How can I determine whether a 2D Point is within a Polygon?

Question

I\'m trying to create a fast 2D point inside polygon algorithm, for use in hit-testing (e.g. Polygon.contains(p:Point)). Suggestions for effective tech

Answer 1

David Segond's answer is pretty much the standard general answer, and Richard T's is the most common optimization, though therre are some others. Other strong optimizations are based on less general solutions. For example if you are going to check the same polygon with lots of points, triangulating the polygon can speed things up hugely as there are a number of very fast TIN searching algorithms. Another is if the polygon and points are on a limited plane at low resolution, say a screen display, you can paint the polygon onto a memory mapped display buffer in a given colour, and check the color of a given pixel to see if it lies in the polygons.

Like many optimizations, these are based on specific rather than general cases, and yield beneifits based on amortized time rather than single usage.

Working in this field, i found Joeseph O'Rourkes 'Computation Geometry in C' ISBN 0-521-44034-3 to be a great help.