GLBasic 3D Improvements Request

[Qube]

Hi, Gernot,

What's the chances of upping the abilities on the 3D side of GLB? - I'd love to have, especially for iOS :

1.. 3D particle engine. Even a very simple one would help as right now it's a nightmare to do anything like this due to z-order issues. GLB definitely needs a method for particle effects.

2.. Sphere mapping. I know this is already in but last time I checked it didn't work on iOS.

3.. Added commands for object rotation to avoid gimbal lock. True there are routines already out there but none are 100% bug free. So we could do with built in commands.

Any chance these will make it into GLB? - I'd happily pay to have them in 

[Kitty Hello]

1. The particle engine would have to sort the particles also. There's no other way. unless you totally want to disable writing to the z-buffer... OK, I'll add that.

2. I think that's not possible. Maybe with OpenGL|ES 2.x, but that I would have to rewrite the whole engine with shaders.

3. You can use X_MULTMATRIX and provide a final matrix. There's no gimbal lock with that. How you get that is your task. The matrix is just a set of 3 vectors for x,y,z axis and one vector for the position.

[Qube]

1.. A simple particle engine to avoid z-order fighting or having to manually sort 100's of particles with funky math would be a great help, thanks  - I think OpenGL has a method for using the depth buffer? - I'm sure you'll sort out a speedy method 

2.. Best not go that far then, just for sphere mapping, lol. Seems a tad overkill for one feature 

3.. I've sorted it out myself with multimatrix but I was just thinking of other users and new users who go into the 3D side and suffer with gimbal lock. Using multimatrix is not simply an alternative to X_ROTATION though as it requires other hand coded functions when it comes to gimbal lock free rotations.

Thanks for adding no.1 to your to-do list 

[Slydog]

2. I think that's not possible. Maybe with OpenGL|ES 2.x, but that I would have to rewrite the whole engine with shaders.

I assume this is a major undertaking?

Would there be other advantages to upgrading to OpenGL ES 2.x?
I think the shader support is much better.

[Kitty Hello]

It breaks compatibility with old ipods and iphones. (3g iirc)