CompuServe Messages

Fred, > BORDERS? Where the heck are you? The only Border's Books I know of is in Dallas. < Well, there's one in Mt. Lebanon –just outside of Pittsburgh. Before Barnes and Noble opened it was the only book store that had computer books besides the "How to use ….", et al. (except of course for the campus bookstores at Pitt, CMU, etc.). I don't know if these are part of a chain, but Border's Books is the only book store I know of with a fireplace, comfy chairs (no one expects the Spannish Inquisition <g> –sorry, I've seen too much Monty Python) and FREE coffee to make your book browsing experience as pleasant as possible. Sure beats the "Are you going to buy that?" approach to customer service. > Well, let's discuss this Mode-X thing a little. < Thanks for your insights, I haven't ruled out mode-X, but I think I'll first optimize my 3D "stuff", and then proceed to tweak the video. > There's a great demo called "Planets" available on the Internet…. < I think I saw that here, and it didn't "appreciate" my '286. > I've got a (fairly) good implementation of his algorithm in Pascal…. It uses my XUNIT library (of course) and includes an algorithm which darkens the bitmap as a function of the direction the light hits the globe. If you're interested…. Let me know. I've also got a cheezy cobbled-together "land-mass generator" which attempts to make Earth-type world bitmaps built in. < Sure I'm interested, it isn't exactly what I want (but then it wouldn't be any fun, if there wasn't any work <g>). I can use the Pascal code, but I'll hold off on the C for now. Even if I don't use the code, I may give me some ideas and start me thinking in new and different directions. > Just a thought. Maybe it would be worthwhile building a REALLY optimized > triangle generator and then just using solids that lend themselves well to > this type of engine. It could always be expanded to arbitrary polygons later. YES, I'm thinking of putting a satalite in obit around my planet, and I'll try and build it out of triangles. The globe has some obvious symetry that I don't want to overlook (I figure that I can calculate normals for only 1/8 of the facets, and then just change the sines –sort of like building a sine look up table for just the first quadrant, and applying it to both sine and cos for ALL angles). > Also, while on this subject, FYI, the spherical texture-mapper I discussed > before uses a lookup table, not a polygon or triangle engine. This makes it > blazing fast, but limits the directions you can rotate the sphere when viewing > it. I was thinking about the LUT approach, but decided that I wanted full freedom of movement. I'm considering making my demo "interactive", in order to prove that it's being generated in real time. What I'll probably do is generate a plasma cloud (one which "wraps" from left to right), add ice caps to the poles and distort it for texture mapping (sqish the x-values as y gets further from the equator). The globe will be faceted, but I think (hope) it will still appear "mostly" round. You can UL or mail your PASCAL planet stuff, like I said, even if I don't use it, there still may be plenty of useful ideas. Well, you decide when your demo is finished, I don't think that a pregenerated motion "script" wouldn't be legal. You could always generate it at start up while you have a scrolly with your name, etc. go by. > The one problem you might have is … didn't you say you have only a 286? > It will run on that, but it only runs at 7 frames per second on a 386/16. It > will probably be slower yet on a 286, …. Slower is an improvement to: ERROR 386 Req'd > I guess if you had a choice, you'd have upgraded by now, right? Choice, money, etc. I'm looking into those CPU upgrades. 486SXs may be getting cheaper, but I need to keep my FPU –and I can't afford a DX :(. Jeff, P.S. Like I said, you decide on how you want to send it, but I AM interested in your Pascal goodies.