I found a ARM6 version of FreeBASIC on the net somewhere that so far seems to work with a Raspberry PI 3+, and the same program runs around 30% of the CPU as reported by "top" . I was impressed again - a RPI would make a very inexpensive display system for all kinds of projects.

Since FreeBASIC can load Win32 DLL's and Linux .so libs, it looks like I've found my new best friend. Now if I can find or build a socket library, (I haven't looked yet) I could build apps to connect to acquisition servers and stream/plot data over TCP. (I do that now with C# programs that call C libraries, but it's a pain to do realtime plotting in .NET . It can be done but, well it's a pain...)

Looks like I have some learning to do. That's ok with me.
grindstone
Posts: 862
Joined: May 05, 2015 5:35
Location: Germany

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by grindstone »

Please notice that the alpha channel doesn't work in FB.
MrSwiss
Posts: 3910
Joined: Jun 02, 2013 9:27
Location: Switzerland

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by MrSwiss »

grindstone wrote:Please notice that the alpha channel doesn't work in FB.
You must be joking, it works very well however, you'll have to enable it
with the: &h40 / 64, in ScreenRes() arguments! More info in fbgfx.bi ...

GFX_ALPHA_PRIMITIVES (constant)

Code: Select all

ScreenRes(scr_w, scr_h, 32,, 64)    ' 5th argument = GFX_ALPHA_PRIMITIVES
badidea
Posts: 2586
Joined: May 24, 2007 22:10
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by badidea »

Hi, I did not read all previous replies, but the graphics routines can work on the screen as well as on a image buffer. This image buffer can be put to screen (or another image buffer) in various ways, see e.g.: https://www.freebasic.net/wiki/wikka.ph ... utgraphics

Edit: I now see that I did not read all of the question as well.
grindstone
Posts: 862
Joined: May 05, 2015 5:35
Location: Germany

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by grindstone »

MrSwiss wrote:You must be joking, it works very well however, you'll have to enable it
with the: &h40 / 64, in ScreenRes() arguments! More info in fbgfx.bi ...

GFX_ALPHA_PRIMITIVES (constant)
I tried it some years ago, and it didn't work. Now I tried again, and it works fine. Maybe there was a bugfix in the meantime, or (more likely) I missed something back then.

Anyway, thank you for that hint.
MrSwiss
Posts: 3910
Joined: Jun 02, 2013 9:27
Location: Switzerland

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by MrSwiss »

grindstone wrote:Maybe there was a bugfix in the meantime, or (more likely) I missed something back then.
Matter of fact is: even in case of a later fix, one wouldn't find the difference, because:
fixes always apply to the version "next" of the compiler (never to the current version!).

It is IMO very bad policy, to post <fake news> (better ask: "is it working?", in case of
uncertainty) especially here, where OP is explicitly asking, whether the feature can
be used!
grindstone
Posts: 862
Joined: May 05, 2015 5:35
Location: Germany

Re: Graphics commands over persistent bitmap?

Post by grindstone »

@MrSwiss: Take care that your halo won't begin to pinch some day...
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