On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 01:51:17PM -0600, Richard Rauch wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 06:33:25PM +0000, Gilbert Fernandes wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 01:47:10AM -0600, Richard Rauch wrote:
> > 
> > > The database hasn't exactly taken off, but it hasn't vanished, either.
> > > (^&
> > 
> > :)
> > 
> > maybe we can improve this. a database of users per

(It's growing, though.  Note that despite a relative
sparsity of people, Australia has recently jumped
dramatically in daemon population on the database.  (^&)


 [...]
> > for example, maps should have dots for local user
> > groups and be clickable so it jumps/pops to the
> > name and address of the local user group.
> 
> Okay, two problems:
> 
>  * The map resolution is not so great.  Already names are
 [...]
> 
>  * At present, the maps are generated pretty simply:
 [...]

Both issues might be addressed by going through POV-Ray,
I guess.  It doesn't require an X server to be running,
and lets you control image resolution, etc.  Although not
designed for real-time graphics, one could probably twiddle
the parameters enough to get a high-speed rendering even
on my web-server (a "mere" PII at 233MHz---way overkill for
a web/mail server, but slower than everything but my laptop).

Massaging latitude/longitude information into coords on
a texture-mapped sphere should be easy.


Another alternative, for lynx/links users out there (I know
that there are some!) would be to render to a text field.
A cheat would be to just take the coords as rectangular
coords, with a little intelligence for wrapping the sphere.
This would be lightning fast and with a little work one
should be able to dream up a CGI interface to move around
the scene.

Maybe even a telnetable service that assumes a VT100-like
terminal...


-- 
  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about."  http://www.olib.org/~rkr/