#NAVFlyer questions
11 messages in this thread
Hi David,
I got your message on Saturday, but I promised my boys, no computers, only
gardening all weekend so I was involved in teaching my 9 yr old the age old art
of double digging… Great fun. The garden is getting better every day..
Great feedback, and a lot to answer so here we go…This is a long one. No
it's 2 messages.
<<<<I downloaded your NAVFlyer application and loaded the chevy.3ds file. It
was incredibly slow and the gouraud shading was dithered rather than using
solid colours. Also the lighting was very dark. Is there a way to speed it up
and get solid shading?>>>>
VR worlds are seldom 33K polys. Even the high end Evans & Sutherland hand
gliding demo seen at trade shows (a very fast box compared to a PC <g>) only
renders about 1600 polys on the sreen at one time due to some smart logic
(level of detail , LOD, and other such tools). However I think the Chevy model
is a pretty typical 3D Studio model for experienced users as yourself, so I
will try to address your questions regarding this model. Lets save the speed
issue for paragraph below on VIEW_I. As you know, the dithering is the method
WinG uses to create a better image with only 256 colors. 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). While we do have
displays that work in 256 colors without dithering, they are not that much
faster nor better looking, without that prohibitive reramping of the LUT to
give you great shading. Higher color depth is possible however, read on…
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 rendered it in 3D Studio to see how it looked there and it
was also pretty dark. The demo 3DS files supplied with NAVFlyer don't come in
dark, so I would have to assume that the Chevy model may need some alteration
to brighten it up. Try the NAVcity model supplied. It is very bright and only
1000 polygons for better flying.
<<<<I used VIEW_I.PXP(by Gus Grubba et al) in 3DS R3 to view the chevy car(+33K
faces) from chevy.3ds on my 486 DX2 66Mhz and I could rotate the gouraud shaded
car in real-time with really fast feedback. There was only a slight lag in the
rendering time. When I loaded any smaller object I had immediate real-time
smooth feedback. So I know that is possible to get great real-time gouraud
shading performance even from my 486.>>>>>
I suppose this is a logical question for 3D Studio users. Let me tell you what
I know and maybe it will help… maybe not, but for what it is worth…Start by
comparing apples to apples as close as possible. If you create a window in
NAVFlyer of the same size as the one used in the VIEW_I.PXP and zoom back to
where the Chevy is taking up about the same amout of the window as it does in
VIEW_I.PXP and put Object Lock on so that it will stay in the center of the
screen, on my 486 66 I get around .43 fps. Using VIEW_I.PXP on the Chevy model
on my 486 I get around 1.5 fps. Somewhere between 3 and 4 times faster than
NAVFlyer. In VIEW_I.PXP there are no colors, so the rendering there is
limited to only one calculation. We have at least 3, for RGB so that most
likely (as explained to me by the CDK guys) explains why they are at least 3
times faster than NAVFlyer. VIEW_I does not cares if a rendered pixel is on the
body of the car or the bumper or the seat. NAVFlyer is constantly making these
calculations and rendering the correct color, texture and lighting for each
pixel.
There are no other viewpoints to consider in VIEW_I while we are constanly
checking to see if you have moved in 6 Degrees of freedom (not 2) , released
the object lockon or not, all checked every frame. VIEW_I only has to check on
how the object has been rotated on only 2 axes, I believe from a quick glance
at the source code magnanimously provided by the Yost gurus. Since there are no
other options in VIEW_I there are also many other tricks (or talents) that
might be being utilized to speed up the rendering. I don't know what they are
doing specifically in their rendering library, but such techniques often used
by game makers include integer only math, ray casting as opposed to true 3D
calculations (often used in games like DOOM where the model is typically
orthogonal walls only and very simple to navigate without true 6D control),
model optimization and others. 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.
Also, VIEW_I always uses it's own default lights, not caring what the model has
for defined lights, thus the lighting model is much simpler. The lights are
always positioned in the same place in relation to the camera. NAVFlyer is
considering the ambient light as well as additional lights in the model and
where the camera is in the current frame, each and every frame.
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. The
bottleneck is in painting the pixels, so first start of with as close to apples
to apples as you can get by making the rendered window the same size and the
Chevy at the same distance, so you are painting the same amount of pixels in
both cases. Then compare what capabilities are being considered. If your
purpose is to look at one object to see it's shape, with no surface
considerations or true 6D control, VIEW_I is a better solution than NAVFlyer.
It serves a great purpose in helping to create models. However, it is not
capable of putting you into an environment to fly around and experience. If it
was, it would render slower, period. The more you take into account on each
simulation loop (each frame) the longer it takes. We have weighed the choices
very keenly over the past few years and have chosen the capibilities that we
offer because they are necessary to create a "Virtual Environment". Speed is
not great on standard VGA cards yet for anybody, but that will come with time
and in the meantime, we feel that (especially for 3D Studio users) there is
still a lot that can be done with some immagination and innovation. It is a
gamble we are taking, that modelers will see beyond the speed issue and try to
create worlds NOW that are NOT 33,000 polygons. Maybe we are wrong and modelers
such as yourself will not find it worth it to try, but I am betting on you and
others to go for it. I hope I am right <g>.
<<<I understand that the VIEW.PXP must be using a "fixed" palette consisting of
a gradient for the various light intensities between 0 and 1, but even though
you said that NAVFlyer could do the textures I can't see them since the colours
are dithered(Bayer dithering I think) so much that the colours are muddy.>>>>
Check out the included NAVCITY.3DS and tell me how the dithering on the
textures looks there. It is certainly not muddy. The chair in the Chevy did
look muddy however. Certain textures will look better than others in dithering
I suppose….The goal is certainly to get more than 256 colors if this is a
prime concern. Remember though that a higher bit depth also slows down the
simulation loop (frame rates).
<<<A suggestion: can you have the program work when using a high or true colour
display? I used true colour in windows for Photoshop et al and don't want to
have to switch to 256 colours, run the video profile each time I want to use
your program.>>>
Yes NAVFlyer and NAVIGATOR do work with a true colour displays. Using the
Rendermorphics display we get true color in Windows and in DOS using SPEA's
Fireboard and Future Vision Technologies Sapphire boards. The accelerator cards
give you great color and great frame rates too. Watch for the new Sapphire
2SX card from Fujitsu (now) that is supposed to be out by early April (latest
date, but you know how that goes <g>). They tell us that there will be versions
of the board from under $ 1000 to 1200 or so depending on features.
continued on next message……….
continued from last reply……….
And now ladies and gentleman for my never ending CDK display pitch. I really
think I should get a check (or at least a credit on my account) from Autodesk
for as many time as I go through this. I have asked previously, and I do so
again here for Autodesk to PLEASE put the display issue discussions into a
paper or document of some sort to explain these things to those not involved in
this technology yet. It should be posted in the CDK library.
CDK is rendering independent. This means that it can use whatever display you
want, even if it is not provided by Autodesk. Whoever writes a CDK app has the
choice to use fast cards, fast renderers, slow cards, slow renderers, whatever
they want.
We at MicronGreen have chosen to use every possible solution available that we
can implement. So far we have in DOS, the default VESA VGA display from CDK Rel
1, our own new SP3D VGA display, SPEA fireboard support ($1795), FVT Sapphire
($3500) support and the Division card set ($10,000) support. New cards are
coming like the Sapphire 2SX (around $1000, Glint based) that will also
already work with our software. In Windows we currently support the two
shipping with CDK Rel 2 (WinG and Rendermorphics).
The fastest software renderer we have seen that does everything we need it to
do is Rendermorphics. I also happen to like SP3D from SPEA but it is a bit
slower. RenderWare is very popular for games and seems faster, but it does not
allow all the capability we need in NAVIGATOR such as copying objects, scaling
objects etc. If you include these features by writing them yourself, the
rendering library's functionality and speed becomes negated. At least that is
my understanding.
The fastest hardware card to date that we have worked with is the Future Vision
Technologies Sapphire. There may be faster ones these days, but I have not yet
used any yet. We get rates up around 18 to 25 fps on models that fly 1 to 3 fps
on ISA VGA cards.
I guess to get back to your suggestion….. NAVFlyer will work in true color
with the Rendermorphics display, which we cannot distribute freely. So the free
version can only be in 256 colors. We are in the middle of getting the
contracts worked out with Rendermorphics for distributing their version, but
they've been a bit busy lately while just being bought out by Microsoft.
Hopefully, it will still come soon. The new DOS version of NAVFlyer and
NAVIGATOR has 16 bit color available using the old VESA driver, but it is not a
fast solution, very pretty though, while flying around in wireframe and pausing
to render, for example. Of course the higher end displays look great and fly
fast both, but they cost $$ although everyone has their new stuff coming out
and prices are dropping. The new SPEA card with the GLINT chip is premiering
this week at CeBit in Germany so it should get here soon………. The
future looks fast……….hopefully the little guys like us will still be in
the running since we are concentrating on the modeling techniques, user
interface issues and environment definitions instead of rendering speed.
David, I hope this answers some of your questions. We know it needs to be
faster, but we are not going to get rid of functionality, colors or textures to
get the speed they have in VIEW_I. Gus Grubba has given that to you already.
VIEW_I serves a great purpose, but it does not create a Virtual Environment. I
hope that you can see the difference and will continue to persue the Virtual
Environment idea with us. I know the 3D Studio modeling community can build
better flyable worlds than I can…if we can just get them to try. Look at it
this way. If we build smaller worlds now, just think of how we can fill them up
and fly faster later, when the speed picks up! Is there nothing that can be
gained NOW from working together in a small world, for example in the
StudioCity project, for flying interactively? Or am I still just
dreamin……….
Angela
would a space controller (for a pc) and diamond viper pci card(s) and virtual
i.o i-glasses and a gravis ultrasound max or soundblaster16 be able to offer a
high level of interactivity (running on a pentium 90) for arch. walkthru.
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…
Some more discussion….. can you take it? I personally am very greatful for
your feedback…
<<<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?>>><<<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.<<<
The DOS version uses only solid colors with no textures. Folks wanted textures,
so we gave it to them for free. They fly nicely in the demo worlds and add a
lot to the images. To texture or not to texture, what to do……… In the
non-free versions, you can just turn them off whenever you want to……… And
I tried the Fast Previewer with the Chevy model and got less than one frame
every 4 seconds when in 1/4 screen. Full screen was impossible and I didn't
even try to guage it after I got above 1 frame in every 11 seconds. I guess
we all need faster rendering solutions <g>. When the faster and cheaper
cards get here we will all fly more freely……….If they would just hurry
up!
<<It is for this reason that I think VR technology has a way to go. >>>
granted this is very true…….. and we can all help it get there and benefit
from being there when "IT" arrives, I hope.
<<< 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 this is the case then I think that you are probably right that the Fast
Previewer will suit you better than a Virtual Environment. I will bet that once
you start interacting with your models, your goals will change, however…..
It's amazing how we always want more….. The need to move things around, and
change the world, train people in your world how to do something, give them
tasks to accomplish… And how about the desire to interact with other people
in the same environment for games [ I can't believe I said that 😕 ] and
for communication of complex ideas and feelings that were impossible before
(i.e. interacting live on a 3D mechanical design with engineers across the
country or world) , Another example is with handicapped people who can have
new capabilities they cannot in the real world. Much work has been done showing
how simple Virtual Environment interaction of some sort can make some major
changes in rehabilitation and a growth towards self reliance. The education
possibilities are changing the planet already. There is an unbelievable demand
for interactive curriculum. And whoever gets beyond interactive CD's first is
going to do well. I have personally seen such requests from sources ranging
from the National Academy of Sciences, to the New York City School Board, to
numerous private industries creating their own training projects, to community
colleges business departments, high school and college art and advertising
departments and even kindergartens in my home town. If a small company in a
relatively rural town like mine can see these opportunities, the big guys are
obviousely getting hit over the head with such a potential market demand. This
is what is driving the market to finally produce the hardware to pull it off.
It sure isn't us mom & pop types that have been successful to get the cost
under $ 5000 for decent performance. The new possibilities are pretty
endless. And the new opportunities for 3D modelers for projects other than
video animation are also just beginning to open up. These are the goals of
VR… Not just fast previewing. Uh Oh, I'm rambling again…..sorry.
<<<<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.>>>>
I agree 100%. You don't have to do anything to the lighting as far as I have
seen between 3D Studio and NAVFlyer. They look the same to me. When I render
the default chevy model, the car itself is much more black and grey in color on
the image than red. I almost emailed you the JPG then realized how silly this
is.. you can render it yourself and see. This is NOT a bright red car. In
NAVFlyer, I found a nicely lit bright red car when I lit the model and changed
the material so that it rendered that way in 3D Studio as well. It is very
difficult to discuss this when you havn't yet seen the demo worlds. You will
find them very bright with a the SKY texture showing a nice bright blue and
billowy clouds, and the same 'reflected' (just mapped, not really reflected) in
the glass buildings.
<<I tried several times to load this model and MUSEUM.3DS but my computer hung.
When I loaded the SECTANT.DXF I had no problems. I could also load all the 3DS
models in my 3DS/mesh directory. Any ideas on what may be the problem?<<<
I would suspect that you are just not waiting long enough for the model to
load. Unfortunatly, when the 3DS load starts up, our 'please wait' message
disappears, so it seems hung up, but I have NEVER seen it just hang up. When
something does go wrong, you get and error message and then it dumps the
NAVFlyer out and the window disappears. So try it again!
<<Sapphire 2SX board.. What are the rendering features of this board?>>>>
I will fax you a spec sheet on it if you give me a number. I can't find it
right now (middle of the bleary night) to quote from. It is a GLINT based
board.
<<<What is the polygons per second/fps performance?>>>
They will tell you the fps depends on the model and system. and the poygons per
second depend on many things, like how big is the rendering area, how many
lights, etc. There is not cut and dry statistics for this stuff, but I would
refer you to the article in 3D Artist a few months (?) back that reviewed 3D
rendering technology. Great article, which used as close to a standard as
anybody's by rendering the same teapot at about the same size ,etc. etc.This
article covered the boards and software renderers I mentioned plus a few
others.
<< If you are designing specifically for VR than many further optimizations
could be made to get better performance. But this is not my purpose so I miss
out on viewing my models in a VR world because they aren't "designed" for
it.>>>
I have seen this is a common response. But I am ever hopeful that we will yet
entice you to change your mind. I can see you are going to be a real challenge
David <g>. When I win you over I will finally have made it, right? <bg>.
<<<If you don't have very fast rendering speed then you don't have VR. If the
images aren't shown at a reasonably speed then you aren't getting anything more
that you don't have in a standard rendering package.<<<
Ouch. that hurt. OK Uncle…. I guess we only 'have VR' in your mind on the
accelerator cards today. Personally I disagree wholeheartedly. My son can fly
the solar system and ride each planets orbit, or look down upon it, on the
fly, or move the planets around to make 'happy faces' by putting Venus and
Mercury inside of the Sun like 'eyes' and the earth pokes out like a mouth. (I
never would have thought of that) He now understands what make the tides happen
and why the Sun looks like it is going up and down instead of us moving around
it. He understands it because he 'experienced' it for himself, by himself, how
he wanted to. It is much different than watching an animation. It's on the same
machine with 3D Studio, and while he is a pretty darn good 3D Animator for 9
yrs old (got the keyframer down last summer) he can't do that in Studio wtihout
waiting a long time for flics to render and then just watch them. And on the
other hand, we can't do shadows, relflections, transparencies. etc. The magic
of 3D Studio is not even approached by NAVFlyer or NAVIGATOR. It is a
completely different magic. NAVFlyer is NOT A RENDERER. CDK IS ALSO NOT A
RENDERER. Sorry for shouting…
<<< But for me personally, I don't need VR if the performance isn't fast enough
to get quick feedback. But in any event VR will become viable in near future
and when it does I'm sure you'll be in a good position to deliver it to the
masses. Save me a place at the head of the queue <g>>>>>>
Done. Thanks for the feedback! I really do appreciate it and when we can
handle models with tens of thousands of polygons on a PC I will let you know.
It will happen. And everyone is not as crazy as we are about this stuff to work
on even though it is not here yet. Thanks a lot for trying it out and I do hope
that you retry to fly the City as an example of what we could do collectively
in the Studio City project. If each contributor had a few hundred polygons '3D
placeholder' in the city and we could fly up to it and then pull up Gifs, JPGs
and FLICs of that structure fully and beautifully rendered, would this not be a
great way to have all our works in one space at one time for all to experience?
This CAN BE DONE TODAY. But it would mean that we would have to make this
'special world' of low poly count. I have volunteered to both make the
placeholders and set up free fully functional NAVIGATOR with the city hard
coded into it and all bitmaps attached to the correct '3D placeholder'. So
give that city one more try, whadda ya say? Email me with any problems or call
me and I will walk you through it to whatever the problem is and try to help
you solve it. I'm at (904) 378-5486.
Thanks again David,
Angela — flyin' on (a little bumpy here in the turbulance <g>)
<<and we can all help it get there and benefit from being there when "IT"
arrives, I hope.>>
What is that your company does? I understand you deal in VR solutions.
<<I will bet that once you start interacting with your models, your goals will
change, however….. It's amazing how we always want more….. The need to
move things around, and change the world, train people in your world how to do
something, give them tasks to accomplish…>>
Interacting with my models in something I want to do. This is why I think the
GLiNT cards are going to be so popular. I can do a real-time rotation of my
gouraud shaded model. I can scale it, rotate it, dice it, slice it, all with
shading giving me and anyone I'm demonstrating it to a greater sense of
"volume" over the wireframe methods. You see that 3DS with the ability to work
on the models shaded in real-time rather than wireframe will allow many people
to now sit down with a client and possibly make changes "on the fly". The
modeller with adjustments using different cameras and views will be form of
real-time VR navigator. You can zoom in, zoom out, rotate left, right and in
almost any direction. Whatsmore you can EDIT the *solid* object in real-time
which is very powerful. You have effectively closed the gap between modelling
and rendering for basic shading, since they are now one and the same.
<<And how about the desire to interact with other people in the same
environment for games [ I can't believe I said that 😕 ] and for
communication of complex ideas and feelings that were impossible before (i.e.
interacting live on a 3D mechanical design with engineers across the country or
world),…>>
But this is still for all intents and purposes out of the reach of most people.
When it does become feasible then the industry will explode, the enabling
technology is here but the costs are still prohibitive.
<<If a small company in a relatively rural town like mine can see these
opportunities, the big guys are obviousely getting hit over the head with such
a potential market demand.>>
Microsoft recent purchase of RenderMorphics is a sign of things to come.
<<And the new opportunities for 3D modelers for projects other than video
animation are also just beginning to open up. These are the goals of VR… Not
just fast previewing.>>
Maybe not, but it will be the commerical interests in VR that attract the big
players and this is because people will want to use VR for commerical projects,
so they will have to cater to the modeller/animator/artist breed of people that
are going to MAKE these environments.
<<I would suspect that you are just not waiting long enough for the model to
load. Unfortunatly, when the 3DS load starts up, our 'please wait' message
disappears, so it seems hung up, but I have NEVER seen it just hang up.>>
This seems counterintuitive so you may want to fix this. I'll give it another
go.
Could you direct me to somewhere I could find more information on the new
Hi David,
<< Could you direct me to somewhere I could find more information on the
new…>>
your post got chopped.(?)
jonas[adesk]
The rest of my message:
Could you direct me to somewhere I could find more information on the new breed
of GLiNT boards?
<<But I am ever hopeful that we will yet entice you to change your mind. I can
see you are going to be a real challenge David <g>. When I win you over I will
finally have made it, right? <bg>.>>
Maybe I should sign off David "Customer from hell" Gould <g>. If you can give
me rendering speed and quick feedback then you've got me won and possibly
everyone for that matter.
<<Personally I disagree wholeheartedly. My son can fly the solar system and
ride each planets orbit, or look down upon it, on the fly, or move the planets
around to make 'happy faces' by putting Venus and Mercury inside of the Sun
like 'eyes' and the earth pokes out like a mouth. (I never would have thought
of that) He now understands what make the tides happen and why the Sun looks
like it is going up and down instead of us moving around it. He understands it
because he 'experienced' it for himself, by himself, how he wanted to. It is
much different than watching an animation.>>
I'm not disputing the pedagogic capabilities of VR, but instead that for the
majority of commerical projects VR doesn't provide the speed necessary. I'm
sure the solar system your son was viewing didn't include a great deal of
detail, while an astronomer would need this. For instance, the recent
collisions of asteroids with Jupiter would be fantastic to see in VR. You could
move in and set the explosion right up close. But unfortunately you couldn't
get the level of detail needed.
<<NAVFlyer is NOT A RENDERER. CDK IS ALSO NOT A RENDERER.>>
Technically it is, since it produces a rendered image from a scene containing
objects from a camera view, but I feel the importance of VR will be only
heightened when it can be integrated tightly into the entire design and
modelling process. I see 3DS R5 with a GLiNT board as the first real step in
this direction. For the purists, this may not be considered VR, but my opinion
is that if the program can render in real-time the object from any chosen
position with freedom to change the view then that's VR to me.
<<If each contributor had a few hundred polygons '3D placeholder' in the city
and we could fly up to it and then pull up Gifs, JPGs and FLICs of that
structure fully and beautifully rendered, would this not be a great way to have
all our works in one space at one time for all to experience?>>
I would be interested in creating a simple model for you to include with your
demos. What sort of model do you want and what should the face count be?
<<Email me with any problems or call me and I will walk you through it to
whatever the problem is and try to help you solve it. I'm at (904) 378-5486.>>
Sounds like your product support would be very good. BTW Are you aware that I'm
living in Paris, France. Don't take what I say personally, this is simply my
own opinion on the subject and has nothing to do with you personally.
David "face count: 1, eye count: 2, brain count: 1.0003" Gould
<<<What is that your company does? I understand you deal in VR solutions.>>>
Absolutely. However, most of our existing clients are not working on VGA cards
and the systems we install are usually start around $40 to $50 K by the time
all the VR peripherials are added. The "IT" I was referring to is the low cost
VGA solution with adequate performance that all VR vendors are striving for.
The NAVFlyer is our first attempt in Windows on VGA.
Regarding the slow load time on NAVCity.3ds in NAVFlyer……..
<<<This seems counterintuitive so you may want to fix this. I'll give it
another go.>>>
Thanks for trying again! I am really anxious for this to be a workable
possibility for SC2K with the use of '3D placeholders' as a 'entrance world' to
the more complex worlds. Yes I am trying to get a work around for this. We use
our own DXF reader in both DOS and Windows NAVFLyer (CDK's only reads in
polyface meshes which don't make AutoCAD users to happy) and our own 3DS reader
in DOS. 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.
Angela-
PMFJI but your information about CDK, NAVIGATOR, VR in general is terrific.
Its the sort of stuff I've been scouring about looking for…the specifics, the
details. Your posts are much appreciated.
Carlton
Oh Carlton,
Your always such a bright spot in my day………
Let me see some worlds from your students soon! I am craving flyable worlds
from others out there……… If you're up for it I'll send you a registered
Windows flyer too……for the texture mapping. Same mouse control.
Glad to know someone out there is using all this info!
Angela
PS, I am going to my old (like decades ago) teachers' faculty show next
month. They are
also putting on a piece about the superhighway and digital art! From the
backwards UF no less (LOL). My favorite teacher, Jerry Uelsmann will be there
and I can't wait to see what they are all doing with 21st century technology.
To be back in the art world again full time would be soooo nice……..I sure
do envy you lately…….. and I haven't forgotten ……….