In a lot of cases, they are. In some cases, they do need to be sent; it
depends on the model, and how accurate you need the lighting to be. That's
why I said "wherever possible".
> They define the lighted shape of the model, and can be calculated accurately
> only from the original geometry the VRML IndexedFaceSet is approximating.
> Models that want to be lit should include them.
Not necessarily. If you know that the normals that would be computed are
close enough to the "actual" normals, then you can reduce the file size
by almost a factor of two. Aside from using gzip, that's the single most
effective means of reducing file size.
-- 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