Hi Fred, Thanks for the feedback! Regarding the load time, I have observed a noticeable delay when first loading the page, but on my system the delay is less than 5 seconds (I timed it a few times after clearing my caches). This delay is almost entirely due to a single large (2.68 MB) JavaScript data file that contains all of the info for all of the polyhedra/tilings. The only ways I can think of to shorten it would be to (a) split up the file and load portions of it as needed, or (b) generate some of the data on the client when a given polyhedron is selected, replacing the expanded data with a more compact description in the data file. Both solutions would be kind of a pain to implement, so for now I'm just going to live with the delay when loading the page. I agree that the f+e+he notation isn't obvious until you try it and see what it does. "f" means "[visible] faces", "e" means "[visible] edges", and "he" means "hidden edges". The problem with expanding the components into full words is that it would result in some overly long names, e.g. "faces+edges+hidden edges". My thinking here was that people might be initially confused, but as soon as they tried it it would be obvious what was being shown, after which the compact names would be preferable. Regarding some of the less useful viewing combinations, I suppose it's partially a matter of taste and/or interest. In my case, I usually leave it on "f", but sometimes I use "f+e", and sometimes "e" or "e+he". My feeling here is that with only 5 options in the list, it's easy enough to simply ignore the ones you don't use, and I find them all interesting to look at even if I rarely use some of them. Fore the background, I'm undecided on whether changing it to a light gray would make things better or worse. One of the problems with a light gray background is that the hidden edges would tend to fade from view when viewing in "e+he" mode. Expanding the set of polyhedra to include the non-convex cases would certainly be a logical extension to what's there now. The biggest problem is that my 3D renderer is too primitive to handle the intersecting faces. Even if the faces were sliced up into smaller pieces that could be z-ordered when rendering, I would still need to add a z-sort. At the moment, the hidden surface logic is laughably simple: It just takes the dot product of a surface normal and the view point relative to the base of the normal, and looks at the sign. If it's positive, then the outer surface is facing the viewer and the face is visible. If it's negative, then the inner surface is facing the viewer and it's hidden. No sorting needed. Tom Fred Lunnon writes:
Took minutes to load, but then ran OK on my iMac/Mavericks/Chrome.
Suggest scrapping viewing options f+e+he , e , renaming e+he -> e ; maybe use words instead?
A tastefully neutral background would be worth spending time on tuning.
Are you going to tackle stellated and Coxeter/Miller uniform families?
WFL
On 3/17/15, Tom Karzes <karzes@sonic.net> wrote:
Hi folks,
I've put together a simple interactive polyhedron viewer which might be of interest. It requires a web browser that's current enough to support html5, and JavaScript has to be enabled, but that's pretty much it.
Here's the URL:
http://karzes.best.vwh.net/polyhedra/polyhedron.html
You can click-and-drag the individual polyhedra to rotate them, or you can make them spin around automatically.
Some filters are available at the top, based on classification and on rotational symmetry. Please note that the rotational symmetry designations are deliberately broad and imprecise, so please don't flame me for their lack of specificity; it's intentional.
I should add that the click-and-drag functionality won't work with a touch screen, so you'll want to use a real mouse to use the full interface.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
Tom
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