CompuServe Thread

Glad to see someone out there interested in CDK. Yes we are using it in a big way everyday. As yet it is still an uphill struggle, not because of CDK but more because of how little the Autodesk community seems to be aware of it. We are trying to change that in the near future. We fishing here for feedback because we are about to release a shareware real-time flyer for Acad and 3D Studio users to fly around their models. It will be called NAVFlyer. It should be available right here in this section of the forum if we see enough interest being generated from the Adesk world out there. So let us hear from everybody interested! NAVFlyer uses CDK to fly around 3D models in real-time both shaded and in wireframe, using only the keypad with 6 degrees of freedom. It also has a "LOCK ON" feature (the num_lock key) that allows you to lock an object in the center of the screen so you can orbit it very quickly and simply. There is also a calibration control for adjusting speed on both translation and rotation, so you can alter it for different size models. (You have to fly slower in an atom than you do on the Grand Canyon.) We are going to add a $49 registration fee if the user wants additional support like flying with the mouse, and soon a faster diplay, etc. When discussing CDK performance, there is only really one issue, display speeds. In our full featured product, the Virtual Environment NAVIGATOR, if you set the diplay to NULL, meaning don't show me anything on the screen, the frame rates jump up to anywhere from 80 to 200 fps depending on the complexity of the model. That means the the simulation code itself, all geometry transforms, the viewpoint updating from flying around, the hand tools (color wand, move wand, rotate wand, user defined wands) the in-environment hypertext links… as well as all of the other features being managed by the CDK are performing quite fast. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE GRAPHICS DISPLAY as to how fast the performance goes. So lets talk about displays. If you are running on a fast graphics card, meaning one of the specialized cards with hardware on board to speed things up like SPEA Fireboard (W/ I860) or Sapphire (w/ their own proprietary chip), then things can fly along at rates anywhere from 4 to 10 frames per second on really big models up to 18 to 28 frames per second on very simple models. This assumes a fairly decent machine 486 or Pentium (and the bus matters, depending on the card). Using local bus VGA's the speed is slower, like from 1 frame every couple of seconds on really big models up to 7 to 10 frames on simple models. Simple models mean models of less that 1000 polygons. We are now in the process of supporting Rendermorphics, which is a software display accelerator, It compares to the higher end card speeds, but uses VGA. Pre release information of CDK Rel 2, as announced at Siggraph, should support Rendermorphics, Hoops, RenderWare (Cannon) and SP3D from Spea. Whether they will be successful at all of these is still to be seen but we know they are working feverishly to produce a much improved Rel 2 (which will run under Windows). So… sorry for the lengthy reply but, look for NAVFlyer here soon as a demo. The existing demos that come with CDK work really fast on the high end cards, but their existing DOS VGA display class (VESA) is fairly slow, which we feel is why the CDK has not gotten more attention than it has. Release 1 really is a good product, just not mature in the display areas yet. What are your interests in CDK. Got any great plans for applications that you can share?