glTexImage2D slicing and alignment issues appearing in window

Question

I'm working on making my own topographic map, and I have been using .hgt files from NASA.

I'm loading the files using

void MapImage::load_map_file(const char* filename) {
    std::ifstream file(filename, std::ios::in | std::ios::binary);
    if (!file) {
        std::cout << "Error opening file!" << std::endl;
    }
    std::vector<short> tempHeight(TOTAL_SIZE);
    unsigned char buffer[2];

    int x, y;
    for (int i = 0; i < TOTAL_SIZE; i++) {
        if (!file.read(reinterpret_cast<char*>(buffer), sizeof(buffer))) {
            std::cout << "Error reading file!" << std::endl;
        }
        tempHeight[i] = (buffer[0] << 8) | buffer[1];
    }

    height = tempHeight;
}

And then adding them to an inmemory bitmap using:

void MapImage::loadTextureImage() {
img_tex = 0;
glGenTextures(1, &img_tex);

int x, y, w, h;
w = h = SRTM_SIZE;
unsigned char* img;
img = (unsigned char *)malloc(3 * w * h);
memset(img, 0, sizeof(img));

int g = 0;
double height_color;

/*
for(int i = 0; i < TOTAL_SIZE; i++){
    height_color = (float)height[i] / 10.0;
    g = (height_color * 255);
    if (g>255)g = 255;

    img[i * 3 + 2] = (unsigned char)0;
    img[i * 3 + 1] = (unsigned char)g;
    img[i * 3 + 0]= (unsigned char)0;
}
*/

for (int i = 0; i < w; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < h; ++j) {
        x = i; 
        y = (h - 1) - j;

        height_color = (float)height[j + (i * w)] / 10.0;
        g = (height_color * 255);
        if (g>255)g = 255;

        img[(x + y*w) * 3 + 2] = (unsigned char)0;
        img[(x + y*w) * 3 + 1] = (unsigned char)g;
        img[(x + y*w) * 3]     = (unsigned char)0;
    }
}


glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, img_tex);

glTexImage2D(
    GL_TEXTURE_2D,
    0,
    GL_RGB,
    w,
    h,
    0,
    GL_RGB,
    GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,
    img
);
}

However this results in a image with the corner sliced, like this

Using the commented version in the loadTextureImage() looks slightly different, however with the same corner sliced.

Does anyone have a hint to whats going on? I've tried using a image as a texture, loading with the stbi library, and that works fine, so I'm not sure where it's going wrong.

(the coordinates for the image is N10E099)

Answer 1

This looks like row misalignment, caused by the 3-wide colour data. Try using the following call just before glTexImage2D:

glPixelStorei(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT, 1);

This alignment value, which is 4 by default, is used by glTexImage2D and friends whenever texture data is read to be sent to the GPU.

There is no verification that it matches what the data actually looks like, so in cases like yours where a row doesn't end on a 4-byte boundary, the first few bytes of the next row will be skipped, leading to this diagonal distortion.

Texture data transfers in the other direction (from the GPU to client memory) are aligned via glPixelStorei(GL_PACK_ALIGNMENT, 1);.