#LAW YEE WEI# wrote:
> While there have been a lot of talks on advanced graphics techniques like
> collision detection, particle system on the mailing list, none of these have
> ever made their way to the loader. I fully realize all development has gone
> to X3D, but the VRML97 part of X3D has never seen any improvement as far as
> I can tell.
Since Alan Hudson and I have been working on the X3D code, the priority
has been to get the XML part of the code going. We mainly got that
happening by the Web3D conference. We deliberately did the minimal
amount of work on the core VRML implementation. Basically we just
patched it to make it semi-workable for the X3D rendering as we knew the
code was in shocking condition. The aim was to fix the XML/DOM handling
to a reasonable state where people could start using that for playing
with the SAI and DOM interfaces without having to worry about the
rendering. It was what we were being paid to do after-all.
Today we started discussions on the VRML side of the implementation.
Tomorrow, probably, we will start the design fresh to make something
that is suitable for both VRML 3.0 and VRML97. Once we have that settled
over the next week or so, we will work at the implementation. I believe
Alan Hudson will be doing most of the work on that as I'm going to be
looking at the scripting/proto issues of the implementation. An
ECMAScript implementation is one of the primary goals.
I completely understand the frustration of the VRML implementation. Just
over two years ago I spent about A$100,000 of company money with
developers rebuilding it to be specification compliant and managable.
Part of this work as also to prove the EAI spec I was working on at the
time was going to work. That code was completely disregarded by the
person maintaining the code and it has literally not progressed one bit
in the intervening time. To say I was rather pissed at this situation is
a gross understatement. The _only_ reason I'm working on the code now is
that I am being paid to do it. I also now have write access to the CVS
repository so I know that something reasonable will end up being
publically available. What you will end up with out of this is a
properly engineered piece of code that will work. Maybe not extreme high
performance because there are other aims for the code (spec compliance
and modularity for testing X3D profiles), but definitely a couple of
orders of magnitude better than what is there now.
The current timeframe for this work is two months. I'm working 50% time
on this for 2 months and Alan is working fulltime for the next month. Of
course, we're open to offers from other companies that would like to pay
us to continue the work ;)
> (2) The navigation interface contributed by Laszlo Seregi
> (http://www.external.hrp.no/vr/) is excellent, thanks Laszlo.
Yes, I'm re-working this a little to be re-usable and it's on its way
into the j3d.org code repository.
--
Justin Couch Author, Java Hacker
http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/ Java 3D FAQ Maintainer
http://www.j3d.org/ J3D.org The Java 3D Community Site
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"Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now.
Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism
processes data according to its domain, its environment; you, with
all your brains, would be useless in a mouse's universe..."
- Greg Bear, Slant
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