As Deron predicted way back in January, our product has been renamed. What you have come to know as Point Break is now called Insight3D. Usually developers resist name changes but we're all pretty happy with it. We hope the name change doesn't cause too much confusion for you. In memory of our original name, I've modified the Surface Mesh primitive example in our HowTo to use our original logo for the texture:
We don't have a new logo yet but you should have high expectations.
In other news, we are thrilled about the amount of interest Insight3D received at this year's User's Conference. Thanks to everyone for their feedback and ideas. If you have more to say or want to request an alpha version, email Insight3D@agi.com. Our team has quite the track record of making changes based on customer feedback. In fact, Bart immediately started coding things based on customer requests from the User's Conference, after he returned in the "party van."
The slides for our Insight to Insight3D presentation from the UC are available under Primers on our User's Conference page. They assure me that the log-in is quick and painless. For other Insight3D resources, check out our online help or this past summer's special edition Inview. The Inview contains two articles on Insight3D (called Point Break back then). We were excited to meet many people at the UC that read the Inview and wanted to learn more.
Fall recruitment season is only a month away. Good timing. Our 3D team is working on lots of interesting problems in the fields of computer graphics and software architecture. In fact, we have so many interesting things to do that we need your help.
Specifically, we’d like to talk to students in computer science, math, engineering, or other hard majors, who are seeking internships for next spring or summer. Both undergraduate and graduate students are equally encouraged to contact us.
The alpha version of Point Break is now complete. For an alpha, it is packed with features, documentation, and examples. I also expect it is more stable then most alpha software; well over 20,000 lines of unit test code have been hammering on it several times a day for months. If you're interested in trying out the alpha, contact Tom Urie at PointBreakAlpha@agi.com.
Before I provide an overview of the major features, I'll show two example projects that ship with the SDK. We’ve blogged a lot about the data structures and algorithms deep inside Point Break, but we've rarely shown it in action – these examples will change that. Since we know there's no better way to learn an API than by example, we've provided the HowTo project shown in the video below.
View the higher quality .avi (31.6 meg) if you want to be able to read the text in the video.
This example presents many of the component's capabilities organized by namespace and object. When the user clicks on a task, the 3D window is immediately updated. In addition, the code used to create the visualization is shown in the code view for easy copy and paste. The HowTo actually reads its own source code to display the code.
We're taking a break from Point Break to discuss how STK's Solar Panel Tool calculates its numbers. STK's Solar Panel Tool is used to estimate the amount of power that solar panels generate at a given time. If you are unfamiliar with the tool, search for "Solar Panel Tool" in STK's Help to learn how to use it. The tool uses a graphical rather than analytical approach to determine power.
Since the '90s, STK has visualized the geometric relationships in 3D between land, sea, air, and space assets over time. Our 3D engine has been specifically designed around the core strength of AGI: astrodynamics. Given the emphasis that STK places on space, the engine is adept at precisely rendering very close and very far objects in the same view. Years of feedback have guided the engine's development to meet our customers' analytical needs for situational awareness, geospatial intelligence, spacecraft mission design and operations, etc. With Point Break, we are taking all that experience and lessons learned to allow our customers to use that same 3D engine in their own applications. More...
Welcome to the AGI 3D Graphics Team blog. Our blog primarily concerns Point Break, the future 3D visualization component for AGI's product suite. The name is inspired by the movie of the same name that entered the Western canon in 1991, and the name will likely suffer the same fate as FBI agent Angelo Pappas before going into production.
Point Break is AGI's 3D engine in component form ready to integrate into your application. Point Break can use either STK's astrodynamic libraries or AGI's C# based Dynamic Geometry Library (DGL) for astrodynamic calculations. Therefore, Point Break works with both 4DX and DGL based applications.
In this blog, we'll discuss our design decisions, our experiences implementing papers and algorithms, and major Point Break components and best practices. From time to time we'll make proposals and solicit feedback.
