[x3d-public] Random point within a bounding box? On a globe? Proto library?

[Don Brutzman]

Additionally:
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1. Martin Reddy did some nice scenes years ago as part of GeoVRML, they are included in the Basic Geospatial examples.

http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/Geospatial/

Trips Around World
This GeoVRML scene has a model of the earth which you can drag to rotate. Dotted on the surface of the planet are a number of pointers to places that I have travelled to recently, many with hyperlinks into my on-line photo album so you can see pictures of the places by just clicking on the red pointers. The GeoVRML for the pointers was generated automatically by the text2geovrml utility that is packaged with the tsmApi library.

Trips Model
Individual trip locations and links, integrated as Inline into TripsAroundWorld.

Those sound somewhat similar to what you described as a goal John.
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2. We've also done some some work mapping KML to X3D prototypes, that deserves a followup someday.

	X3D Example Archives: Basic, Geospatial, Kml Prototypes

	http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/Geospatial/KmlPrototypes.x3d
	http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/Geospatial/KmlPrototypes.html

If we got half-decent X3D renderings of KML information, styling from one to the other is easy.  We have something like that already in AUV Workbench somewhere, I think.
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3. All of the naming and construction thumbrules that have helped us with Prototype design are found as part of the X3D Scene Authoring Hints.

	http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/X3dSceneAuthoringHints.html#InlinesPrototypes

	http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/X3dSceneAuthoringHints.html#NamingConventions

Contributions to the Web3D Example Archives are asked to follow these when possible.  Fortunately a good number can be checked by the X3D Validator, and I'm happy to help dial things in.

Improvements and suggested additions to these hints are always welcome.
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4. A good scene to contribute would be the bubbles shader example, if we can figure out who created it or if it is sufficiently modified to be considered a new work and open source.  Gaps are listed on the Projects Wish List (section 4).

	http://www.web3d.org/projects/wish-list

Eventually filling those gaps is a prerequisite for the corresponding components to get promoted to X3D v4.

	http://www.web3d.org/wiki/index.php/X3D_version_4.0_Development#Legacy_Issues

all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman