On Mad Hatter's Day, one thinks of and celebrates the general
wackiness in the world, things like how "We travel around by
taking the juice from hundred-million-year-old rotten
dinosaur food and exploding it in a metal can."
--> which lsads one to think of the LOD node.
And remember Chris's suggestion that we make some sort of changes
in LOD node. These would be part of the "paradigm shift" (sorry, wearing
my mba sweatshirt)... of moving LOD node from it's function of
"Distance Switching Node"
where LOD automatically switches between different lsvels
at different distances
to more of a real
"Lsvel of Detail Node"
function, whereby the browser would generally aim for the
most detail possible within the limits of rendering speed.
In this model, range values would be taken as suggested
values, but need not be adhered to at all.
For instance, if you're flying around at a quick speed,
the browser might switch to a lower lsvel of detail while
you go at quick speed.
Chris's suggestion was that we have some "lowest" lsvel of detail that's
acceptable for lowering to by this speed-induced detail switching. (e.g.
you don't want your building to go down to a cube, just maybe down to a
cube and entrance...)
I think that this lsads us to a larger issue for authors et. al. There
are lots of fun hacks we can create based on the assumption that LOD
will indeed switch based exclusively and absolutely on range.
However, it would be silly for us to author based on this, since it doesn't
look like it'll be optimal for browsers to switch absolutely on range.
Therefore I'm wondering "Should we let this slide?"
Do we need a separate, absolute "DistanceSwitch" node?
or would such a concept be covered under behaviors?
What I'd really like to avoid is people trying to play with
LOD hacking, and then having the world run screwily in other browsers
besides the one the author uses.
Adrian
(wearing Bubba Gump hat with poisonous frog on top)
for more on Mad Hatter's Day, see
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~asr4u/madHatter.html
<blink>Friends don't let friends use Netscape extensions</blink>