[vtkusers] Multithreading & vtkRenderWindowInteractor

[Nigel Nunn]

Hi Thomas,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ttickle [mailto:ttickle at cs.uno.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, 20 January 2005 8:36 AM
> To: vtkusers at vtk.org
> Subject: [vtkusers] Multithreading & vtkRenderWindowInteractor
>
>     I am writing a program which will have realtime updates to the
> displayed data under C++ using VTK under Windows.  I have tried using
> a vtkRenderWindowInteractor.  Unfortunatly, vtkRenderWindowInteractor
> only seems to preform updates when the user is interacting with the
> scene.  I need to refresh the window anytime my data changes.  At
> the present time, I am trying to following solution:
>   
>     Create the window, interactor, and renderer and associate
> appropriatly.   Then create my worker thread whose job it will
> be to periodically update the vtkActors which are being displayed. 
> I then start the interactors event loop with interactor->Start();. 
> I have tried having the thread update the screne by calling the
> render methods of both vtkRenderWindowInteractor and vtkRenderWindow
> (not at the same time of course).  However, I get error messages
> related to something about wgl not being able to make the current
> context.  Can anyone show me some code or suggest how I can both
> use an Interactor with a scene that must be updated even when the
> user is not interacting with the data scene?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Thomas Tickle


Hi Thomas,

Sounds like you're getting a worker thread to manipulate
vtkActors belonging to a pipeline owned by some object on
another thread.

A safe way to do this is to store simulation results in
some globally accessible object (protected by appropriate
flags or mutex object), then send a message from the worker
thread to the GUI interface, that new results are available.

Vtk pipelines on the GUI thread can then update themselves.

Nigel



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