Michael Frank Deering: Graphics Software Projects
Below is a list of the commercial/research 3D graphics software that I was the architect of or the consulting architect of. (Some projects also qualify as VR and are listed in duplicate on that page.)
Sun: Java 3DTM
I (with others) architected a 3D scene graph API for Java: Java 3D. This software has been and still is widely available for a number of platforms: Sun, HP, SGI, Apple, Linux, and Microsoft.
Sun: HoloWeb
This was a last minute submission to the VRML II competition. (Currently, the file is in inverse page order!)
Sun: HoloSketch
This was a research project I designed to see what would happen when a high-resolution virtual reality environment was always available. In the main, HoloSketch was a system for creating, editing, and animating 3D objects all in VR. But HoloSketch was also used as a 3D playback environment, a demo system, and a research platform for debugging many 3D graphics concepts: compressed geometry, 3D scene graphs, and per-pixel programmable shading hardware. There was never and intent to release HoloSketch as a commercial product, but a sub-set of HoloSketch was released as a real-time demo with all Creator3D systems, and the design of Java 3D was heavily influenced by our experience with HoloSketch. The second version of the Virtual Portal was run by HoloSketch, and several HoloSketch and HoloSketch related papers were produced.
Sun: TBAG
This was an earlier research project on high level 3D graphics API’s. While it was not commercialized, a SIGGRAPH paper did result.
Personal: Ray Tracer
This was the first general purpose 3D graphics rasterization program I wrote, and various versions over the years supported a number of (now common) features.
