Questions and Answers.

 

Question

 

Answer

Is 3D Worlds free?

 

Yes, for the general public.

 

If you're a public body, well... we can negotiate.

Question

 

Answer

What's the basic idea behind 3D Worlds?

 

The basic principle of 3D Worlds is to show historical scenes - not as they are, ...what would be the point - but as they were, with banners flying, fires burning in the hearth, and animated people.

 

In the same way that the Doom and Quake games were each a basic engine into which you could then load different game levels, we've wanted for some time to use the same principle - a single software engine which could have different historic scenes added as we made them. (Or even like MS Word, loading different documents.)

 

But 3D Worlds is not a game.

It is educational software, but much more fun than learning pages of facts and figures.

Question

 

Answer

Which software was used?

 

Blitz3D was the specialist 3D language used; plus DirectX 9 extensions thanks to FastLibs.

Question

 

Answer

Who did the modelling and animation?

 

TLA modelled all the main buildings, terrain, water, and effects.

Some models were bought in (-just too good to ignore).

Arteria and Bond1 provided the superb animated characters.

Question

 

Answer

Why does 3D Worlds look so crap on Windows 7?

 

Glad you asked me that.

 

1) On my 9-year old Vaio laptop the performance is slow and jerky.

This is because they didn't think to put a lot of graphics memory into computers in those days.

A message pops up explaining, and recommending that the user disables vegetation and extraneous scenery.

And that's the best I can do with an old under-powered machine.

 

2) On my 5-6 year old desktop running XP (which is what most of the country probably has) all intended graphics function correctly - smooth animation, subtle lighting, and triple layer terrain (grass, stones, sand etc).

 

3) On my brand new Windows 7 PC

I've found that - as usual - Microsoft have not yet fully implemented 3D graphics.

We'll probably find full functionality creeping in as they send out updates over the next couple of years, but currently 3D graphics capability is way below that of a standard PC with XP+nVidia card, and is in fact effectively bugged in certain areas.

That's why it's taken me another couple of weeks to build in Windows 7 detection,

which then automatically disables certain intended graphics such as the triple-layer terrain.

A popup message at the start warns Windows 7 users of this problem.