NeTpower is currently working on a port of Open Inventor to Windows NT
platforms. Please note that applications developed on Windows NT are Win32
and hence compatible with the future release of windows (4.0 or Chicago).
Our port consists of a development environment as well as a runtime. The
development environment is pretty much equivalent to that of SGI's. The
Inventor file format, even in binary form is 100% transportable across
platforms. (SGI isn't the only UNIX platform, there are ports available on
Sun and HP as well.)
Inventor on Windows is different from the UNIX version in that one is able
to use it to embed 3D into applications using OLE2.0. For example you can
have an Inventor document embedded into a Microsoft Word document or an
Excel spreadsheet. When the user activates the 3D by selecting it, the
Inventor runtime activates the window inplace and the user is able to
interact with the 3D using Inventor manipulators.
Since we have to pay royalties to SGI, there is a charge for the runtime.
However this project is of enough interest to companies like SGI and
NeTpower that I would speculate (not commit or promise) that it would be
possible to negotiate a royalty free license for a WWW application.
Paolo