Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS
From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: 3D
Message-ID: <880207101818.4.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 7 Feb 88 17:56:48 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 17


    Date: Sat, 6 Feb 88 21:00:57 EST
    From: portal!atari!daisy!klee@uunet.uu.net  (Ken Lee)

    Extensibility is especially important for ... sophisticated graphics output
    (such as 3D).

For high-performance high-end graphics, particularly 3D, programmability (which
is what you seem to mean by "extensibility") is totally inadequate.  You don't
get performance by downloading a program that implements a rendering pipeline,
you get performance by using the rendering hardware built into the server.  At
a minimum, this requires that additional "primitives" be added to your language
(you can argue about how high or low level the primitives should be), which
cannot be written directly in that language.  (Note that this is true, e.g, of
video output as well.)  Beyond that, it may be desirable to provide a fuller
integration of 3D-ness into your imaging model.  Of course, PostScript only has
2D CTMs ...