CompuServe Messages

Speaking for my own personal needs with regards to real-time interaction: While you say that VR worlds are rarely 33K polys this assumes that people are creating worlds especially for this purpose. More often you create models in the most efficient manner to achieve a final result depending on the specifications. The reality is that most commerical projects are going to use +33K polys or more. For "enjoyment" you may want to create a smaller model to explore, but for commercial purposes the models most often made aren't small. It is for this reason that I think VR technology has a way to go. The VR technology has to be an extension of the basic modelling/animating process. I see it's greatest benefits in creating real-time previews. What I really want from technology of this type is a real-time gouraud preview of my animation at a reasonable rate of 15fps. It doesn't need textures or special effects. If the technology could do this then I would be a very happy chappy. I guess this solution will come soon in the form or 3D R5 running on an Alpha with a GLiNT board. Then real-time previewing will become a reality. The VR technology HAS to be better/faster than Fast Previewer et al in order that it becomes useful. If it can't improve the fps then I, and many others, won't use it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the attraction of VR: real-time interaction. If it can't give "reasonable" feedback then I question it's purpose. <<There is no time in real-time rendering (or as close to it as we can get) to optimize the pallette on each frame (many per second), depending on which objects you happen to be looking towards at the moment (and which colors they are).>> Then the basic "shareware" version shouldn't support textures but instead use only solid colours. If you have all the features but not the speed then most people are going to turn to the Fast Previewer? <<The darkness seems to be in the model itself. When I looked at the Chevy model, the ambient was set to 10. I upped it to 100 and put some lights in and the white part got very bright while the red part was still pretty dark. I would suggest that the material properties on the chevy are probably metal with a dark diffuse color (I havn't checked, please correct me if I am wrong) and it renders very dark.>> I found the lighting for the chevy model to be fairly standard. If you have to tweak and change a model in order for it to be viewed then you miss out on the "quick feedback" possiblity of VR technology. If I have to spend more time converting from 3DS to NAVFlyer and then back it becomes a hinderance rather a help. In order to be effective we need to be able to load a 3DS file up and do a quick "run-through" of the animation. Then make changes and then repeat the process. The iterative changes need to be speed up in order to be useful. Understandably there are lot of calculations that need to be performed at every frame but unless the performance can be improved I have to resort to Fast Previewer or generating a Preview. <<It is very interesting that using VIEW_I with the Chevy model on my 486 in Flat its 1.5 fps and Gouraud is 1.3 fps and in wireframe, where you see each edge of each poly it SLOWS DOWN to only .5 fps, very close to NAVFlyer's texture mapped Gouraud speeds. WE generally fly faster in wireframe than shaded, which leads us to conjecture that they have some good techniques in use while shaded that don't work in wireframe.>> If you look at the wireframe it is in fact the Wire shading model used in 3D Studio and not a simple "line" wireframe method. So they are generating shaded lines rather than single pixel lines. I recall that you have to use Antialiasing in order to display Wire shaded models. So the wire option in VIEW_I is generating antialiased shaded areas in real-time and considering this, the performance is impressive. If they did a straight single-line wireframe rendering I'm sure the performance would be much better. <<So when you say that you know you "can get great real-time gouraud shading performance even from my 486" I suggest that there is more to consider.>> This is true and for this reason I guess I'll have to wait for 3DS R5+Alpha+GLiNT. continued…