Pierce Interaction - Multihit Picking

[ThomasOrtner]

Pick surface returns the first hit surface, I suppose w.r.t. Surface Priorities.

I think it is often practical to get all surface hits sorted along the pick ray, so a users knows which surfaces are available for a given point on Mars. I would call this interaction Pierce as the pick ray pierces through surfaces after hits.

a pierce at the white dot should return the 4 surfaces (3 visible, HiRISE underneath) in a sorted list, which acts as a filter to the surface tree. This filtered list then also allows for e.g. manipulating visiblities. We can make an additional issue the UI if necessary.

[ThomasOrtner]

@haraldsteinlechner what is your opinion on this
@gpaar can you imagine projects that would benefit from such an interaction?

[gpaar]

Not planned in current projects, as for now users should be aware of the sequence of surfaces they had loaded themselves. However, interesting for future proposals, please mark it with an appropriate label.
Many use cases come into my mind, the more so when surfaces from different sensors, in different resolution and different surface states (e.g. before / after drilling) are involved - to step through them in proper (even selectable) order, which would go beyond the (texture) layer scheme that we are about to implement / use anyway.

[ThomasOrtner]

I had this Idea long ago already, but it now came to my mind during data selection. So it would primarily beneficial to us intermediate users ;)

[haraldsteinlechner]

In another project where i have realtime picking preview (which would be absolute boost in pro3d also) i have hot keys for chosing "the second" pick. This only makes sense with proper transparency while holding the hot key. IMO this somehow also relates to more complex "occlusion/visibility techniques.