[X3D-Public] CAD meeting minutes; OctagaVS is back!

Wed Apr 18 19:00:25 PDT 2012

Attendees:  Vince Marchetti, Dick Puk, Hyokwang Lee, Don Brutzman.
Regrets:   Myeong Wong Lee (brief appearance), Anita Havele (at WWW W012).

1.  Big news from Vince:  Octaga has again released a public player!

	http://www.octagavs.com

	Get the new Octaga Player 4.0   (16 January 2012)
	http://www.octagavs.com/company/news-archive/128-get-the-new-octaga-player-40

> Octaga Visual Solutions has released Octaga Player 4.0 for sale from our web site. Octaga Player is a high quality interactive 3D viewer capable of displaying X3D and VRML files, in addition to a wide variety of multimedia content.
> 
> You can download and run the Player for free, with certain limitations, or buy a license in our web-shop and run the Player without any limitations. Read more and buy Octaga Player.

Download:
	http://www.octagavs.com/softwarem/octaga-player

	2 Windows versions were shown on that page:
	Octaga Player and
	Octaga Player x64

> Minimum system requirements:
> 
>     OS: Windows XP / Vista / 7
>     Processor: Dual-core 2.0GHz Intel or AMD CPU
>     RAM: 4GB
>     Graphics card: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 or ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 or better
>     Graphics card memory: 256 MB
>     Updated graphics drivers supporting OpenGL 2.1
>     Hard drive: 10 GB free space

Advertised features are impressive:

>     Handles huge models (up to 100 million polygons in a single scene) allowing highly detailed models where every nut and bolt is visible.
>     Enables highly realistic, visually impressive models through the use of advanced rendering features.
>     Based on X3D, the ISO standard for interactive 3D graphics, reuse of models is ensured.
>     Highly optimized animation support.
>     Strong support for integration of audio, video and images.
>     Supports video and image export.
>     Supports multi-screen setups based on AMD Eyefinity or nVidia Surround.

Some good news / bad news here:  Vince thinks that they have partly
broken some of their past implementation of NURBS, he has sent them
a note about this.  More information about those issues can be found at
X3D Rendering of NURBS surfaces: Example models and browser support
http://www.kshell.com/pages/nurbs_surface_demo/

The free version is free to download for non-commercial use and has
a rich set of capabilities.  Full-license version (no floating logo,
many developer options like wireframe, recording, etc. added):
99 Euros (~ $130) via Pay Pal.

Test reports of free plugin follow.

Vince, Windows XP sp3 (32 bit)
- passed:  application, plugin for IE8

Don, Windows 7 (64 bit), required reboot
- passed:  application, plugin with Firefox 11, Chrome, Opera
- failed:  plugin with Apple Safari, Internet Explorer 9

... sounds of enthusiastic cheering and applause in background!  8)

2.  Vince has also made some changes to a local copy of the Xj3D Source
for better NURBS handling.  He is building against the NPS branch.
He has also done some work on QuadSet/IndexedQuadSet nodes.  We'll
be happy to integrate that code when Vince is ready to hand it off.

p.s. Hyo mentioned last week that PartDB may also have some valuable
additions to the Xj3D codebase over the next few months.  We all
plan to test and integrate them together on the NPS branch before
we integrate them back into the trunk.

https://savage.nps.edu/Savage/developers.html#Xj3D

3.  Dick discussed the X3D 3.3 Medical Interchange (MedInterchange)
Profile with Nick Polys, cochair of Medical Working Group.  He reports
that they are not yet ready to include NURBS Level 2.  This is a good
possibility for future work.

4.  Vince reports that the uploading of .x3d content to the wiki is
now working.  However there is some kind of security filter that is
barking about the head/meta tags - Len can you please fix?

5.  X3D Validator has been tested satisfactorily by Vince.
It now includes pretty-print HTML lets you test online links are OK.
https://savage.nps.edu/X3dValidator

If there are any "gotcha" issues or surprises in CAD, NURBS or other
scenes, please identify them to me so that we can write a Schematron
rule to detect them.

For example, if we remove the following from a scene with NURBS:
    <component level='4' name='NURBS'/>
http://www.web3d.org/x3d/content/examples/Basic/NURBS/TrimmedNurbsWithHole.x3d 

> Performing X3D Schematron check...
> <X3D profile='Immersive'> doesn't match contained nodes, increase profile or add needed <component/> definition(s) [/X3D, error]
> <X3D profile='Immersive'> is indicated, but nodes in scene have actual profile='Full' [/X3D, info] Error(s) detected during this validation test. X3D Schematron check: fail.

That is is a good test, because it failed and indicated why.  The test itself
could be improved to indicate the required component that is needed.

However changing the level value to level="1" passed Schematron validation-
which is erroneous.  (Interesting there is no way to test this with DTD
or Schema).

So there are 2 tests that might be improved, and I will work on that.
Further test cases welcome.  We also save the test cases to ensure that
future rules work on future content.

6.  Hyo asked Vince if he can provide a demo at the Web3D Conference
and a SIGGRAPH Birds of a Feature (BOF) session.  He is working on
attendance - the group will provide remote access for him if needed.

7.  Vince added some further resources to the CAD Wiki - thanks!

Web3D -> Wiki -> Working Groups -> CAD
http://web3d.org/x3d/wiki/index.php/X3D_CAD

NURBS Patch Surface demonstration scenes and explanations for implementations by Vincent Marchetti
http://www.kshell.com/pages/nurbs_surface_demo

NURBS Trimmed Surface Examples of NurbsTrimmedSurface node with internal trimming curves by Vincent Marchetti
http://www.kshell.com/pages/trimmed_nurbs_demo

8.  We discussed the X3D Specification Checker report from this
morning's X3D meeting.  It is a cool tool that found some minor
issues in the CAD component, but nothing major.  It also can
produce interface diagrams for X3D nodes, which might be useful
in our specification development someday.

Thanks everyone for the steady progress today.

Our next CAD meeting will be next month.

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

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