[Haskell-cafe] Uniting graphics libraries

[Vo Minh Thu]

2010/9/18 Tillmann Vogt <Tillmann.Vogt at rwth-aachen.de>:
>  Am 18.09.2010 15:14, schrieb Vo Minh Thu:
>>
>> Hi,
>> This is a great goal! I've also been thinking in solidifying all
>> things 3D on hackage lately and forming a game and graphics strike
>> team. (The idea is that even if you're not interested in games, there
>> are still a lot of common things.)
>>
>> Now it seems you see Collada as a good common starting point. I don't
>> know much about Collada and I can't really say if it is a good idea or
>> not. But by following the blender development mailing list, it seems
>> people don't really 'trust' it, in the sense that in practice, it is
>> still difficult to move things around between different programs
>> through Collada...
>
> Maybe the format isn't properly implemented in some programs. I have also
> experienced examples-files that didn't load.
> But it think that collada is currently the best format and it's quite
> powerful (shaders, physics, ...).
>
>> Also Collada is (I am not sure) just an interchange format and you
>> talk about data types. Can you be a bit more specific about what you
>> envision? Are they a direct representation of Collada?
>
> Yes, pretty much a direct representation. But some things can be made
> simpler. I.e. I replace the <instance_> tags with their value and have a
> type garantee instead of trusting that a url referenced object exists.
> The Collada people stress the point that its only an interchange format.
> But Google is using it also for delivery (Google Earth).
> If one can live with some seconds longer loading it is no problem.
> By the way wonder why Collada isn't advocating binary XML?
> That would make things faster.
>
>> You talk about combining the different libraries on Hackage, would you
>> like to do it through Collada?
>
> Yes, the types . I currently don't see a better way.

Ok. I'll learn more about Collada then. Is your code already available
somewhere?

Still, Collada seems to be on a far end of the spectrum of what could
be unified. I mean, say your animation has to be rendered by some
Haskell code, do you wish to go through Collada or that your animation
code and the rendering code share some other data structures than
Collada (Or maybe Collada is just a first step?) ? If the later, it
would be useful to share what those other data structures should be.

>> When I said I thought about solidifying things lately, I was thinking
>> to the problem you describe but at a lower level: for instance there
>> are many different representations for 3D vectors and transforms. Is
>> it also a concern for you?
>
> This is a problem. But I would accept a majority vote. At the moment I would
> use the same vector library as gpipe.

Why a majority vote? Maybe we can do better: state some desired
properties, benchmark the existing libraries and see if something
fits?

Are there other people interested in unifying the efforts here?

Cheers,
Thu