Carl!! thanx for info about the book..... as for the pyramid which was not rendering properly, yes, the problem was with the normals... Thanx all!!!!!! Ajit OK, this guy is more into the philosophical aspects of a 3D GUI than the technical stuff. Most of his discussion is based on the assumption that he wants things to work on any old PC, so the "standard" GUI is meant to work with a screen, mouse, keyboard and maybe loudspeaker, with no fancy virtual equipment. Given those 3 things, he thinks about how to give the user a useful and credible virtual experience. He explains about all the little things you need to consider, like whether the viewer's point of view is 1st person or 3rd person, which kinds of controls you want to give him (keyboard? mouse? both?) and what they should do (pan? zoom? turn? move? slide? etc). About which kinds of realisms are good to keep the user oriented (gravity to keep his idea of up and down intact) and which are silly (a furniture CAD program requiring the user to drag furniture up and down virtual stairs to get to another location). He talks a lot about "3D Swing", the idea of building an elegant and universal UI that is as slick as Swing is. I haven't yet read to the point where he explains just how to do that, but I've scanned ahead to where he talks about a general-purpose UI framework he gives us (source code at the publisher's site and/or on CD-ROM) to make this a little easier. His framework kind of substitutes for the com.sun.util classes, with a lot more emphasis on input and interaction. He explains a lot of basics, but details the nitty gritty only where it fits into his plan. Thus, as I mentioned before, I'm still waiting for the other book to hopefully explain in a little more detail just how to use all the stuff in the API. I'm citing all this from a brief nightly read and from memory. If I've done him any major injustice, please set me straight but don't sue me! Regards, -Carl- =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help". ____________________________________________________________________ Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.amexmail.com/?A=1 =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
