JReality

Fidelity Menu ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ Purpose: Provides control over the realism or fidelity of the image in the 3D VR window. Usage: To Display Menu: press left mouse button while cursor is over Fidelity menu bar item. To Select a Menu Item: Display the Fidelity menu. Drag cursor over the desired menu item. Release the mouse button. To Tear Off a Menu: Display the Fidelity menu, and drag cursor to menu item. When menu pops up, drag cursor to dotted line at top of the menu. Release the mouse button. To Dismiss a Torn Off Menu: Press right mouse button while cursor is over menu title bar. When system-dependent window control menu pops up, select appropriate menu item to dismiss. Notes: All Fidelity menus are tear off except Refresh Rate, which is a dialog window.

Rendering ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ ______________________ | <untitled> | |--------------------| | * Hidden Line | | o Wire Frame | | o Point Set | |--------------------| | * Perspective | | o Parallel | |--------------------| | * Antialiasing Off | | o Antialiasing On | ---------------------- Purpose: Allows changing parameters that affect the way 3D shapes are rendered in the VR Window, including polygon rendering, line rendering, and projection type. Usage: To Render Polygons as Surfaces: click Hidden Line. To Render Polygons as Lines : click Wire Frame. To Render Polygons as Points: click Point Set. To Render Geometry Using Perspective Projection: click Perspective. To Render Geometry Using Parallel Projection: click Parallel. To Render Lines Using Antialiasing: click Antialiasing On. To Render Lines Without Antialiasing: click Antialiasing Off. Notes: The Hidden Line (surface rendering) setting will be used most of the time to render the Polygon objects that constitute the bulk of most scenes. Wire Frame and Point Set are useful under special circumstances, such as by scene developers when debugging newly-created geometry. Parallel projection is not very useful for rendering in the 3D VR window under most circumstances. Perspective will almost always be the projection setting of choice as it presents a much more realistic view of the scene. (However, note that parallel projection is used to draw the 2D section window images, but these are drawn using Java2D rather than rendered using Java3D.) Enabling antialiasing causes Line geometry objects to be drawn in such a way as to reduce the apparent amount of "jaggedness" that is a natural consequence of using pixel-based graphics displays. However, this setting has no effect on Polygon geometry, which constitutes most, if not all, of the geometric content of most 3D VR scenes. Thus, the antialiasing setting will have no effect on most scenes.

Lighting ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ ______________________ | <untitled> | |--------------------| | o Lighting On | | * Lighting Off | |--------------------| | o Pan Lighting On | | * Pan Lighting Off | ---------------------- Purpose: Provides controls to enable and disable lighting. Usage: To Enable Lighting: click Lighting On. The 3D VR view is immediately updated with lighting calculations active. To Disable Lighting: click Lighting Off. The 3D VR view is immediately updated with lighting calculations inactive. To Enable Pan Lighting: click Pan Lighting On. This retains direct sun lighting as well as ambient lighting when the avatar is moved. To Disable Pan Lighting: click Pan Lighting Off. This causes direct sun lighting to be temporarally disabled when the avatar is moved. Ambient lighting will still be active. Notes: Java3D Scene geometry must be specifically created to respond to lighting calculations. If enabling lighting has no effect, the scene most likely has been created in such as way as to not respond to lighting. It is not a bug. The pan lighting setting has no effect unless lighting is enabled. If the scene appears uniformly dim when Lighting is first enabled, recall the default Sun Position is directly overhead, which causes the sides of all objects to appear in shadow in the mathematically precise world of computer rendering. Use the Sun Position menu to set a more aesthetically pleasing sun position. Testing on Linux revealed that moving the avatar with pan lighting and lighting both enabled sometimes resulted in CM Surveyor crashing with a "Problematic Thread Error" in C code that underlies Java3D. This is a bug in either the Java3D libJ3D.so library or in Mesa3D for Linux. Until the reponsible vendor(s) fix this bug, it can be avoided by disabling pan lighting.

Transparency ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ __________________________ | <untitled> | |------------------------| | * Fast Transparency | | o Nice Transparency | | o Screen Transparency | | o Blended Transparency | | o Transparency Off | -------------------------- Purpose: Allows selection of the transparency blending algorithm used when rendering transparent geometry in the VR Window. Usage: To Select the Fastest Algorithm: click Fast Transparency. The fastest available method for transparency will be used in subsequent rendering. To Select the Nicest Algorithm: click Nice Transparency. The highest quality available method for transparency will be used in subsequent rendering. To Select the "Screen Door" Algorithm: click Screen Transparency. A transparency algorithm that uses "an on/off stipple pattern in which the percentage of transparent pixels is approximately equal to the specified transparency value" will be used in subsequent rendering. To Select the Blended Algorithm: click Blended Transparency. A transparency algorithm that uses a proportional blending function will be used in subsequent rendering. To Disable Transparency: click Transparency Off. All transparent objects will appear as opaque. Notes: Many, but not all, 3D VR scenes contain transparent objects. If the scene being viewed contains no transparent objects, the Transparency menu items have no effect.

Color Blend ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ _________________ | <untitled> | |---------------| | * Fastest | | o Nicest | | o Flat | | o Gouraud | ----------------- Purpose: Allows selection of the color shading algorithm used when rendering colors in the VR Window. Usage: To Select the Fastest Algorithm: click Fastest. The fastest available method for color shading will be used in subsequent rendering. To Select the Nicest Algorithm: click Nicest. The highest quality available method for color shading will be used in subsequent rendering. To Select the Flat Shading Algorithm: click Flat. Enables a shading method that duplicates a single color, without any interpolation, across all the vertices of the primitive. This algorithm will be used in subsequent rendering. To Select a Smoothing Algorithm: click Gouraud. A gouraud (color smoothing) interpolation-based algorithm for color shading will be used in subsequent rendering. Notes: The difference between the various color rendering algorithms may not be very noticable on some systems.

Textures ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ ____________________________ | <untitled> | |--------------------------| | * Textures On | | o Textures Off | |--------------------------| | * Modulation Color Mode | | o Decal Color Mode | | o Blending Color Mode | | o Replacement Color Mode | |--------------------------| | * Fast Persp Correction | | o Nice Persp Correction | ---------------------------- Purpose: Allows changing parameters that affect the way textures are rendered in the VR Window, including texture enabling, blending of texture and shape colors, and texture perspective correction. Textures are bitmapped images layered over the surface of a polygon to produce an effect similar to a decal or wallpaper. Usage: To Render Polygons Using Textures: click Textures On. To Render Polygons Without Textures: click Textures Off. To Modulate the Shape Color with the Texture: click Modulation Color Mode. To Layer the Texture Over the Shape Color: click Decal Color Mode. To Blend the Shape Color with the Texture:: click Blending Color Mode. To Replace the Shape Color with the Texture:: click Replacement Color Mode. To Use Highest Quality Perspective Correction: click Nice Persp Correction. To Use Fastest Perspective Correction: click Fast Persp Correction. Notes: When Textures are disabled, the shape's assigned color will be used. When Textures are enabled, the color will be computed based on the Texture Color Mode setting. If enabling Textures has no noticable effect, the parts of the scene being rendered most likely are defined without Textures. The Texture Color Mode setting selects the algorithm used to compute the shape color taking into account any Textures assigned to the shape. Modulation, Decal, and Blending options combine the texture and shape colors in various ways. The Replace option substitutes the texture color for the shape's color. The Perspective Correction Setting influences Texture color and texture coordinate interpolations. In many cases, the difference between Fast and Nice Perspective Correction will not be very noticable.

Behavior ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ ___________________ | <untitled> | |-----------------| | * Behavior On | | o Behavior Off | |-----------------| | * Hyperlink On | | o Hyperlink Off | ------------------- Purpose: Provides controls to enable and disable behaviors. Usage: To Enable Behaviors: click Behavior On. All behaviors in the 3D VR view are immediately enabled. To Disable Behaviors: click Behavior Off. All behaviors in the 3D VR view are immediately disabled. To Enable Hyperlinking: click Hyperlink On. All hyperlink behaviors in the 3D VR view are enabled if Behavior On is set. Otherwise, this option has no effect. To Disable Hyperlinking: click Hyperlink Off. All hyperlink behaviors in the 3D VR view are immediately disabled. Notes: Currently, hyperlinking is the only behavior available. Other types of behaviors may be implemented in future versions.

VR Refresh Rate ______________________________________________________________ | CM Surveyor | |------------------------------------------------------------| #2 Menus | File Personal Environ Section Fidelity View Help | |------------------------------|----------------|------------| | | Rendering > | | | Lighting > | | Transparency > | | Color Blend > | | Textures > | | Behavior > | | Refresh Rate | ------------------ ________________________________ | VR Refresh Dialog | |------------------------------| || 1000.0 ||/\|/\| Accept | |+-------------+|~~|~~| | | Frame/100 sec | | | | |+-------------+| | | | || 10.0 || | | Reset | |+-------------+| | | | | Frame/sec | |__| | |+-------------+|==|__| | || 100 || | | Cancel | |+-------------+|__|__| | | ms per Frame |\/|\/| | -------------------------------- Purpose: Sets the maximum refresh rate for updating the scene in the 3D VR Window when the avatar is moved. Usage: To Set the Refresh Rate: adjust the Frame/sec scrollbars to the desired value, then click Accept. The left scrollbar has a resolution of 30 frames/100 sec, while the right can fine tune the rate to 1 frame/100 sec. To Restore the Previous Refresh Rate: press Reset instead of Accept after sliding the scrollbars. The scrollbars are returned to the last Accept'ed setting. To Dismiss the VR Refresh Dialog: press Cancel. Also resets the scrollbars to the last Accept'ed value. Notes: If the refresh rate is set to a value higher than the system hardware can physically accomodate, then the realized refresh rate is the maximum achievable by the system. Setting the refresh rate to a very small value, such as 1 frame/100 sec, effectively causes the 3D VR Window to be updated during mouse-driven movement only when the mouse button is released rather than continuously. Setting the refresh rate to zero disables updating of the 3D VR View Window entirely.