JB, Well I agree... Still as far as I understand, the iGame3D can be used not just for games. My personal interest in 3D development of a scientific app for my phd project, which will need 3D support for terrain and bathymetry mapping and visualisation. I have less than 3 years to accomplish this thing and I have chosen Rev Studio for the GUI and some functions, just to avoid time consuming coding in C/C++ . Well I made my purchase in February this year, and from advertiser of Arcade engine on the Revolution web site I understood that 3D support is not a problem. But this was not the whole truth about 3D in Rev... For all other aspects of my work Rev suits perfectly. I am glad I found it. But now as 3D is missing and time is running out, I have to look for possible alternatives. One solution as I see it would be loading VRML plugin within browser loaded within altBrowser external. But then communication between the VRML and transcript is a bit unclear, if possible at all, and efficiency of this approach is questionable. Now I see iGame3D on the shelf trying to attract our attention... It is there but we can not take it, so it is a bit frustrating. Regarding the tighter integration of externals into the system, as far as I understand, Runtime Rev. Ltd is planning to do this for altSQL and altBrowser. This should mean that integration of externals into engine is somehow possible, but is a sole responsibility of the Ltd. Best regards! Viktoras -------Original Message------- From: jbv Date: 11/23/06 12:01:44 To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Where Rev could be going...3D? Viktoras, > Hey, hey > > I provoked the 3D stuff not because to force someone starting developing Rev > 3D module from scratch... > The intention was to draw your attention to the fact that OpenGL 3D engine
> for the Revolution ALREADY EXISTS and sits on the shell exposed by iGame3D > with seemingly no one being interested in the ready-to-use thingy. > > Any ideas on how can we "take" it? Because if we do not manage to "take" it > somehow now, it will likely be gone in a few months... and then somebody > (definitely not me ;-)) will have to code the whole thing from scratch again > Don't worry, we all do understand your concern. But at the same time, please allow me to consider the problem from the other way round : have you ever wondered why some MC / Rev users (like me) have been waiting for years for some vector graphics to be available in Rev, or why this 3D API has been sitting on the shelf for so long ? IMHO this situation is an inheritance from the old HC days when the only way to add features to the engine was through externals. Which means you have a proprietary engine (a bit like a black box), and the possibility to add limited functions to it via the limited externals API. But times are changing, and now open source is much more different from what it could have been in the late 80's. I'm not pleading for complete open-ness of the Rev engine code, but rather for some general framework that would allow skilled coders to jump in and start coding to enhance the engine by adding primitives to the Transcript language itself. Again I'm convinced that some "heavy" enhancements can't be added to Rev in any other way. And since such a framework isn't available, Rev users have to wait and wait for the skilled but more-than-busy Rev crew to achieve and debug any improvement... Those coders would first build these new primitives for their own use (because they need it for a specific project - it was my case in 2003 when I needed some openGL interface for a specific client - and most important, it would prevent them to switch to another development tool), but then nothing would hinder them to make the new primitives (or the code itself) available for others, just like in open source. Eventually, others could tweak the code to meet their own needs, and finally a more or less universal and final version could be included in the engine by RR. BTW this would re-inforce the deep natural english-like nature of xTalk, by copying natural language in its improvement & evolution process... Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm convinced that more "universal" developments could be achieved that way. 3D is a good example : I understand that opening Rev to the development of 3D games is a good thing, but why limit the use of 3D to games ? A powerful set of primitives for 3D creation and control would open more horizons : industrial process simulation, education, scientific imagery, etc. And who knows what kind of new developments would arise by simple interaction with other existing features (I for one have a few ideas that I don't want to disclose right now, but hope I'll find the time to code in a more or less near future) ? ---------- And last but not least, here's another innocent question : please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand, the improve-rev list is limited to those with an Enterprise licence. How come someone (like me) who has spent thousands of hours since 1987 coding with the successive versions of HC / SC / OMO / MC / Rev is less qualified to discuss possible Rev improvements than anyone who discovered Rev and xTalk last week, but with enough $$$ to afford an Enterprise licence ? Cheers, JB _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
