No, there are Intel Macs with integrated video all the way up to
high-end cards. All can, from what I've seen, handle OpenGL just fine
- I know my Macbook does, so I presume all other Intel Macs with
better video systems can too.
so it is safe to assume that all Intel Macs can handle Shockwave / SPi-V
when Shockwave is available natively on Intel Mac?
In light of what Hans mentions from a Brocap perspective Intel Macs
*need* to be a separate machine class, for if they are silently added to
the current OSX class and a website has Shockwave/SPi-V higher in the
pecking order than QuickTime, the risk is to display "nothing".
Brocap defines for each machine class a plugin pecking order
(customizable by the website owner) so that VRs are displayed with the
first available plugin in that pecking order. The intention is to avoid
a plugin download and to adapt the display to the specific situation
without bothering the user. Only if no plugin is available, the user is
directed to a download page.
Well as you know, on Macs we always have Quicktime available.
sure I know that, but also Shockwave, Java, Flash can run on Macs...
without entering a discussions of the pros and cons of each technology,
there are some features available in QuickTime that are not available in
other players and there some features available in other players that
are not available in QuickTime. So depending on what content the
webesite shows, the best experience may be given by a different
technology than QuickTime. I'll mention just three applications that
come into my mind now:
we have chosen Java as the preferred delivery method for these visits
because authoring them in QuickTime would be much more expensive. In
Java/ptviewer the overlay floorplan and the hotspots are added
automatically, dynamically, from a database. The same principle can be
used for the other supported technologies (the modules have not been
coded yet). For QuickTime we'd have to hard-code them in the QTVRs. More
time consuming. More expensive. The result is a compromise. It is also a
compromise on Mac users: since Java has plenty of problems to display
properly on the Mac, we decided to show them the (degraded) QT version.
once the DevalVR example loaded, move the cursor on the top of the
window from left to right. I could offer a degraded QT version, e.g. as
multi-node panorama or as two separate QTVRs, but no smooth transition
as in the example above. For this content, QT would not be my first choice.
Currently the following machines classes are defined:
* modern Windows: anything after Windows 2000
* legacy Windows: all other Windows boxes
* modern Mac: OS X (and currently also Intel Macs)
Not this is a pretty wide berth... a lot of machines can run OSX that
are miserable for some things. I think it's better to classify Modern
OSX and then everything else - personally I'd probably distinguish
between 10.3 and later, and all other versions.
does this mean that 10.3 machines can run SPi-V while pre-10.3 can't?
and can't pre-10.3 be upgraded?
these machines classes are an abstraction, and it is all done relatively
to panorama displaying capabilities. If those 10.3 machines can display
VR better than pre-10.3 machines, that's something I'll want to look
into. So far I had no choice but use QuickTime as a standard for all of
these machines, because some are not good enough at Shockwave/SPi-V. If
there is an indication that the bar can be set at the 10.3 version
(rather than at the Intel Mac), I'll do that.
* legacy Mac: all other Mac systems
Ouch...
ouch? why ouch?
By the same token, you can't tell from a browser user agent or even OS
version whether a machine will handle Shockwave well or not. Too many
variables besides OS and browser...
true. I've also seen very modern machine misconfigured so that they can
not handle a particular technology, even though the hardware would have
handled it and the indication from the software said it could. i wish
there would be an easy way to make the deterministic approach (determine
what hardware and software is there and use it) work. instead i must
rely on a probabilistic approach (determine what you can about hw and sw
and based on that classify the machine into a class it is most likely to
belong to).
Why use Brocap at all for Macs then if you'll default to Quicktime,
which everyone has? When would a Mac user ever see PangeaVR or a Java
player in this case?
I've had reports of QuickTime not displaying properly on Mac, e.g. in
Firefox browsers. Misconfiguration is beyond the control of anybody but
the owner of the client machine. The interaction between different
packages (web broswer, os, plugin) is also beyond my control. Last but
not least, see my above argument for content that QuickTime can not
(yet?) handle.
variety is the very spice of life, it seems :-)
Yuv
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