CompuServe Thread

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