Setting up Dome Resolution and Degrees Per Pixel setting for Lines and Points In Uniview

In Uniview 2.0, in order to change the width of line and point rendering, you had to tweak the data in order to make it look good for your screen.

From Uniview 3.0.12 onward, there are global settings pertaining to your Dome Resolution (in pixels) and the point/line thickness in degrees per pixel (<degreeperpixel> in systemconfiguration.xml, see below) that effects line/point rendering. This way, you can share your data freely among collaborators and not have to worry about how it would look on their configuration, as that will be taken care by their dome settings.

While this has had certain issues regarding differing dome and planar configurations, these issues can be worked around, see below.

The default that Uniview tries to do is to make the dome look good for a 4K Dome. 6K, 8K would look good as well by default, but for even crisper lines and points the Dome Resolution parameter needs to be tweaked (by changing the dome resolution in the systemconfiguration.xml configuration file).

However, for planar cases, this becomes problematic as <degreeperpixel> needs to be smaller. Most of our running user base have carry over configurations from their old installations where there was no such distinction between planar and dome. 

To solve these issues, we have to reconfigure some settings int the systemconfiguration.xml file.

Lets for example look at a case where your dome is a resolution is 3K. Here's an example setting you might have in your systemconfiguration.xml file.

...
<domeconfiguration>    
    ...
    <resolution>3000</resolution>    
    <!--
        The values given here for the table are default values that Uniview applies incase
        these are not specified here in your systemconfiguration.xml
    -->
    <pointsizedegree>
        <record>
            <resolution>1024</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>.15</degreeperpixel>
        </record>            
        <record>
            <resolution>2048</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>0.1</degreeperpixel>
        </record>                        
        <record>
            <resolution>4096</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>0.08</degreeperpixel>
        </record>            
        <record>
            <resolution>6144</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>0.07</degreeperpixel>
        </record>                                    
        <record>
            <resolution>8192</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>0.065</degreeperpixel>
        </record>                                    
    </pointsizedegree>
</domeconfiguration>  
...  

The <resolution> tag specifies the final resolution of your dome in pixels. Based on that resolution, the <degreeperpixel> chosen for default width of points and lines (with a multiplier factor of 1) are given in <degreeperpixel> value. Note that the final value would be linearly interpolated between the nearest neighbor. Lets illustrate that with an example:

if in the above case the <degreeperpixel> value would be linearly interpolated to be: 

   
low = 0.1 (as 3000 falls in the range 2048-4086)
high = 0.08
t = (3000-2048) / (4096-2048) = 0.46484
degreeperpixel = t * low + (1-t) * high = 0.045

If you don't specify the <resolution>, the default value is: 4096

The default value for the <pointsizedegree> table is the same as given in the example above. Which means you don't need to specify it for domes as the default is with good settings.

If your configuration is not for a dome, then you have to tweak these values to better fit your installation.

E.g, lets say your planar resolution (the higher dimension) is 3000. Then a configuration like the following Would give you crisper lines and points:

...
<domeconfiguration>    
    ...
    <resolution>3000</resolution>    
    <pointsizedegree>        
        <record>
            <resolution>2048</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>0.02</degreeperpixel>
        </record>                        
        <record>
            <resolution>4096</resolution>
            <degreeperpixel>0.04</degreeperpixel>
        </record>                    
    </pointsizedegree>
</domeconfiguration>    
...

Experiment with these for your planar configurations and determine which values in the table are best for your installation.