Re: Height maps

Jim Terhorst ([email protected])
Tue, 9 May 1995 11:49:52 -0600

On May 9, 9:26am, Len Wanger wrote:
> Subject: Re: Height maps
>
> Why not stick with more standard graphics nomenclature and call it a
quadMesh.
> Also, for lots of terrain people find it handier to use a triangular mesh
> instead of a grid. It gives you roughly the same bandwidth savings, but the
> generation and rendering of the surface is easier as you don't have to worry
> about all of the vertices being co-planar.
I'm not too concerned with the name, but QuadMesh implies that i can
have an irregular grid. The point of using a regular grid here is that the
x and y values for each vertex do not have to be sent accross the wire. The
ElevationGrid node would be responsible for generating x and y for each vertex.
This capability would be in the viewer. A general purpose QuadMesh can
support irregular grids, and i would like to see such a node, but we need
the elevationGrid in addition to a QuadMesh.

>
> My vote would be to add Inventor style tri-meshes in the next release.
I like tri-meshes too, but again, the server has to send values for x and y
for each vertex. This is what i'm trying to avoid with the ElevationGrid node.

>
> This brings up another point. There are a number of useful features that have
> been shot down in this group by people who have to get a product out of the
> door. To appease these pragmatic concerns, but to also get in good features,
> what do people think about trying to have a 1.1 release? I'm concerned about
> having these features lumped in with the 2.0 release.
>
We won't be doing anybody any favors by putting out product that is slow
to the point of being unusable. If it takes 5 megabytes to represent
a 200 by 200 elevation grid, people are gonna wonder what the great benefit
of 3D is when it takes so long to download a scene. We may as well just
point people to Quicktime VR and forget about true 3D.

jim terhorst (MountainTop::Computing) [email protected]