Re: TOOLS: Virtus Walkthrough Pro 2.0 and VRML 1.0

Syndesis Corporation ([email protected])
Fri, 19 May 1995 22:29:32 -0500


[email protected] (Anthony Parisi) writes:
>> It takes all number down to 2 digits of precision, and
>>gets rid of numbers like 1.05678e-10 (makes them 0), which seem to
>>occur a LOT.
>
>Three cheers for James! Hip hip HOORAY! (*3) Smooch!

Although I see the sense of reducing the size of VRML files
in order to reduce transmission time, and I'd also see the logic
of removing excess whitespace (since things like compilers spend
a large fraction of their time skipping whitespace and comments),
I guess I fail to see why changing floating point numbers from
seven decimal places to two decimal places would cause an
increase in rendering speed. If you magically knew how to optimize
floating point numbers so as to increase the speed of calculations,
it probably has little to do with their base-10 representation.

- John Foust