Tierra - Biodiversity Reserve

Mark S. Meadows ([email protected])
Tue, 2 May 95 04:34:38 PDT

there's a group of us that are working with tom ray trying to develop a 3d
interface for tierra (tierra is an AL program that allows digital
creatures to navigate/propogate/compete/etc...).

of usual course, we're going the vrml route.

we're trying to figure out what the best way would be to pass fields out of
tierra into vrml so that TPing's output can be read as a graphics.
tierra's primary node looks like:
struct TPingData {
I32s Speed;
I32s SoupSize;
I32s NumCells;
I8s OS;
}
where each field represents various infos on what the organism "sees" (OS
is operating sys, Speed is how long it takes for the creature to access
that OS, the other two fields define info on the CPU's available resources,
and so on...)

what drives vrml's graphics? how would an outside (tailormade) engine
interface with vrml? how should the venerable mr ray structure tierra so
that vrml can read its output?

thanks and "cheers"