Re: [Visualpython-users] The VPython project

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

Glad you like VPython!

VPython was created in 2000 at Carnegie Mellon University for use by 
students doing computational modeling in an introductory physics course. 
As a result of that origin, it got known initially in physics education 
circles. However, it has been making its way out of that community. 
Particularly gratifying is that it is seeing growing use in the 
scientific research community, initially mainly physicists. The value of 
VPython to research scientists is that they sometimes have a need for a 
more flexible way to generate 3D images and data visualizations than any 
application or group of applications can provide. There is power in a 
programming environment that is difficult to capture in a nonprogramming 
application.

I think it's fair to say that VPython lacks many things required for 
serious game construction, though I don't know enough about the issue to 
identify them precisely.

Not sure what you have in mind about "draw resources away from VPython". 
At a personal level, I'm deeply involved with Ruth Chabay in trying to 
wrench introductory physics out of the 19th century, and this effort has 
been so enormously difficult that it has left little time for VPython 
development. However, the physics education effort is now somewhat 
mature, if unfinished (we need to produce a significant 3rd edition of 
our textbook by March), and I've deliberately been working on VPython 
again for the last year. I retired in July in part to delve more deeply 
into development. It was a hugely important accident that David Scherer, 
the originator of VPython, came back to work on it again during the last 
eight months. He has made an enormous difference in the quality of the 
new Visual 5 which will be released soon.

The growth and stability of an open source project seem to depend on 
there being a number of developers who can contribute from time to time. 
Unfortunately, very few people in the VPython community have been able 
to contribute to its development and maintenance, because it is a 
complex multiplatform multithreaded C++ project. I see this as a 
significant problem.

Bruce Sherwood

Anders Petersson wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I'm a software developer living in Linköping, Sweden. Usually I don't do 
> programming in my spare time, but since a couple of weeks I'm working 
> intensely on a hobby project. I'm using VPython to create a program with 
> generic functionality to visualize, animate and edit data structures 
> such as graphs and trees. With 10K lines of code so far and still a long 
> way to go, it's a pretty ambitious project.
> I hope to be able to return to you with some concrete results and 
> screenshots!
> 
> I'm a fan of VPython. Using primitive 3D objects is the right 
> abstraction level for my project and VPython makes this easy to use. Of 
> course, all the benefits of Python are there too. Defining my own 
> __setattr__() allows me to continue to extend the VPython abstraction of 
> doing "obj.pos = (x,y,z)" etc.
> 
> I'm happy to see that the project is evolving, with the beta of a new 
> major version and a new wiki. Actually I'm surprised to see that VPython 
> isn't more heavily used than it seems to be. It seems to be mostly used 
> in education to visualize physics etc.
> http://www.vrplumber.com/py3d.py has a long list of Python 3D projects. 
> Other Python frameworks seem to provide either advanced but low-level 
> features, or are less complete than VPython.
> Certainly there is a general need for an easy-to-use 3d engine for all 
> kinds of projects... but the only major VPython project I found is PyGeo.
> 
> If I may trouble the list for some answers, to get a better view of 
> VPython and its community:
> 
> What are your interests in VPython? What drives you to contribute to the 
> project?
> 
> What do you think vpython's niche and goals are? Are there any design 
> decisions that limit the suitability of VPython for certain areas? (For 
> example game programming or large-scale visualization or animation)
> 
> Are there competing projects that draw resources away from VPython?
> 
> 
> For me right now, the weakest point is the handling of text in 3d 
> scenes. Labels don't integrate into the scene but floats on top of it, 
> covering all 3d objects. Maybe the Beta's (future?) ability to use 
> textures can be utilized with PIL to render texts into the scene rather 
> than on top of it.
> 
> Interested to hear from you.
> Regards,
> Anders Petersson