thx  
after the scene change and adding the lights the apperance really changed. my only problem is texture aliasing but i will open a topic about it

r a f t

considering my experience how much it differs between a timer based approach and animation loop, i agree with you: depending on sleep and other os timing measures is not good idea. i put it in my todo list, although not that urgent (since requires a lot of work :/)

if you dont run cpu to its limits everything is working fine, but the more you load the cpu the stranger the whole system behaves.

i also find it strange that there are so many articles, books etc suggesting fixed time step approach. it obviously eases some calculations but..

btw, i still cant figure out how on some machines that loop can run 2-3 times faster. i cant imagine how clock granularity and sleep inaccuracy may result this continuosly (it's not for a second or so, it just runs fast ??)

r a f t

well, first of all this is not a jPCT question, it's about the strange behaviour of my animation loop on some rare machines. i have no idea why and when that happens, maybe you may have

i've taken the animation loop below from a book about Java games and slightly modified

as you can see, the main idea is to keep updates per second constant (as much as the desired fps = 1 / period). it works reasonably well on most machines (including my slow one) but on some rare ones, updates per second increases unexpectedly up to 2-3 times.  

i've no idea how that can happen ? i can only blame window's system clock granularity or sleep time inaccuracies (even with sleep time inaccuracies that loop shouldnt expected to run faster ??)

so do you have any ideas why this may happen ?
thx

edit: the mentioned book by Andrew Davison can be found online at http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/


            long beforeTime, afterTime, timeDiff, sleepTime;
            long overSleepTime = 0;
            int noDelays = 0;
            long excess = 0;
           
            running = true;
           
            while(running) {
                try {
                    beforeTime = System.nanoTime();
                    gameUpdate();
                    if (! paused)
                        gameRender();
                   
                    afterTime = System.nanoTime();
                    timeDiff = afterTime - beforeTime;
                    sleepTime = (period - timeDiff) - overSleepTime;
                   
                    if (sleepTime > 0) { // some time left in this cycle
                        try {
                            Thread.sleep(sleepTime/1000000L); // nano -> ms
                        } catch(InterruptedException ex) {}
                       
                        overSleepTime = (System.nanoTime() - afterTime) - sleepTime;
                       
                    } else { // sleepTime <= 0; frame took longer than period
                        excess -= sleepTime; // store excess time value
                        overSleepTime = 0L;
                       
                        if (++noDelays >= KConfig.noDelaysPerYield) {
                            Thread.yield(); // give another thread a chance to run
                            noDelays = 0;
                        }
                    } // if-else (sleepTime > 0)
                   
                    /* If rendering is taking too long, update the game state without rendering it, to get the updates/sec nearer to the required FPS. */
                    int skips = 0;
                    while (running && (excess > period) && (skips < KConfig.maxFrameSkips)) {
                        excess -= period;
                        skips++;
                        gameUpdate(); // update state but don't render
                    }
                   
                } catch (Throwable t) {
                    logger.warning("exception in timer thread {0}", t);
                }
            } // while running


r a f t

hello,

how should Object3D.setSortOffset(float) be used ? javadoc says it sets on offset for the z-Sorting but i couldnt get it. i guess it's sth like objects are sorted by given float for render but what about the camera ? should one track where the camera is by himself and set the sort offset accordingly ?

i'm having a strange rendering artifact:  it seems like polygons are sliding when camera approachs to them, as can be seen in image below. i have two transparent objects one covering another. the inner one is actually rendered (it has visible pixels) but the outer one is never seen (all black) and used for collision purposes.



strange rendering disappears if i dont put the outer one into to the world.  that made me think this may have something with that sort offset thing.

so how should i use Object3D.setSortOffset() thing ?
thx

r a f t
ps: the two objects arent that close, the inner one is fine grained (has a lot of polygons) but the outer one is a simple box with 6 faces.
ps2: infact the invisible one is inside, but their normals are looking inside and the camera in always inside

re-wrote balloons:
* changed the way they are drawn (i dont know why, previous mechanism hangs a bit on windows during first popup),
* changed their appearance,
* added some smoothness to their movements,
* and they are kind of (not that much) smart now: they try to avoid overlapping each other.

still needs some improvements for a clearer view in crowd

the new balloons


r a f t

* added the new boy avatar.
* improved avatar mechanism to allow mixing texture and mesh based variations.
* changed avatar panel to use thumbnails.
* improved avatar tool to test and fine tune paired animations (can be found at demos section).
* slightly changed camera behaviour based on distance: one may feel it while adjusting camera with shift + arrow keys. i'm not quite happy with the new default angle but i have to since those avatars arent made to be viewed from above back

the new boy avatar


girl and boy kissing in test tool


r a f t

yeap, they're cool, they provide private jvm, shell access etc..