[plt-scheme] 3-D graphics

On Thu, 2009-03-26 at 09:38 -0700, John Clements wrote:
> On Mar 26, 2009, at 6:28 AM, Stephen Bloch wrote:
> 
> > I attended a talk yesterday on using 3-D animation to teach  
> > mathematical concepts.  The presenter was using either (a C/C++  
> > library named DarkGDK) or SecondLife, but I imagine a lot of the  
> > same things could be done with Alice.  And if we perceive Alice as a  
> > serious competitor for "how to teach beginning programming," it  
> > would be nice if we could beat (or at least meet) her on her own  
> > turf -- fun, highly-motivating, attractive 3-D animation accessible  
> > to first-semester students.
> >
> > So there's this OpenGL binding bundled with PLT Scheme.  Who out  
> > there has played with it?  I'd like to write (or, even better, get  
> > somebody else to write!) a beginner-friendly, functional front end  
> > for it that allows first-semester students to build 3-D animations,  
> > with not much more difficulty than the 2-D animations we do with  
> > world, sb-world, or universe.  Is anybody working on this sort of  
> > thing?
> 
> It's ludicrously unfair of me to mention this before he's even gotten  
> started, but I'm working with an undergraduate (cc:'ed) who's  
> expressed an interest in bringing OpenGL into the FrTime fold.  

I had a go at this a while back, and wrote a 3D graphics frtime
extension which is included with fluxus. I'm hoping to get some more
time to work on it and get some decent examples going.

I think the combination of functional reactive programming and games are
really intriguing. Having worked on big commercial game projects in the
past, I think a switch to a different way of managing state is long
overdue in that industry.

cheers,

dave