On 21.09.2011 13:50, Alexandre Bergel wrote:
I think that depending on your goals both approaches are good:
- binding to OpenGL it would be very cool to have a working/solid solution in this area. As Henrik and Marcus said, native support would be great. If I remember correctly, Lumiere is not very usable. Perhaps with NativeBoost and its GL bindings could be a way to go. Would be cool, but frankly I do not think the Pharo community can provide a reliable, multi-platform and smooth integration of OpenGL in a near future. Many have tried before and there is not many success.
- software 3D (no hardware support) As Alex said, for simple stuff it could be enough and it is easier to ensure portability. But be carreful of the size of your scenes because I think that Moose graphs could be huge and it could be really really slow... I would not be that pessimistic. Visualizing software does not require animation, moving colored cameras and texture.
Hey, it WOULD be cool way of visualizing a programs execution though ;) Think squares as classes, height of buildings as amount of instances, and some sort of traffic being message sends, camera panning automatically to catch the activity. For GC, you could have a tetris-effect, where some of the buildings height start blinking then disappears! The possibilities are endless! Hmm, it kind of sounds strangely familiar when I think about it... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3XzPhdBx9g#t=143s Maybe that wasn't as ludicrous as I've always thought :) Cheers, Henry