● Covered by 1 source · 1 reportMedium impact1 neutral
earstrip Library Released for Faster Polygon Triangulation, Outperforming earcut
Key points
- earstrip library released under ISC license.
- 14% faster than earcut.hpp in C++.
- 1.4 to 2.1 times faster than earcut.js in browsers.
- Triangulates 3.7 million polygons in 489 ms.
- Improves map rendering performance.
earstrip Library Introduction
The polygon triangulator from a map engine has been released as a new library called earstrip. It is available as a single C++ header file and a WebAssembly build on npm. The library is licensed under the ISC license, matching the license used by earcut.
Performance Benchmarks
In C++, earstrip is 14% faster than earcut.hpp. For browser-based applications, earstrip.js demonstrates a performance increase of 1.4 to 2.1 times compared to earcut.js. The library was able to triangulate 3,740,425 polygons from a map of the Masovian Voivodeship in 489 milliseconds on one core of an M4 Pro.
Context: Polygon Triangulation in Mapping
GPUs process triangles exclusively, while maps consist primarily of polygons representing features like buildings, parks, and roads. Before these polygons can be rendered, they must be converted into triangles through a process called triangulation. For example, 331 polygons with 5,151 vertices can become 4,514 triangles.
Development Process
The earstrip library was developed by replacing a constrained Delaunay triangulator with an ear clipping algorithm. The development involved an iterative process where each idea was implemented and timed on the same dataset of 3.7 million polygons to measure performance improvements.
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Reporting from
A new C++ and WebAssembly library, earstrip, has been released under the ISC license for polygon triangulation. It is 14% faster than earcut.hpp in C++ and 1.4 to 2.1 times faster than earcut.js in browsers, processing 3.7 million map polygons in 489 ms. This development provides a performance improvement for rendering map data, which relies on triangulating polygons for GPU processing.