Wings clone in C++

[nemyax]

https://github.com/feather3d/feather
The guy's set out to make a full clone of Wings. If anything, it will be an interesting project to follow.

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Edited by Micheus
Updated the github link to the new one. (the old was: github.com/richardlayman/feather)

[ggaliens]

Yep. Just like FreeStyle, I'm sure.

[nemyax]

What's FreeStyle? Google isn't turning up anything relevant.
EDIT: Never mind, I've found the sad little thingie. I wonder what the author hoped for when he made it non-free.

[ggaliens]

He seemed pretty serious for a time, Madsie. Honestly, I have not opened the app in ages.
It might do something more now than then ... but seems aweful stale.

[Wegg]

This Feather thing looks pretty awesome. I'd love to have a version of Wings that didn't have the polygon limitations of earlang.

[nemyax]

the polygon limitations of earlang

What polygon limitations? Erlang's limitations are not polygonal in nature =)
The Feather project is still pretty active (a commit or two every few days), but doesn't do anything yet.

[ggaliens]

I think the design choice of C++ is so so silly. And in fact ... will doom the project.

[Wegg]

Nemyax, I'd love to hear why you believe it is difficult for wings to handle super large models.

ggaliens, what is it about C++ that is silly? I'm not a programmer but it seems to me that more modern languages and compilers would be of huge benefit. I know blender is coded in C. messiahtudio is all C. Is there something about C++ that would make it incapable of creating a modern re-fresh of Wings3D?

[ggaliens]

C++ is not a modern language. It's ancient by computer standards and not at all suited to mesh processing.

C++ is used for performance reasons only ... and for me ... that seems like a WEAK reason. There is also the aspect of also being compatible with tons of native libraries ... again ... for me personally ... a WEAK reason.

VHS beat Betamax. Momentum is a real thing.

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"Is there something about C++ that would make it incapable of creating a modern re-fresh of Wings3D? "

incapable and easy to re-write ... they aint the same issues Wegg. I'm going with Wings3D won't be easy to re-write and get it functionally the same ... why should it be easy ?

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And maybe more simply ... in this case ... I think there are cool aspects of Wings3D and the way it works that are absolutely strongly tied to the way in which it is implemented at a core level.

C++ .... Erlang

Way different ....

So ... what you have is a RE-WRITE. Which may be fine. But I would suggest to you ... that you count the module and code in wings src tree and consider that it is functionally compact stuff ... now think about writing 3,4,5 times as many lines of code to do the same job in a low level language. Why not use assembler ? It helps with performance. Perhaps they still do for critical loops.

GROSS MAN.

[nemyax]

Why not use assembler ? It helps with performance.

Because portability.

not at all suited to mesh processing

No less suited than Erlang is. It's a general-purpose programming language, and a mesh is a data structure. So how is it not suited?

I'd love to hear why you believe it is difficult for wings to handle super large models.

Because it runs as bytecode on a software virtual machine rather than on raw hardware.