The Underscore Archives

On 3 Jun 2008, at 16:07, Ben Reed wrote:
>
> I would stick with whats around and maybe tweak that to be honest, i
> dont see the benefit in reinventing the wheel. Papervision 3D has
> Collada support so models can be created and out put from just about
> and 3D modelling environment. Trying to build a render engine to  
> play nice with every browser, every graphics card and every possible  
> set up is a huge HUGE task.


Agreed.  Papervision3D is surprisingly quick, even though the code  
quality is (IMHO) fairly poor and inefficient, such as a bad object  
model (eg. the discrepancy between Vertex3D and Number3D and the  
resulting superfluous casts),  and a fairly braindead approach to  
projection (eg. all objects are reprojected on every frame... I ended  
up overriding the projection stage do conditional projection =>  
threefold performance improvement)

The major speed problem with PV3D, though, is fill rate and the lack  
of a decent 3D projection transform, both of which are apparently to  
be improved on by Flash 10.  The use of 2D transforms is why textures  
in PV3D look either slightly off (due to lack of perspective  
transformation), or slow (due to use of subdivision to disguise lack  
of perspective transformation).

I agree the OP is asking the impossible though, and even if plugins  
were acceptable, it'd be a major programming job even for an über- 
coder, which is why PV3D (a _relatively_ straightforward coding  
project) has taken well over a year to get this far.

Bone deformation and shadows are very intensive, and not practical in  
any of the suggested technologies while using a high polygon count.  I  
mean, they're hard enough to do well in native code.

What's being asked for is high-powered hardware-accelerated native  
code performance, yet in a browser without any (extra?) plugins.  Not  
going to happen.

There is arguably a place for exposing OpenGL/DirectX 3D capabilities  
to the browser, but the argument so far is that it would be  
practically impossible to guarantee any level of minimum spec... the  
difference just between desktop PCs is bad enough, let alone when you  
bring in mobile devices.  IIRC, the stated reason the iPhone doesn't  
support Flash and OpenGL (only having OpenGL ES instead) is the  
hardware spec, esp. w.r.t. battery life, and it's clear that the  
iPhone is, quite frankly, the daddy right now.  It seems that mobile  
platforms are far more interesting to people like Adobe now, as they  
can actually make real money out of them.

As I understand it, this is the reason there isn't a proper hardware- 
accelerated "Flash 3D" as yet.  (Flash devs, am I right?)

Plus, it was tried before with VRML in the mid-/late-nineties.   
Admittedly, the hardware wasn't really up to it then, but as I  
remember it, no-one ever found a killer app for VRML, so there was  
never any drive to fix those problems.


Tom

-- 
Tom Gidden
http://gidden.net/tom