Help speeding up a plot

I have a plot of a planet, satellites and their orbits. I have 32 satellites and would like to plot all of them however doing this leads to massive lag in the plot. I'd like to speed up the plot because I have further things I need to do after plotting the satellites. Can anyone help/suggest improvements so that the full 32 satellites run as smooth as these 4?

Full code can be provided if required.

This is the plotting code I'm using, currently only for plotting 4 satellites (speed is fine), for 32 satellites, loops for k would change to 1:8, 9:16, 17:24, 25:32;

%PLOT
%Create Mars as a surface
marsterrain = imread('mars.jpg');
[X, Y, Z] = sphere(20);
mars = mesh(X*Mars.r, Y*Mars.r, Z*Mars.r); 
set(mars,'FaceColor','texturemap','cdata',marsterrain,'edgecolor','none');
hold on

%Draw Orbits
Orbit1 = animatedline(POS(1,1), POS(33,1), POS(65,1), 'color',  [1 0.5 0]);
Orbit2 = animatedline(POS(9,1), POS(41,1), POS(73,1), 'color',  [0 1 0]);
Orbit3 = animatedline(POS(17,1), POS(49,1), POS(81,1), 'color',  [0.2 0.6 1]);
Orbit4 = animatedline(POS(25,1), POS(57,1), POS(89,1), 'color',  [1 0 0]);

%Set axis limits
axis equal
xlim([-a, a]);
ylim([-a, a]);
zlim([-a, a]);
set(gcf, 'color', [0 0 0])
axis off
hold on

%Plot over time
for j = 1:length(t)
    %Rotate Mars
    rotate(mars, [0 0 1], (rad2deg(Mars.th)));
    %Draw orbits from leading satellite
    addpoints(Orbit1, POS(1,j), POS(33,j), POS(65,j));
    addpoints(Orbit2, POS(9,j), POS(41,j), POS(73,j));
    addpoints(Orbit3, POS(17,j), POS(49,j), POS(81,j));
    addpoints(Orbit4, POS(25,j), POS(57,j), POS(89,j));
    %Plot satellites (currently only plotting lead sats due to lag)
    S = zeros(1,32);
    for k = 1
        S(k) = scatter3(POS(k,j), POS(k+32,j), POS(k+64,j), 'Filled', 'MarkerFaceColor', [0.6 0.3 0]);
    end
    for k = 9
        S(k) = scatter3(POS(k,j), POS(k+32,j), POS(k+64,j), 'Filled', 'MarkerFaceColor', [0 0.4 0]);
    end
    for k = 17
        S(k) = scatter3(POS(k,j), POS(k+32,j), POS(k+64,j), 'Filled', 'MarkerFaceColor', [0.2 0.2 0.6]);
    end
    for k = 25
        S(k) = scatter3(POS(k,j), POS(k+32,j), POS(k+64,j), 'Filled', 'MarkerFaceColor', [0.6 0 0]);
    end
    drawnow
    %Delete satellites from current frame
    delete(S)
end

Answer 1

[dpb]

At a minimum w/o digging more deeply

1) Before beginning simulation define color vector

C=[repmat([0.6 0.3   0],8,1);
   repmat([0   0.4   0],8,1);
   repmat([0.2 0.2 0.6],8,1);
   repmat([0.6   0   0],8,1);

2) Eliminate loops on k (coding would be easier if you had X,Y,Z coordinate arrays)

   S=scatter3(POS(1:32,j),POS(33:64,j),POS(65:96,j),C,'Filled');

I suspect but have never tested that the animatedline is probably quite a bit slower than the technique of updating the [X/Y]Data values for the other portion.

[Scott Hunter]

Fortunately my POS is already set up like that so I will give that a shot thank you!

I'm not sure what you mean by the second part? I used animated line because I wanted a thinner continuous line as my orbit not big points like my satellites. Do you think I'd be better using another scatter but making the point smaller and just not deleting it?

[dpb]

Well, it seems they've rewritten the documentation a lot and it's much harder to find examples and it is claimed animatedline is fast--I suppose that is possible; I've not actually tested it myself.

The technique to which I was referring is shown in moving the marker at Marker-along-line -- one just updates the data in the object directly rather than going thru the high-level interface to do so.

You could do the same thing to build the scatter plot via line instead; all it is is in essence is an interface to line that doesn't set the line property by default.