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Re: [x3d-public] Heilan X3D Browser Released
Niall Moody wrote:
Hi,
I've been lurking on this list for a while now, but this is the first time I've posted.
As part of my PhD, I'm developing an X3D browser designed for audio work. As such, it provides a low latency audio engine (courtesy of PortAudio), and uses Ambisonics (1st order, B format) to spatialise the sound. This means it can provide a full 3d soundfield, and should work with virtually any speaker configuration (at the moment it's limited to 11 presets, but it will support custom configurations in future). It also has full support for Open Sound Control, meaning that any node's attributes may be manipulated in realtime (potentially by multiple users), providing the scene author has provided it with an OSC address.
sounds cool.
As far as the X3D specification goes, the aim is for the browser to fully support the Interchange Profile (with some additions - the Sound component is obviously supported). At the moment that support is not complete though - all the interchange nodes have an implementation in the browser, but not all of them are fully implemented yet. Other things missing are support for the USE, PROTO, EXTERNPROTO, IMPORT and EXPORT keywords, and the SAI (I'm not entirely sure how to do this to be honest - it will almost certainly require some refactoring of the browser code).
For an Interchange browser you do not need to support PROTO or
EXTERNPROTO.
USE is fairly important though. A lot of content will have that. It
allows you to reuse a piece of scenegraph so you render faster and the
file takes less space.
It's a standalone browser for the time being (I may create a web browser plugin in the future, but that's not really my main focus), and it's released under the GPL. Currently it's available for Linux and Windows, though I do intend to provide an OSX version in the future.
The website is: http://www.niallmoody.com/heilan/index.htm
I'm basically developing it according to my own needs, to provide an
environment within which I can create a specific kind of audiovisual
art, so I have to admit I don't know how useful it'll prove to other people...
I've added you to the X3D implementations list I'm maintaing. That now
makes 18 implementations floating around! Your's is the first to really
concentrate on audio.
BTW, I feel like X3D's audio could be greatly enhanced. If you find the
same thing then I'd recommend you propose some extensions to improve the
situation. Audio rendering should be as expressive as the graphics.
--
Alan Hudson
President Yumetech, Inc. www.yumetech.com
President Web3D Consortium www.web3d.org
206 340 8900
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