Re: LANG: Text in VRML

Kevin Goldsmith (unitcirc@netcom.com)
Mon, 20 Mar 1995 17:56:53 -0800 (PST)


I don't want to get into this argument again, but quick response:

>
> Hi,
>
> I just found this stale note in my reader:
>
> I am very concerned about the tone that this note is taking. This is an
> apples-to-oranges comparison. OpenGL texture mapping is "general",
> where the texture can be strecthed, shrank, oriented in whatever way on
> whatever shape, while DOOM only works on "traps" (trapezoids -- quads
> with horizontal or vertical edges (or degenerate triangles), with textures
> aligned to match. The quality of the image is far different -- get close
> to a wall in DOOM, and tell me that's high-quality texture mapping. Then
> there's the age-old argument about sorting polygons vs. depth-buffering.
> It's just a different class of features/functions, and the resulting
> performance is (very) different.
>
Doom -> Rendermorphics RealityLab 3D library. Arbitrary 3D
textured polys. Same argument on my side.

> The point is that no serious CAD/CAM vendor would even think of using DOOM
> for thier engineering drawings -- its too broke, and too feature-limitied
> in too many ways. OpenGL was/is designed to be a very general-purpose,
> do-it-all, easy-to-use, h/w-acclerated 3D API. DOOM was designed to be
> a cut-corners, never-mind-the-hacks, who-cares-if-looks-wiggy-if-its-fast
> game application. It's kind of a mistake to point at DOOM and say, "do
> that", and "ohh, do that in a general-purpose way".
>
Doom is indeed a game which covers a specific domain. Bad example.
However, there are several packages which will do arbitrary 3D polygons faster
that a lower end SGI and textured polys faster than a mid-range SGI.

> -- on a diffenret note -- maybe you have a really bad implementation of
> OpenGL on the pentium. The one I have cranks.
>
Which one are you using? I have yet to see an OpenGL
implementation that is worth spit without hardware acceleration.

Kevin

> --linas
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