Flocker - New Version

Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 4:24PM
Eric Fredericksen in LUA, OpenGL, flocking, software, software

I have been having a lot of fun with LUA lately, expanding the Flocker program to create a better 3D display experience. :)

Get the latest version here.

Updates and additions in this version include:

• Added configurability of 8 lights covering the gamut of OpenGL controls, including diffuse, ambient, and specular colors, and omnidirectional light position (directional-at-infinity lights are not yet enabled). You also can choose to make any omnidirectional light a spot source and set its direction, beam width, etc.
• Expanded the bird avatar to use 3D geometry and surface material properties.
• Added preconfigured, programmatic generation of bird placement (accessed through the menu).
• Added independent load, save, and delete of lighting configurations.
• Updated tooltips and added some help buttons that open Wikipedia pages describing the topic.
• Extended the bird-space partitioning to 3D (a performance enhancement for flocking calculations).
• Updated LuaGL to version 1.4 so I could use some additional GLUT functions.
• Factored the OpenGL related code out into a separate module.

Note: the OpenGL Testing tab is just there for fun. You can watch it but not interact with it. :)

-Eric

Article originally appeared on Got reading material? (https://pttpsystems.com/).