Re: [9fans] Colors and other fun

["Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>]

"Bakul Shah" <bakul+plan9@bitblocks.com> wrote in message 
news:20070627190951.73A8B5B3B@mail.bitblocks.com...
> I am not sure what I mean :-)  Guess some sort of 3D UI.  A
> way to deal with 3d objects.  ...

You need to distinguish between a genuine 3D display, which is extremely 
rare,
a stereoscopic display, which is not as rare (I have played Tomb Raider on a 
PC in stereo),
and a 3D *model* rendered in 2D, which is pretty common these days.

3D rendering is computationally intensive, and in modern times it is usually
done by sending the model to a so-called 3D graphics card along with
lighting and viewing parameters; updating just the viewing parameters
is sufficient to view a static model from all aspects.  For 3D games a
lot of compromises are made in order to be able to supply new model
information at a good frame rate as the modeled objects move in real time.

You might look into free 3D rendering software such as the POV ray-tracer
or the BRL-CAD package (on SourceForge I believe), which I contributed
to in its early days.  These provide modeling and viewing tools, and in the
case of BRL-CAD there are programming library facilities for interrogating
the model geometry, for applications like ballistic vulnerability studies.
*Maybe* these could be ported to Plan 9; I suspect APE would be helpful.
If there is an X-Windows server for Plan 9 it might not be too hard.