Re: Fwd: vrml browsers
Doug Rabson (dfr@render.com)
Fri, 2 Jun 1995 11:47:04 +0100 (BST)
On Thu, 1 Jun 1995, Greg Scallan wrote:
> [snip]
>
> The VRML spec is definitely tilted toward OpenGL. The Nodes are pretty much 1-1
> mappings to OpenGL calls. Some Nodes will need additional code to be implemented in
> RenderMorphics, but generaly not too much. The problem comes into play when you
> need to specify things like different colors for ambient/diffuse/specular/emissive
> properties of a material and the 3D API doesn't support that. OpenGL supports this,
> RenderMorphics probably doesn't. Thus, if you can live without ever having this
> type of functionality, you'd be ok to use rendermorphics. However, the fact that
> rendermorphics does not support these types of calculations may point to some of the
> reasons they are so much faster. Whatever you do, I would suggest writing to your
> own 3D API independant layer so you could *plug in* OpenGL/RenderMorphics or
> whatever 3D API you want. Which API is best is difficult to tell, and depends on
> the application, the user, and the platform. Being flexible in this area is pretty
> easy to do.
Actually, our driver layer supports all the emissive/diffuse/specular
colour stuff that OpenGL can do. The only part which is missing is the
APIs in Reality Lab to access them! Performance is not an issue here.
--
Doug Rabson, RenderMorphics Ltd. Mail: dfr@render.com
Phone: +44 171 251 4411
FAX: +44 171 251 0939