CDK thoughts …
Hi All,
I have been watching some of the conversations on the CDK forum and I would
like to
add some comments. Just to let you know, I am one of the programmers who works
on CDK.
My goal here is to help people with technical questions so most of my comments
will be centered on how to program, compile and design CDK applications. You
will also get a dose of my personal take on VR technology, I can never keep
quiet about that!
You and Angela have had a long discussion about many different topics. I am
happy to see that there is discussion here about VR, what it is and how it can
be used. Here are some points that I would like to make:
* VR will not survive if it is only an extension of rendering and animation and
is only used as a production tool. There are many others who are truly
interested in immersive and interactive simulation and CDK serves this large
population by providing a solid modeler, physical simulation, sensor reading,
animation processing, simulation application framework, integration with
Windows … the list goes on.
* It seems as though in general people are comparing rendering technology to
the CDK. This includes Rendermorphics, Renderware and the Fast Previewer in 3d
Studio.. I think this comparison has no foundation. Sure, CDK has a number
of rendering solutions that come in the box but I would not classify it as a
rendering product. Thats like calling my Chevy Blazer simply an engine. Thats
a somewhat correct description but it is in reality more. CDK is an
application framework in which you can build complex and compelling
simulations. Rendering is only one part. I could also argue that CDK has the
most flexible rendering in the business because it can drive any rendering
solution as long as that solution can be written to from Windows.
* Hopefully the CDK will let people create complex simulations using many
different animation paths and files. Animations are one of way that people
can bring their worlds to life (one of my standard VR sayings is "NO DEAD
WORLDS" meaning no static geometry please!). I think this is where the real
power of CDK lies. I see VR (and CDK) incorporating live objects that react
to your presence, portals that link you to other worlds, body sensors as input,
sound and computer graphics as output, physically real simulations. Thats what
VR means to me and I hope others as well, not just rendering.
* << On March Angela Pate writes: I was happy to see the new 3DS reader in CDK
REL 2 and it works well, except for this exhorbatant wait time upon loading
while reading in all the textures, and no messages while doing so. Our messages
is disappears when the loading begins. This has got to be fixed and quickly. >>
I will take a look at this problem this week. The image load time is high but
we should not be changing the cursor or anything like that during image load. I
can't imagine why this is not working for you but I will check it out and
report back here.
Thanks for listening. I hope my presence here will help foster a technical
discussion of
CDK. Please feel free to ask coding questions (I can't design your application
but I sure
can help you when you are trying to figure out CDK classes).
Brian