Seemingly Random crashes processing Pointcloud with Point Cloud Library - possibly memory issue? - memory-management

Question

I am doing several steps of reprojections of a point cloud (around 40 Million points initially, ~20 Million while processing). The Programm crashes at seemingly random points at one of these 2 loops. If I run it with a smaller subset (~10 Million Points) everything works fine.
//Projection of Point Cloud into a sphere
pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr projSphere(pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr cloud,int radius)
{
//output cloud
pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr output(new pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>);
//time marker
int startTime = time(NULL);
cout<<"Start Sphere Projection"<<endl;
//factor by which each Point Vector ist multiplied to get a distance of radius to the origin
float scalar;
for (int i=0;i<cloud->size();i++)
{
if (i%1000000==0) cout<<i<<endl;
//P
pcl::PointXYZ tmpin=cloud->points.at(i);
//P'
pcl::PointXYZ tmpout;
scalar=radius/(sqrt(pow(tmpin.x,2)+pow(tmpin.y,2)+pow(tmpin.z,2)));
tmpout.x=tmpin.x*scalar;
tmpout.y=tmpin.y*scalar;
tmpout.z=tmpin.z*scalar;
//Adding P' to the output cloud
output->push_back(tmpout);
}
cout<<"Finished projection of "<<output->size()<<" points in "<<time(NULL)-startTime<<" seconds"<<endl;
return(output);
}
//Stereographic Projection
pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr projStereo(pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr cloud)
{
//output cloud
pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>::Ptr outputSt(new pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ>);
//time marker
int startTime = time(NULL);
cout<<"Start Stereographic Projection"<<endl;
for (int i=0;i<cloud->size();i++)
{
//P
if (i%1000000==0) cout<<i<<endl;
pcl::PointXYZ tmpin=cloud->points.at(i);
//P'
pcl::PointXYZ tmpout;
//equation
tmpout.x=tmpin.x/(1.0+tmpin.z);
tmpout.y=tmpin.y/(1.0+tmpin.z);
tmpout.z=0;
//Adding P' to the output cloud
outputSt->push_back(tmpout);
}
cout<<"Finished projection of"<<outputSt->size()<<" points in "<<time(NULL)-startTime<<" seconds"<<endl;
return(outputSt);
}
If I do all the steps independently by saving/loading the pointclouds on the harddisk and rerunning the program for each step it also works fine. I'd like to provie the entire source files but I'm not sure how/if it's neccessary.
Thanks in advance
Edit:1
After about a week I have still no idea what might be the issue here, since the crashes are somewhat random, but not really? I tried to test the programm with a different system workload (freshly rebooted, with heavy duty programs loaded etc.) makes no apparent difference. Since I thought it's maybe a memory issue, I tried o move the large objects from stack to heap (initialising them with new), did also make no difference. By far the largest object is the raw input file, which I open and close by:
ifstream file;
file.open(infile);
/*......*/
file.close();
delete file;
Is that properly done, so that after the method is completed the memory is released?
Edit again:
So I try further and further, and finally I managed to put all the steps into one function like this:
void stereoTiffI(string infile, string outfile, int length)
{
//set up file input
cout<<"Opening file: "<< infile<<endl;
ifstream file;
file.open(infile);
string line;
//skip first lines
for (int i=0;i<9;i++)
{
getline(file,line);
}
//output cloud
pcl::PointCloud<pcl::PointXYZ> cloud;
getline(file,line);
//indexes for string parsing, coordinates and starting Timer
int i=0;
int j=0;
int k=0;
float x=0;
float y=0;
float z=0;
float intensity=0;
float scalar=0;
int startTime = time(NULL);
pcl::PointXYZ tmp;
//begin loop
cout<<"Begin reading and projecting"<< infile<<endl;
while (!file.eof())
{
getline(file,line);
i=0;
j=line.find(" ");
x=atof(line.substr(i,j).c_str());
i=line.find(" ",i)+1;
j=line.find(" ",i)-i;
y=atof(line.substr(i,j).c_str());
i=line.find(" ",i)+1;
j=line.find(" ",i)-i;
z=atof(line.substr(i,j).c_str());
//i=line.find(" ",i)+1;
//j=line.find(" ",i)-i;
//intensity=atof(line.substr(i,j).c_str());
//leave out points below scanner height
if (z>0)
{
//projection to a hemisphere with radius 1
scalar=1/(sqrt(pow(x,2)+pow(y,2)+pow(z,2)));
x=x*scalar;
y=y*scalar;
z=z*scalar;
//stereographic projection
x=x/(1.0+z);
y=y/(1.0+z);
z=0;
tmp.x=x;
tmp.y=y;
tmp.z=z;
//tmp.intensity=intensity;
cloud.push_back(tmp);
k++;
if (k%1000000==0)cout<<k<<endl;
}
}
cout<<"Finished producing projected cloud in: "<<time(NULL)-startTime<<" with "<<cloud.size()<<" points."<<endl;
And this actually works quit nicely and quickly. In a next step I tried to use Pointtype XYZI because I need to also get the intensity of the scanned points. And guess what, the program crashes at around 17000000 again, and again I have no idea why. Please help

Answer 1

Ok, I solved it. Dr. Memory gave me the right hint by giving me a heap allocation error. After a bit of googling I enabled Large Addresses in Visual Studio (Properties -> Linker -> System)
Everything works like a charm.