>Here's a suggestion for interactivity/behaviors in our time
>
>--- WITHOUT CHANGING THE 1.0 SPEC.
>So, you ask, how do we do this without changing the spec?
>How about using the function that's in many browsers like Netscape,
>of refreshing in-line stuff (read: WWWINLINE).
>
>And we could have it so that the browser could be switched to
>transmit current coordinates, as described in the spec for WWWAnchor with
>map=POINT.
>
>The WWWINLINE could be a CGI script... and the possibilities are
>endless.
I like this idea for some of the stuff I'm working on--it's an easy fix
(well, easy for me to say) and a big bandwidth saver.
There do seem to be some problems, however.
Here are the big ones:
1) It doesn't get you realtime updating like chat protocols. Also, it
doesn't get you time-syncing for movement, I don't think. This limits what
you can use it for.
2) You don't seem to get any interactivity other than traversing the
scene.
3) Do we really want a partial solution, or do we wait for the big
enchilada?
Here are the more technical ones:
1) How do you add objects in the middle of a scene?
2) Do you send coordinates to every object in the space? Do they know
where each other are?
3) How do you keep track of which is which?
I don't have any answers for the big ones, except that you might nail a
toolbar to the camera to get more user "actions." They could process
their own CGI stuff.
As far as the technical issues, what about this:
1) Update the shell VRML file, and cache the objects. Keep the immense
mesh landscape as a inline object, so as long as the main VRML file doesn't
change the WWWInline pointer to it, it never gets reloaded.
2) Have the main VRML file be CGI generated, so when you update, it
decides what to include. It could change the URLs for objects that need
to be updated (either like animation frames, or merely by using different
URL variables that then get sent to a script for the object).
3) The server for the main file could even inline other people's avatars,
and move them around accordingly. Again, there may not be any clear way to
sync them properly.
I don't know how this could get you chat without some extensions or another
window, and I'm not even sure it's a good idea to implement this kind of
partial solution, but if we want this kind of thing at all, I think this
approach would work a bit better.
--Andy
[email protected]