[vos-d] development

[Peter Amstutz]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 12:28:55PM -0600, S Mattison wrote:
> > The goals for the UI prototype is to explore how to present a highly
> > configurable user interface based around vobjects, to consider the kinds
> > of tasks and workflow a user might perform in the GUI, and to confront
> > cross-platform issues (in compiling, in the operation of the GUI and in
> > distributing binary packages) up front, so that development "stays
> > honest" and as OS-neutral as possible.
> 
> Wait, so, you mean, you're rendering the UI widgets in 3d now? (It
> sounds more and more like Blender each day.)

I'm not doing 3D widgets yet.  The UI is wxWidgets with 3D windows (as 
well as other views, such as a tree view) embedded in frames.  The 
frames can be split, unsplit, resized and detached at will, and each 
displays a different view which may be presented as a 2D control or 3D 
rendering, depending on the viewing mode.  It does have some 
similarities with the Blender UI, but it would be more accurate to say 
that the UI I am working on is more inspired by Emacs (!)

Eventually I want to be able to paint 2D views onto 3D textures so that 
you can mix 2D windows and 3D scenes freely -- but that will require a 
bit more work in creating/porting a GUI toolkit that can render to 
texture as easily as to the screen.

> > By developing the UI first, I'm also taking a more top-down design
> > strategy.  In the past, developing the backend first has led to the UI
> > and the sample 3D worlds being an afterthought, which of course didn't
> > impress most users.  To avoid making that mistake again, I'm going to
> > focus on UI and content creation up front, to make good presentation and
> > usability (and usefulness) a priority, and only then develop the backend
> > to support those requirements.
> 
> With Usability as a focus, you could attempt to allow users to create
> their own content, which I think should be the aim of a
> community-oriented project such as this one. More content means more
> popularity means more content, etc, etc.

Absolutely.  In fact since you mention it, I think I'll see if I can get 
the Blender -> S5 Prototype export down to one click (writes the file, 
loads it into VOS for you).

> > I'm hoping to have something for you all to see (UI prototype, with no
> > network capability) in two to three weeks.
> 
> Looking forward to it!
> -Steve

Good to hear :-)

-- 
[   Peter Amstutz  ][ tetron at interreality.org ][ peter.amstutz at gdit.com ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]

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