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
        /-^^^^^^^- /\--\            Mark S. Meadows
       |                             [email protected]
                      @  @
       )                 OO
       |  .l__I   i_..             http://www.arc.org/
       i ./    \ |  i !           http://vrml.arc.org/
 _ ...  UJ   .  UJ   UJ  ._      http://www.arc.org/who/pighed/