Re: Height maps, etc.

Jim Terhorst ([email protected])
Tue, 9 May 1995 14:32:59 -0600


On May 9, 1:18pm, Chris Marrin wrote:
> But VRML 1.0 does have several features made specifically for performance.
> The WWWInline node allows you to delay the loading of large portions of
> the scene. The LOD node allows you to have several representations of the
> scene at various quality levels.
Very good points.

>
> Browsers can be made very smart as well. They can allow navigation while
> loading WWWInline nodes and/or Textures. They can use the various leves
> of detail in the LOD node to degrade the scene while moving. They can
> turn off textures while moving if they are slow to render.
>
> Finally, compress all your files using gzip. We're seeing 8:1 compression
> ratios on most VRML files.
>
> It is the author's responsibility to make a viewable scene. What is
> really needed are tools to help authors produce usable scenes. These will
> surely come out as VRML matures.
The key phrase here being "as VRML matures". It going to take a while.
The ElevationGrid node that i proposed earlier today is easy to implement.
Viewers can borrow code from the IndexedFaceSet support to do it. It
immediately saves tons of bandwidth for very little investment.

> triangles. I'm not saying that things like grids and tstrips aren't good
> additions, but it is very possible to make a rich yet fast scene in VRML
> 1.0.
Depends on what you're doing, Chris. I want to make higly detailed terrain
models. The VRML files being generated could be much smaller, with greater
detail if i had an ElevationGrid node.

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