I've been using the Internet on-and-off for the past 7 years, mostly for work.
It's not hard to imagine, and that ease-of-communication hasn't changed but
has grown thousand-fold.
> a tool to communicate with. Now, the home user may not have a machine that
> can move a 200 by 200 elevation grid in real time, but the environmental
> engineer who wants to show his/her cleanup strategy for Rocky Flats to
his/her
> boss in Washington D.C. may have the horsepower to interact with that complex
a
> scene.
>
Don't get me wrong - I *do* see VRML being used for this stuff too. I just
don't want to scare Joe User away from VRML because he 'tried a few' and
found them to be too slow.
> >
> > I'm expecting the average user to own a 486 or Pentium machine with a 2D
> > accelerator board of some kind and not a high-end machine (be it Windows NT
> PC
> > with a 3D accelerator or UNIX workstation).
> This won't be true forever. I think its a bad idea to limit VRML based
> on the technology that the average user has available to them today. The
> level of 3D performance on the average machine will only get better. We
> better think about it now. Evans and Sutherland sells a PC card today that
> does texture mapping in real time for $2400, so it will probably be here
> sooner than most of us could imagine.
>
I'm not saying we should limit ourselves - I'm saying we should be making a
good first impression and *then* start exploring the possibilities. VRML
popularity among professionals alone won't make it a success. Joe User wants
something that runs on his $2000 PC - he can't afford a $2400 graphics card.
> Also, VRML can help accelerate this process. If people find interactive 3D
> compelling, they will be more compelled to outfit thier machine to handle it.
> On the other hand, if 3D seems slow and burdensome, then people will just
> wonder what all the hype is about, and download some more flat, boring,
> non-interactive, 2D flatlander stuff.
All the more reason to think 'small' at first. If you hit a user with a 200x
200 grid that updates once every 5 seconds, they'll hit the 'quit' button.
> >
> > The ElevationGrid idea is a *good* one, but grids of 100x100 are probably
all
> > your basic PC will handle easily. One nice thing about grids is that you
can
> > do automatic LODs by sub-sampling the grid.
> "will handle easily" today, but what about tomorrow.
>
Tomorrow they'll still handle it easily. And more. 'Point is, if you hit
them with too much now, there won't *be* a tomorrow.
-- ______________________________________________________________________________Mike Sweet 2D & 3D Software for Easy Software Products (301) 994-0377 Silicon Graphics, Inc. 20778 Wolftrap Street [email protected] Workstations Lexington Park, MD 20653 http://www.easysw.com ______________________________________________________________________________