Re: Standard Graphics Set
David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Sat, 10 Sep 94 16:15:14 WST
>
> On Fri, 9 Sep 1994 rayn@crossaccess.com wrote:
> > Actually I'm working on something like a MOO with graphics using PEX,
> > but I dont think that VRML is intended to do anything like this.
I think that VRML is a good contender for the graphics format for
a net wide graphical MOO. However VRML as I understand it is really only the
graphics format for such an undertaking, not the whole world model. I think
making a VRML designed for creating MOOs is a bad idea. I think a VRML that
can be easily used to provide services like graphical MOOs is a great
idea.
>
> Use the HTML analogy. I've seen a prototype MUD client built into a modified
> version of Mosaic that sits *on*top*of* the world wide web using a separate
> protocol and server than WWW documents do - it allows people to inhabit
> particular pages in WWW space as if it was mud space. The most
> interesting thing, though, was that people could send messages to each
> other in HTML - so my words could become a hyperlink somewhere, or even
> have an inlined image in them. Now, imagine something similar for VRML -
> the statements coming down the pipe are just declaritive VRML files, with
> variables that scripts (either server or client side) could modify on the
> fly, thus animating the scene. The script doesn't have to be built into
> VRML at all for this.
>
Absolutely.
I am beginning to think that the whole scripts vs. API issue (which,
I am sorry to say, the survey results did not clear up for me) is a red
herring. In fact, the choice of file format is not a particularly interesting
question to me - all the formats, including Inventor, look reasonable to me,
as something that I could live with, and only extensive experience with all
would give me a useful opinion, IMHO. The real question is the protocol, the
equivalent of HTTP, and how changes in scene, and results of actions, are
communicated. Are they cached? What level of scene change is built in to the
language, and what must be generated va external programs? That sort of
question. I would like to see more discussion of that sort of question on
this list. I understand that the survey results have a lot to say on this
question, but by and large they said "we want it all now".
Cheers
Dave Cake
> Brian
>
>