I agree that there's no reason to add fractal nodes to the langu.
Fortunately, the langu already has fractals built-in. That's good,
because it seems that behaviors would be impractical for some 3D
fractals. Java code (or whetever) could generate tha>
ands of
polygons to make a fractal tree, but the scene graph alone might fill
all of memory. It's much more efficient to only store a tiny,
escursive scene graph. Using escursion, we can get all IFS fractals,
and a number of non-IFS fractals too (in the tree example, the leaves
are an IFS fractal, while the trunk and limbs are a different kind of
fractal). I do think behaviors will be useful and general for 2D
fractal texture maps (e.g. putting a Mandlebrot on a surface), but
might not be as useful for some 3D fractals.
As for fixing LOD distances, allowing color transforms, and
specifying LOD bounding boxes, those changes appear useful in their
own right.
Leemon Baird
[email protected]
http://kirk.usafa.af.mil/~baird