Re: pre lit polygons need no lights

Mark Waks (justin@dsd.camb.inmet.com)
Wed, 22 Mar 95 11:07:02 EST


Regarding all the requests that we add lighting, wireframes, etc to
VRML 1.0: folks, it's a wee tad late now. We're down to the wire on
1.0 -- we really shouldn't be doing anything except important tweaks
and maybe filling in *killer* gaps. I don't think either of these
qualifies; they just limit the scenes that we'll be doing in 1.0 to
simpler ones.

Yes, both of these are necessary in order to do good, pretty VR. But
VRML 1.0 is basically proof-of-concept; making sure the basic underlying
notions work. 2.0 is really the right place to be worrying about making
the results really pretty.

Remember, HTML 1.0 was quite basic; the really cool stuff, that made
it really *useful* (eg, forms) didn't come in until 2.0. (Well, until
Mosaic anyway.) Similarly, VRML 1.0 should be a minimal set, to show
off the potential. Once we've demonstrated that the idea works, we'll
have time to make the thing really hum. Frankly, there is a *lot* that
will need to be added in order to do that (I expect that we're going
to decide to add a large fraction of Inventor's functionality); if we
start that now, we're never going to get that all-important
proof-of-concept out the door...

-- Justin
Who has watched *far* too many projects
collapse because of the desire to get
everything into the first release...

Random Quote du Jour:

"Q: Is there a proper procedure for asking the support staff questions?
A: Questions will not be answered by the support staff unless the
proper procedure is used."
-- Christopher Welty