[x3d-public] SSR: server-side rendering

[Tom Sparks]

On 14/02/15 02:38, doug sanden wrote:
> 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
> 
I like the idea
but portal rendering[1] would work better idea as long as you render the
layered depth images on the server

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_rendering
[2]
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr01/cs598b/papers/rafferty98.pdf

tom