Re: [www-vrml] some questions about X3D

[Paul Aslin <fabricatorgeneral@yahoo.com>]

Wouldn't it make more sense to provide a ECMA script
Browser call which would send data packets to the remote
server ?

Say:
Brower.sendDataPacket(data,server,port,method,loginID);
where method is UDP etc. presumably we can use use
eventsProcessed or Brower.addRoute... to receive
infomation.

See that way developers would be free to implement whatever
systems they needed, as opposed to having to try and alter
an existing system which is coded in the X3d brower itself.
One further advantage would be to allow connections to
multiple server's at once.


I have tried doing something simple with Blaxxun Connunity
server, simply trying to change the LOD distance used to
SharedObjects has proven impossible because the code to
write the objects is part VRML and part OCX plugin.

Should we stipulate/provide a way of allowing X3d scenes to
intercept network communications, rather than having to try
to change things later on.

By this I basically mean that multi-user addon system
should add items to scenes via a node rather than directly
which creates problems with syncronzation of data between
what is in the scene and what is in Script nodes.

--- Miriam English <miriam@werple.net.au> wrote:

> Hi Tony,
> 
> I'm having a bit of difficulty in expressing this
> clearly, so please bear with me.
> 
> First let me say I'm not aiming this at X3D or the
> consortium or anybody as a criticism. I was honestly
> hoping that some such functionality might have been
> added. And I blame myself as much as anyone for it not
> being. If I'd been able understand the problem properly I
> might have been able to suggest something. Well, I guess
> that's what I'm doing now.
> 
> There are a some networking nodes and javascript and java
> calls in VRML, and X3D already. They have fairly
> specialised functions, for example Inline,
> createVrmlFromURL(), AudioClip, Background, ImageTexture,
> MovieTexture, getWorldURL(), loadURL(), ExternPROTO. It
> is good that we have these just as we have specialised
> geometry nodes like Sphere, Cylinder, and Box. But the
> problem is, while we can create a different kind of
> object from low-level geometry (IndexedFaceSet), we can't
> do the same for networking. I can't use a simple, basic
> node to set up a connection with a URL to send and
> receive events.
> 
> I have to think more about this to be able to define the
> problem properly, let alone a good solution, but off the
> top of my head a simple way of doing it might look
> something like this (in VRML, because that is what I'm
> most familiar with):
> 
> Net {
> 	url MFString
> 	protocol "http"  #or "udp" or "rtp" or ??
> 	in eventType name  #define data to be got from the
> network
> 	out eventType name  #define data to be sent to the
> network
> 	#eventIn eventType name  #receive from the scene
> elements to go to the net
> 	#eventOut eventType name  #send to the scene elements
> from the net
> }
> 
> This is probably incomplete and a bit hazy -- remember
> this is just off the top of my head. (I've probably got
> the in and out attributes wrong -- I haven't had
> breakfast yet and I've been up half the day already. :)
> But something like this should be so flexible that you
> could build any of the other nodes or java/javascript
> functions from it.
> 
> I am far from being an expert in these matters, so I'm
> just throwing this out there.
> 
> We definitely need something that does general-purpose
> simple comms from inside VRML/X3D. At the moment we have
> high level comms without low level flexibility. Anyone
> wanting to handle database access, or multiuser, or
> cookie-like wrl memory, or any one of a number of other
> networked uses, currently has to either hack
> inappropriately, or build upon non-spec proprietary
> extensions.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> 	- Miriam



		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
for list subscription/unscrubscription,
go to http://www.web3d.org/cgi-bin/public_list_signup/lwgate/listsavail.html