Re: [Vrmlengine-main] compiling issues

[Michalis K. <mic...@gm...>]

da...@la... wrote:
> 
> it would be very useful if there was a way to move this in the program 
> (insert/delete let you move vertically with gravity turned off)

Hm, good idea. I added this as Ctrl+Insert, Ctrl+Delete. (At first I
wondered whether to just redefine insert/delete for this when gravity is
off, but this doesn't feel good on models where you're often outside the
bbox of the scene.)

I also added "Avatar height", "current height above the ground" on
status text in Walk mode, this should be helpful now.

Note that current height above the ground varies compared to "Avatar
height", due to head bobbing and sometimes due to camera radius
(colliding of steep stairs). "Avatar height" (this is exactly what was
set by NavigationInfo.avatarSize[1]) is usually slightly larger than
"current height" when standing still, as then head bobbing makes you go
a little down then.

(I think I'll make some extentions to NavigationInfo to control the
amount of head-bobbing; but I'm getting off-topic..).

> 
> in playing around with this and the kadota-land.3ds file (now on my site) 
> I sometimes end up with the camera eye level a foot or so above ground 
> level and sometimes around 9 feet above ground level

When there's no NavigationInfo.avatarSize (or when the file is not
VRML/X3D) then default height above the scene is calculated, based on
scene bounding box size. (But it should of course stay constant for the
same scene --- if it's not, you got a bug, please say on which
viewpoints you get different levels above the ground, I'll investigate).

> 
> it would also be useful if there was a way to change the units in the 
> display from meters to feet for the on-screen displays.

I'm unsure about this feature --- I mean, once I start thinking
different units of distance, all hell breaks loose and interface gets
cluttered, as far as I'm concerned... My current approach is to never
talk about "meters" or anything --- what we display are just units
within the 3D file.

You can always scale your whole model, to make your 3D model "unit"
correspond to meter, feet or whatever you like...

BTW, one important thing: in previous mail I forgot that you can do the
trick with adding NavigationInfo and Viewpoint much easier, without
explicitly converting your 3ds file to VRML. You can inline 3ds files
inside VRML, which means that you can write VRML file like attached
(also an example how you can scale your model), place it in the same dir
as kadota.3ds and you're done. The nice thing about this is that you can
freely re-export your 3ds file, and it stays separate from VRML-specific
features you write.

Michalis