PCLVisualizer: make coordinate system actor unpickable

[themightyoarfish]

When adding a coordinate system to the visualizer, it tends to capture f key events. The user wants to fly to the point under the cursor, but gets teleported to the coordinate axes instead for some reason. Usually I have to switch to point-based rendering (p) to get this to stop.

I think it would make sense to make all annotations (text, lines, etc.) also unpickable.

[larshg]

Can you make a video to show what happens?
I can't seem to reproduce it. But the point that is under the cursor gets moved to the center of screen, which seems unintuitive to me.
I can't reproduce directly that it turns towards the coordinatesystem.

[larshg]

On the below image, it "hits" the coordinate system points, no matter if in surface or point rendering mode, rather then actual points, which is "far" behind the coordinatesystem.

Anyways, I would probably opt for a parameter, to set whether the actor should be pickable or not, rather than forcing either.

[themightyoarfish]

pclviewer.webm

I tried capturing the problem here. I hover over a point, and press f repeatedly to fly to it. Left is with my changes – i eventually arrive. Right is current state – the coordinate actor attracts the view and I converge to it instead of my target.

Here it looks rather benign, but I often have cases where i even move the axes out of the viewport, and they still capture my focus and turn around the view completely.

[larshg]

Yeah, so same experience that I have. That you try to target points behind the coordinate actor, but its "in the way".

[themightyoarfish]

Visually, it isn't so I would consider this unexpected behaviour, but I don't know how the point picking works exactly.

[themightyoarfish]

this happens also at times when you fly to a point far away from the axes by the way. i used something close in the example for no reason.

[themightyoarfish]

If I were to add a parameter, can the unpickable case be the default?

[themightyoarfish]

I think this does not only apply to the coordinate system, but also other shapes. I often use spheres and lines and they likewise disable f behaviour. It seems to me that either we have to add the pickable parameter for each add*() function, or we just make them unpickable by default.

[themightyoarfish]

@larshg Could you share your opinions on the previous few comments? Then I could move this forward.

[larshg]

Yeah, I think I would opt for the paramter for each add* method. I would keep it pickable as it is today as default though.

Alternatively we add a getCoordinateActorMap. Then you can use that one and getShapeActorMap and iterate through those and set them all to unpickable.

Another approach could be to add a getActor/Prop (string id), which then returned the actor / Prop type, where you could set pickable?