Travel Plans

In Italy, and all i can think about is how much i'd rather be in Mexico or Zambia. Still, Rome is a nice enough place.

Shame

I used to write VRML, one character at a time, but that was many years ago. Now, it seems state of the art for 3d product display has turned to pre-rendering 100's of images and displaying them via flash. Unfortunately, not all webapps act kindly when simultaneously serving 100's of small images.

I wish i could render our scenes in VRML - i really do - especially considering the lack of complexity of the scenes in question. But i'm also willing to attempt the "new style", and towards that end i've created this moveable view of a recognizer (only tested in Firefox 2/Mac and IE7/win). It's a Proof-of-Concept consisting of 3 files: the html, the css, the image. Here's a scaled-down view of the entire image i'm using:


That image is composed of 612 rendered views of a povray file that i made a couple years back, in anticipation of a compsec shirt i never printed. The PoC concept is rather simple - reposition the one large image based on what button the user clicks. With a little bit of work, it can translate to clicking and dragging the image, working better around the poles, and maintaining consistent speed.

I'd like to deliver my PoC in Flash, as that's what the original target was set for, but i'm not really sure how to begin creating a flash file - that magick is beyond my current capabilities. For now, i'm happliy disgraced by my PoC. Oh, whatever happened to the wonderful world that VRML promised?

Yes, i wear Matterhorns

The knock is quiet at first, but quickly grows louder, more urgent. An old friend is at the door, and wishes to come in.



At first she doesn't look so familiar - new haircut, new outfit, new pose - but after a couple blinks, i remember who she is. Let's sit down, reacquaint ourselves, catch up, where've you been? I missed you! Slowly, we'll regain depth into each other.

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The math was a bit tricky at first, a lot of second guessing myself, but eventually i knew i was on the right path once i had distracted myself enough to programatically draw the above image (yes, the dissolve is deliberate). Perhaps if i had had the discipline to make it through college, then the math would have flown naturally from my fingers, and calculating the x's and y's would have been as easy as drooling. Instead, it took me a day.

But slowly, tenuously, carefully, i've started my way back to thinking in 3d. Eventually i hope to have lifted myself from a blank mind back to a well-rounded consciousness.