Re: Tierra - Biodiversity Reserve

Mark S. Meadows ([email protected])
Sun, 7 May 95 11:51:52 PDT


At 5:45 PM 5/7/95, [email protected] wrote:
>So do you want to create a specific interface ? or do you just want to use
>VRML to build an application with it ?

we're writing some perl that will dynamically serve the landscapes as
a series of PointLight and Material nodes - each one representing the
CPU resources that are available on the sub-net. there are several fields
that TPing sends out - it *looks* like each will be portable to VRML.

>Maybe in a first step it would be enough to create a .wrl file which can
>be used by a VRML Viewer. In a more dynamic usage it would be a performance
>issue.

yeh. i agree. but we've already made lots of .wrl files.
we're also producing interactive media festival's VRML Arc Gallery.
this is several megs of portable *.wrl material. a VRML site, not a world.
and architecturally accurate, to boot.
anyway.
producing the files for Tierra isn't the main problem with the project -
it's the translation from n-space to 3-space... the primary issue is,
as tom has rightly pointed out, that hyperspace (where these critters live)
is non-euclidian. i'm thinking that the best approach is to map the VRML
on various hyperbolic landscapes and rely on lobachevsky for numeric
guidance. we'll see what emerges.
we're working on a webpage with a description of the project.
the design/implementation will be wrapped up by june.
[email protected] is coordinating.

right now we need processing power.... BADly.
<?>if anyone has an indigo they can loan us
for a week or two it would be godsend. </?>

6
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