Raw plotting using vispy

[mluessi]

It would be nice to have more efficient hardware-accelerated raw data plotting, e.g., using https://github.com/vispy/vispy

[larsoner]

Agreed.

I'm following the vispy development for PySurfer also. We need high-level data plotting for plot_raw, which will be built on top of the basic graphics framework. They are currently working on hashing out the design strategy for this basic visual layer. Once that's done they'll have to actually implement it, and then they'll have to implement the scientific plotting routines afterward. I imagine they are some months (maybe even a year) away from having the functions we need, but maybe they will be faster than I expect.

[mluessi]

@Eric89GXL I agree. I think the 2D visualization for plot_raw should be possible soon-ish, 3D stuff ala PySurfer will be more difficult as we require color-maping etc.. and it will take a long time until it can replace mayavi (at that time pyvtk may support py3..).

[larsoner]

Following the discussions, the visual layer they are currently discussing / waiting on is 2D/3D agnostic. I actually slightly expect the 3D plotting functions to be ready for use before the scientific / line plotting ones, since the 3D ones exist at a lower level in that sense.

[larsoner]

And FWIW, the list of things we actually need vispy to do is not too long or complex before it can replace Mayavi as a backend:

https://github.com/vispy/vispy/wiki/UsageExamples#el-visualization-of-data-on-surface-meshes

Every item in that list except colorbar / colormapping (which we can temporarily implement ourselves if push comes to shove) is a low-level graphics quality, the sort of thing they're likely to complete before starting extensive work on upper / higher-level layers.

[jona-sassenhagen]

Is there a long-term timeline for this? I hate having to switch back to py2 for mayavi stuff.

[larsoner]

vispy development has slowed substantially unfortunately

[larsoner]

Closing as WONTFIX :(

[mmagnuski]

:(
I have been trying out pyqtgraph for raw signal plotting lately and it works really well (scrolling is fast and smooth) - and pyqtgraph is a pure python package. I was thinking of mirroring the current raw.plot() and epochs.plot() API and gui, but I'll open a separate issue for this once I have something useful.

[larsoner]

AFAIK pyqtgraph is no longer under active development

[mmagnuski]

activity graph doesn't suggest that: https://github.com/pyqtgraph/pyqtgraph/graphs/contributors
it seems to have a slow but steady pace :)

[larsoner]

Ahh, in that case yeah give it a try