In the course of bugfixing the timeplot widget, I've been reading through the sources. I noticed the following code: http://code.google.com/p/simile-widgets/source/browse/timeplot/trunk/src/webapp/api/scripts/plot.js
<http://code.google.com/p/simile-widgets/source/browse/timeplot/trunk/src/webapp/api/scripts/plot.js> /** * Paint this plot layer */ paint: function() { var ctx = this._canvas.getContext('2d'); I was wondering whether the same canvas used by Exhibit supports 3d plotting?Some googling suggests it does: - http://blog.nihilogic.dk/2008/04/canvas-3d-better-textures.html - http://ajaxian.com/archives/3d-canvas-in-opera - http://my.opera.com/timjoh/blog/index.dml/tag/opera And the HTML 5 spec says ( see http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-canvas-element and http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-2d-context ): context = canvas . getContext(contextId) > Returns an object that exposes an API for drawing on the canvas. > Returns null if the given context ID is not supported. > This specification only defines one context, with the name "2d". If > getContext() is called with that exact string for its contextId argument, > then the UA must return a reference to an object implementing > CanvasRenderingContext2D. Other specifications may define their own > contexts, which would return different objects. > Vendors may also define experimental contexts using the syntax > vendorname-context, for example, moz-3d. > When the UA is passed an empty string or a string specifying a context that > it does not support, then it must return null. String comparisons must be > case-sensitive. > A future version of this specification will probably define a 3d context > (probably based on the OpenGL ES API). Question: How prevalent and supported is context "3d" or "moz-3d" on HTML5 compliant browsers? Is "moz-3d" implemented on any other browsers, such as Safari or Chrome? And what about IE support for this graphics context? What's the performance like? Would it be unwise to extend exhibit to do a 3d plot out of JavaScript? In other words, am I better off converting the data I want to visualize in 3d into an image on the server-side? Or is it worth pursuing plotting the data on the client side using a 3d context in Canvas (which would be nice, e.g. to be able to change facets and have them render directly in canvas). Have any 3d plotting extensions been integrated into Exhibit? E.g. something like the timeplot extension that uses 3d graphics to represent multiple separate datasets -- the time-axis continues to be the X-axis; however, instead of the current approach of layering each related dataset into the same 2d canvas using colors/fills, the Z-axis would be used to generate 3d depth cues. Thanks in advance for any insights or help you can provide. -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SIMILE Widgets" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/simile-widgets?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
