Re: dis-java-vrml Re: GeoVRML mailing list: Welcome Aboard

[Farid Mamaghani <farid@halcyon.com>]

At 4:02 PM -0800 2/2/98, Lee Iverson wrote:


>What I don't understand is how the SEDRIS Data Models relate to VRML.

Based on your e-mail it seemed to me many of the things that you listed are
things that you could leverage from the work done already in SEDRIS (the
data model, the support for 12 different coordinate systems, the API, the
associated applications, utilities, and other software, and the concepts)
and take advantage of it without having to go through the many issues/pain
we have had to go through, struggle with, and solve.

So, if interested, your efforts might be able take advantage of the
concepts in the SEDRIS data model, and reuse the ideas.

SEDRIS provides the capability to represent virtual world (synthetic
environment) data, whether it be GIS-like features, 3D ocean/atmosphere
representation, topological relationships, or visualization information (3D
polygons, animation, textures, etc. which are used extensively in the
modeling & simulation domain for real time visualization and representation
of simulation environments).  SEDRIS does this with the main purpose of
being able to interchange such data among heterogeneous systems.

The representation of 3D for visualization is a part of that.  So I thought
there might be a good deal of overlap in what you might be interested in
and what SEDRIS could offer.  But I could be wrong!

>Can I embed SEDRIS geo-referencing information in a VRML file?  Can I

Without understanding what you have in mind, I'm not sure how to answer
this question.  The answer could be yes or no, depending on what you mean
and how you'd like to do that.

>transform a SEDRIS model to VRML retaining accurate georeferencing?

If by model you mean a description of a 3D object, the answer is yes (of
course we'd have to write the software to do that, but that's not that
hard, especially for someone who knows both VRML and SEDRIS).

If by model you mean the data representation model of SEDRIS, the answer is
also yes.  This would be the super-set of the above, since there is more in
SEDRIS than just representation of polygons, textures, etc. (3D
visualization representation).

>I can completely understand if you are suggesting SEDRIS as an
>alternative to VRML for representing, manipulating and exchanging
>georeferenced data, but there are a lot of reasons people want to use

Not suggesting that at all.  I was simply suggesting that you might be able
to take advantage of work already done in SEDRIS on geo-referencing,
representation and interchange of large (giga byte) databases, etc.

>VRML at least as a delivery vehicle.  Can I use SEDRIS to deliver
>visual representations to a zillion low-end PCs via a Web browser?

Yes you can!  We just finished developing the first phase of a prototype
SEDRIS viewer that works in conjunction with Netscape and Internet
Explorer.  We showed the software (along with host of other SEDRIS
applications, conversion tools, and utility software) at an industry
conference (I/ITSEC '97) last December.

This viewer/browser software, SEDRIS Navigator (designed by Reality By
Design), can download and allow interactive fly-through of modeling &
simulation SEDRIS databases.  The software is going through internal beta
use and we'll soon be posting it at the main SEDRIS web site.  (If you're
interested in an advanced preview of the current prototype, please contact
me directly, and I can provide you the temporary URL and passwd for access.)

Although we've designed SEDRIS mainly for static interchange of databases,
we have built many applications and utilities to allow for examination of
synthetic environment data.  The SEDRIS Navigator is one such application
that works in a client-server mode for viewing databases on-line.  The
server is capable of reading SEDRIS databases.

I hope this helps.  We're very interested in developments of VRML, and if
we can  provide any help, we'd be delighted to do that.

Farid