Re: OpenGL scenegraph

[Erik <br0ke@math.smsu.edu>]

On 05-Sep-99 Jan Ekholm wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Sep 1999, Steve Baker wrote:
> 
>>Jan Ekholm wrote:
>>
>>> So, I ended up
>>> creating an own simple scenegraph on top of OpenGL. It is very
>>> lightweight, easy to use and still somewhat limited in functionality,
>>> maybe even buggy. It however worked fine for displaying the proteins I
>>> needed it for...
>>
>>It sounds a lot like 'ssg' (SimpleSceneGraph) - which I maintain as a
>>part of PLIB  http://www.woodsoup.org/projs/plib
> 
> Yep, I know! I ended up writing my package as a result of not finding
> anything which would implement a good scene graph a year and a half ago. I
> think I could have gone with 'ssg' then, as it's open and it works, but I
> didn't know about it.
> 
>>> Now I wonder if someone is interested in using such a beast,
>>
>>About 300 people are signed up to the PLIB users list and 150 or so to
>>the developers list - so there is certainly interest in such things.
> 
> Sounds interesting. :-) But my humble effort is still to a large extent
> not thoroughly tested nor fully implemented. One good thing I think can be
> worth mentioning is that it does not force anybody to use any kind of
> toolkit, it works everywhere where there's a window which would accept
> plain OpenGL, e.g. glut, the Qt QGL widget and probably the Gtk equivalent
> (name?), as well as the Motif GLRenderArea.
> 

gtkglarea is the gtk one. Being independant of a toolkit is a good thing, I
think, it allows a lot of modularity. It can be slurped up into another toolkit
or 5, used independant, etc

>>I refer you back to the long thread (that just wound down) about why
>>there are so many near-identical packages out there - and why you can
>>never get someone (like me) to give up my package to work on yours (or
>>vice versa).
> 
> Multiple packages are IMHO a good thing. Evolution will most likely let
> the best and strongest survive (although not in Kansas). Basically I don't

hehehehe :)

> really care that much if my package lands belly up, as I do this for the
> fun of it, and most of the development was paid anyway. Had I done it all
> for 'free' I think I'd have a much stronger emotional attachment to my
> code (as with my networking lib Zombie).
> 

even if code lands belly up, it was fun to do and you learned from it. That's
the important stuff. I know I code for fun and to learn, which probably
explains my resistance to the concept of using an sdk for everything :)

> Btw Steve, thanks for the nice docs on OpenGL you have on your site. I've
> been reading a couple of them while trying to figure out how to properly
> combine several rotations into one single rotation in order to avoid some
> weird effects. Still struggling, so I had to write a Matrix class to try
> out the theories in practise... :-)
> 

quaternions give me wood

> ---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
>  Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm |    CS at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
>     Linux Inside     | I'm the blue screen of death, no-one hears you scream
> 
> 

        -Erik <br0ke@math.smsu.edu> [http://shells.clipboard.com/~br0ke]

The opinions expressed by me are not necessarily opinions. In all
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