Local Navigation Systems Stepán Kment xkment@cslab.felk.cvut.cz Computer Graphics Group Czech Technical University Prague, Czech Republic

Hardware and software recommendations

I have currently tested VRML players on PC and SGI machines and I have to admit, that results did not make me happy. One must create highly optimised scenes in order to keep the framerate of playback in reasonable values (8+ fps). Full screen playback on Pentium II machine was impossible, I recommend no more than 300*300 pixels resolution of playback window. On O2 and Indy machines from SGI, the speed is nearly the same (slow) as on PC's. For reasonable results, machines with Pentium CPU and PCI graphics should be used, any hardware 3D acceleration compatible with directX or OpenGL technology helps much.
HTML browsers and VRML players differ much too. I recommend Internet Explorer 4 (that has a a bit better functionality than Netscape Communicator 4) and CosmoPlayer 2 (it has some specific advantages compared to MS VRML plug-in) as optimal configuration. Note that older VRML players do not support JavaScript as a valid language in the script node and that my examples will not work in these players.

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