Multiple Viewports Simultaneously?

[Percipient24]

I just found Hyperion last week and I am LOVING IT! My thanks and appreciation goes out to everyone involved with the project!

I have two questions, if you please:

First, does Hyperion have the capability to display two camera views of the same scene at the same time? Through XML and Lua I've defined two cameras, but it seems as though the last camera enabled is what shows up. Ideally I'd like to be able to show two views at the same time, for the purposes of a two-player racing game.

Second, what determines the maximum size for a window? I'm curious because another project requires a 3200x600 output displaying 4 different 800x600 views of the same scene (if it can do 2 for a racing game, how about 4?). My computer is running two  nVidia 7900 gs cards. Would enabling SLI get me any closer to my 3200x600, or do I need a hardware upgrade?

Thanks for your help! I apologize for my newbie-ness!

- Joe

[JeGX]

No need to apologize, with hyperion there are no n00b questions!
And your questions aren't for newbies 

You're a lucky guy, the multiple viewports management has just been improved and will be available in the next release.
So you'll be able to display the same scene by 2, 3, 4, ... cameras in the same time.

The maximum size of the window is simply fixed by the maximum size of the viewport. This data is dependent of your graphics card.
Example:
- Geforce 6/7: 4096x4960
- Geforce /: 8192x8192
- Radeon 1k: 4096x4096
- Radeon 2k/3k: 8192x8192

So with a geforce 8 or a radeon 3k, you could create a window of 8192x8192... With such a res, you'll be able to span your demo on four 24" widescreen: 7680x1200!!!   

Use GPU Caps Viewer to get the size of the viewport (you get the size in the second tab).

[Percipient24]

Thanks for the speedy response! This community is AWESOME!

One more question, please. When can the next release be expected?

To give you more information...

I'm a student at Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester NY, USA) working with a team of 8 others on a 3D immersive environment. Think of a large cube with cloth walls you can stand inside of, with rear-projected screens on each of the 4 vertical sides. We're working on content that can be dynamically projected on this system, to eventually travel to area schools as an educational aid.

Because we're working in the time constraints of the university course, being able to test this out and develop for it hinge on being able to have a testbed that works.

I was very impressed with the timeline in your release notes - back in 2005/6 you all were releasing a new one every month! Amazing! I'm just a little nervous because your last release before this one was almost a year ago. I don't mean to be demanding, but this system is our most promising tool, and a guess at the next release date would be very helpful.

Thanks again!

- Joe

[JeGX]

No panic Joe, the next release is planned for the next few days. We're working on a new logo...

Okay now I understand why you need multiple and large viewports. Cool!

[Percipient24]

Hooray for Demoniak3D! The new release was a great early Christmas present.

I've been continuing work on the immersive environment project and have a few more questions.

http://testing.jp-design.net/Demoniak3D/4cams.zip shows a quick demo of a 4-camera setup (I borrowed the church model from one of the samples) . . . with a couple problems.

1 - Inactive Viewport Streaking?
When I run this, it looks like whatever viewport the mouse is over behaves correctly, but all others redraw over the previous frames' content (leaving streaks). Is there a way to force a viewport to clear itself before redrawing? Or is that an issue with my graphics card? Please help! :-D

2 - Window/Viewport Sizing?
Why does is the actual window size different from the window size in the HyperGraph? I'd like to run 4 800x600 viewports in a 3200x600 window. 3200x600 is less than the 4096x4096 my graphics card *should* support. The biggest I can get is 4 300x225 viewports in a 1200x225 window. When I try something bigger, the window that opens is much less than 3200! This was answered above, but my results are different from the given explanation. Please correct my lack of understanding! :-D

3 - C++/Lua Communication? [unrelated to viewports]
I have a Nintendo Wii Remote connected to my computer through a BlueSoleil bluetooth adapter. It can communicate with a C++ script. I'd like to be able to access the Wii Remote through Lua to control Demoniak3D scenes. Is there a way to get Lua and C++ to communicate with eachother? Please point me in the right direction.

I realize I've been asking a lot of questions, and appreciate all the help I've been given. I'll be glad to share my experiences and source-code once I have something worth sharing! Thanks all!

- Joe

[JeGX]

Hey Joe,

here are some answers...

1 - Inactive Viewport Streaking?
Yes you're right, there is a small framebuffer refresh problem. I'm going to look at this asap.

2 - Window/Viewport Sizing?
I'm afraid this problem comes from the free version of Demoniak3D. In the free version, the viewport is limited to 1280x1024...
Buy the unlimited version: http://www.ozone3d.net/demoniak3d/purchase.php
It's really cheap!

3 - C++/Lua Communication? [unrelated to viewports]
I think LUA is able to load and control regular C DLL. But I didn't play with this side of LUA yet. But you're not the first person who asks me this kind of question. So let me a few time and I will look at how call DLL functions from LUA.

[Percipient24]

JeGX,

  Thanks again for your speedy response! Your help on the forums is one of the reasons I don't have a problem purchasing a full version! I'll be ordering later today!

- Joe

[JeGX]

The version 1.18.0 fixes the framebuffer refresh: http://www.ozone3d.net/blogs/demoniak3d/?p=57
I'll look at LUA/DLL later.