[x3d-public] SSR: server-side rendering

[doug sanden]

IDEA: SSR - server-side rendering: render the scene on a server and ajax screenshots to client
-Doug 
more..
1. client side page shows:
a) a rendered image when not navigating
b) a ground grid during mouse/touch drag navigation
http://dug9.users.sourceforge.net/web3d/tests/SSR/grid4_x3dom.html
2. At the end of a drag when the touch/mousebutton is released, the accumulated navigation is ajaxed to the server, and the server moves an avatar, takes a screenshot, compressed to jpg, and sends back to client.
3. client renders the image over/instead-of the grid

Purpose of the grid: to give user a sense of how far and what direction they are navigating when there's no visible scenery
- they can guestimate how far they want to go
Option: server renders 2 or 3 'depth slices' of the view frustum against transparent background, and ajaxes all depth slices, and the client composes them, as textured planes in 3D scene to give a sense of distance

Benefits:
- for large scenes, no geometry to download other than small grid. very fast to get into a large scene
-- avoids the need for any kind of binary compression other than jpeg
- for proprietary scenery, only screenshots are sent to client, no need to encrypt
- best when scene contains no time-based animations - just static geometry
-- option: also detect short mouse/touch 'clicks' and send them to server as clicks instead of navigations
- server-side scenes can have conventional x3d/vrml97 files with Protos and advanced nodes

>
>>
>> Discussed during call today:
>>
>> http://www.web3d.org/news-story/3d-graphics-compress-call-contributions
>>
>
> The only thing that pops to mind is the very different .x3z/.web3z idea^, except allow multiple formats in the zip file so a browser can pick and choose its favorite format from x3dom,json,x3d,vrml97 (resources would be the same in /images etc subfolders)
>
> -Doug
>
> more..
> x3z/web3z blob (binary large object) formats - the whole thing is downloaded first, as a single zip file, then opened
> - analogous to googleEarth .kmz
> .x3z
> - http://www.cloudvr.net/
> - implemented in freewrl, works
> .web3z
> - similar to .x3z
> - idea was to put a metafile in the root folder of the .zip
> - browsers would open the metafile first
> - metafile would say what the root scene file is, which could be .x3d or .wrl
> - today's insight: multiple formats could be in .zip -.wrl, .x3d, .json, .html/x3dom
> -- and metafile would have a way to say that
> -- so browsers could pick their favorite format
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