Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a976
From: a976@mindlink.UUCP (Ron Tarrant)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: 3D Movies
Message-ID: <2124@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 90 03:24:54 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 31

> jcs@crash.cts.com writes:
> 
> Msg-ID: <3174@crash.cts.com>
> Posted: 15 Jun 90 17:31:46 GMT
> 
> Org.  : Crash TimeSharing, El Cajon, CA
> Person: John Schultz
> 
>   I've seen BoB on the PC: great simulation (best of its kind).  As you
> have probably noticed, the aircraft appear to be tabled bitmaps, and not
> 3D generated objects. Further, it would take a great deal of storage
> (depending on frame rate and scene complexity) to save each frame to
> memory. Not the bitmaps, but the transformed points.  Since you can
> replay from different views, it would appear that at least 3D position
> points and table indices are being stored, as well as frame to frame
> deltas, perhaps similar to run length encoding.  If this is the case,
> 
>   John


It's also possible that the planes, landscape, etc. were all generated as 4D
objects and what you actually see on the screen are the 3D _shadows_ of the 4D
objects. A friend of mine did some experimenting with this type of thing at
university. The math was a real pain, apparently. The advantage of doing
everything in 4D was that once the objects were generated, near real time
playback was possible if you only wanted to see the 3D shadows. He actually
_got_ real time playback on a 68000-based Amiga by using 8-colour screens. The
original 4D file for the starship Enterprise took many hours to render and even
longer to type in (a week, I think he said).
-Ron Tarrant
a976@Mindlink.UUCP