Re: TriStrips, one last time.

Kevin Goldsmith (unitcirc@netcom.com)
Thu, 8 Dec 1994 11:19:41 -0800 (PST)


> It is useful for providing caches of scenes, etc.
> Agreed, the actual motion updates of
> participants/objects should be handled
> differently. Earlier discussion mentioned DIS,
> and that could be incorporated complementary to
> the http portion later.
>
But that would be a kludge. To do this in a
CLEAN way means changing everything around. Granted,
this would affect the VRML spec if it stays a 3D
description language, but future versions of VRML
need to realize that they cannot be tied to HTTP.

> As for corporate efforts, corporations tend to
> keep things to themselves because they think
> exclusivity gives them an edge. It is usually
> unintended that they let something like Unix slip
> out and get used and improved by a larger
> community. Some changes are underway, and a good
> sign is that SGI is willing to let the Inventor
> format be used as a starting point. But just
> because corporate efforts are underway does not
> guarantee it will get done. Corporations are
> fickle at times.
>
While I love Inventor (Hi Gavin! Hi Rikk!),
it is of course in SGI's best interest to push inventor
for VRML. SGI wants Inventor to be the standard interchange
format for 3D. Something it is well suited for.

If one corporation was working on this,
it might mean that it wouldn't happen, but there are MANY
working on these ideas. One of them will get to market.
Actually the first one will be out sometime very soon: Chip
Morningstar and Randy Farmer's new version of Habitat.

Kevin