Agreed! Being able to "instance" objects and make per-instance
changes in them is a very important technique for reducing bandwidth.
> This being the case, there is still some merit to parameterization.
> Say I want to use the Ice Cream Cone that's over in library L, but I
> want (say) the cone to be chocolate (ie, brown). Or I want the cone
> (but not the lump of ice cream) to be stretched a bit. With the
> simple model we have now, I have no choice but to copy the object, and
> recolor the cone.
Another example is a parking lot full of cars; there are only a small
number of different models of car, and it would be silly to require
that browsers download the same geometry over and over again just
because individual cars happen to have different colors. Besides,
doing so would increase the use of bandwidth, the loading on the
servers, etc etc.....
> If we had some concept of parameterization, on the
> other hand, it might be possible to share the base "class" of ice
> cream cones, while still retaining some valuable data sharing.
Exactly.
>
-- Bernie Roehl University of Waterloo Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering Mail: [email protected] Voice: (519) 888-4567 x 2607 [work] URL: http://sunee.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl