A long time ago (on this list, a long time is a few months), there was a brief
discussion on the use of local libraries of commonly used objects. These could
be used with a set of attributes that the browser would use to define the
details locally. For example -- at some point, the use of trees and shrubs will
be useful. Or books for a library scene. Or the human body -- after all, I
assume we eventually hope to be able to interact with others in these spaces --
and being able to create avatars on the fly from attributes would be more
efficient that downloading the definition for each individual you wish to
interact with.
Can we provide the same level of detail with primitives? OR would they be
limited to fairly simple assemblages of geometric shapes -- such as
architectural elements?
McQ
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: SPEC ADDITIONS (_please_)
Author: [email protected] at -SMTPlink
Date: 5/23/95 4:19 PM
>
> >
> >I will point out again that this is why we need a mechanism for
> >distributing and/or caching common items -- spaces are a *lot* faster
> >to download if you've already got some of the building blocks locally.
> >We still haven't addressed this point in any sort of coherent way, and
> >really ought to by, at the latest, the time of rollout for 2.0...
>
> Am I right in thinking that you can specify a "file" URL in a document that
> is not itself a "file"? IOW could http://www.mystuff.com/home.wrl include
> a WWWAnchor with the URL "file:///c:/vrml/objlib/chair.wrl"?
>
How about adding a Library node, that will basically be just like
the WWWInline node, but the browser will know that it's gonna get called
often...
WWWInline lets you use another file to hold primitives, but the browser
dosn't know to download it once and keep it handy for calls from other
.wrl files, with a Library node the browser can download the .wrl file
put it somewhere handy and referance it whenever it is needed.
Another suggestion.... what I really really want is
some boolean operators... like add, subtract, intersect
so you could subtract one primitive from another, add two primitives
together or find the common intersection between them...
I could make an icecream cone by say
add {
cone { blah }
sphere { blah}
}
or i could make a hollow cylinder by
subtract {
cylinder { blah big}
cylinder { blah smaller}
}
Or I could make a half sphere by
intersect {
sphere { blah }
cube { blah covering half the sphere}
}
These operations would make one object that could be manipulated
as one object..