my intro

[chris]

Hi,

Cameron asked me to comment on the design so I thought I'd intro myself first.

I live in 3D land so there is a big difference right there. However, I
believe there is a lot of commonality between 2D and 3D graphcis plus
I am doing geospatial, web bsed, open standards, open source - lots of
common ground there.

Normally, I network to the server directly from the 3D client via
http, avoiding the portability issues that plague javascript
solutions. However, it seems everyone else wants to use Ajax so I
decided, after talking to Cameron, to start learning how to use it.
There is also some web3D Ajax work in progress: Ajax3D - see
http://ajax3d.org/content.html.

I am completing a Phd on improving the fidelity and scalability of
virtual environments and use a full scale geospatial world
(planet-earth.org) as a test case. I have been working with the web 3D
standards for years, starting with VRML and now with X3D (see
http://www.web3d.org), which are both ISO standards for 3D on the Web.
I've been writing open source for years too - java - for terrain
modelling/translation (http://planet-earth.org/Rez/RezIndex.html).

Anyway, what I envisage is a client that has a 2D geospatial
window/frame and a 3D one as well, perhaps for local views. This clien
would provide chat and other multiuser collaboration facilities.

So, I'm going to follow up with my comments on the design Cameron has
pointed me to and see if we can get to some common ground.

cheers,

chris