could someone follow up on the part of creating your own plugin? sounds interesting and might be just what i need for one of my projects

well, to keep this thread at the top, and to offer my opinion, i still think VRML is the best way to do 3D on the web. i''m not too sure if you want to undertake an OpenGL web plugin. i would imagine this would involve some java, which, like sinistrx pointed ou, already too slow.

VRML allows much of the functionality that most would desire out of 3D on the web anyway. you can assign events to certain 3D objects, integrate sound, trigger animation from events, etc etc, and it even does the collision detection for you! which i thought was pretty damn impressive.

however, if anyone out there still thinks there''s a better idea, by all means... i''d like to know too.

a2k

I have been thinking about an OpenGL plugin for the past few days, and I really think I should work on creating a plugin of sorts that supports OpenGL for the web.

If Java takes too long to load up, then there must be something else to code it in besides Java. What I was thinking of doing was creating an external program, like RealPlayer or Flash, that once downloaded to the hard drive, all the browser does is simply call it up, and the downloaded program takes care of all of the rest.

Is this a feasable solution?

-Cecil

hmmmm.. maybe. what host program were you going to use if not java? i would think c++ would be sort of hard because the networking functions aren''t quite as robust(?) as java.

also, are you planning to make this interactive? if so, then it might be worth doing... i would have no idea how to do this without java. it sounds like a lot to create a flash/opengl player. however, there are new programs that are beginning to support 3d for flash. (i think there was a review on www.flashplanet.com).

good luck. keep updating.

a2k

I was thinking of writing the engine itself in C++, and having poeple export their own models in .3ds form. Do you think this would be unconventially slow if I made the engine as an .exe file, have people download it, then have their browser run it?

-Cecil