I'm familiar with the Alternativa3D engine
To me it's quite good, but I just wondered about another 3d engine which is able to compete with it.
An engine must correspond to the following requirements:
must have a good Stage3D support
be open-source if possible (Alternativa3D is not open-source, it's the major disadvantage)
must have an adequate documentation and tutorials
There are a few good 3D engines for actionscript. Although I only know of these two that support Stage3D at the moment:
Away3D - Stage3D support from version 4.0 upwards and is open-source.
Flare3D - They are not open-source but free to use for non-commercial projects and they also have a really cool website.
Hope this helps.
You may have to compromise somewhat because Stage3D is a new resource so support and uptake especially in free open source engines is going to be scarce. You may need to be more realistic with your constraints and settle for an engine which is not open source or isn't documented as much as you would like.
http://www.flashsandy.org/
It's documented, and it's open source. I'm not sure how good it is, the samples work...
Related
I've been trying to make use of the GPU as part of a project of mine. I've looked into both CUDA and OpenCL, but the lack of information showing you how to introduce these into a project is shocking. Even their dedicated forum groups are dead. So now, I'm looking into DirectCompute.
From what I can tell, it's simply a new type of shader file that makes use of HLSL. My question is this, does my program (aside from being DirectX 10 / 11 ) need its structure changed?
I mean, is it simply a case of creating the CS file, setting in the project like I would any other shader, and watch the magic happen?
Any information on this would be appreciated.
Yes CS fits into the usual DirectX programming structure. It works in a similar way to CUDA/OpenCL. Here is a good, simple example:
http://openvidia.sourceforge.net/index.php/DirectCompute
Personally I would suggest using CUDA/OpenCL rather than going the DirectCompute route if your project does not involve graphics. I think CUDA/OpenCL are better for general-purpose computing. It can be a little difficult to find documentation but these are the main aspects to GPU programming:
Setting up data on the CPU to pass to the GPU.
Understanding how many warps/threads need to be started on the GPU, how threads might need to communicate, etc.
Computing on the GPU, reading data back on the CPU
Another option is C++ AMP - please follow links from here for more info and feel free to post questions as you have them: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nativeconcurrency/archive/2011/09/13/c-amp-in-a-nutshell.aspx
Easiest way - is to make project which uses CS with C# and SlimDX.
And here is good site with basics how to use CS from within C# code.
Later on you can move to full scale CS exploration with C++ and DirectX 11.
I am new in the FIX and have requirement to develop a small FIX engine to communicate trading system. As I know there are plenty of FIX engine available but here requirement is to develop it.
Could anyone provide me the reference on any open source or any good article to start it?
For C++ use quickfix
Java use QuickfixJ
For .NET use VersaFix
To refer to Fix message constructions.
Both the libraries(Quickfix) have the same nomenclature as mentioned in the FIX protocol standards. But they are little buggy here and there, but you can rectify them in your source code. I have used both of the libraries in a commercial project and say so after seeing the libraries work. But the code is quite simple and they have an online reference manual to work with.
But developing your own library will be a big task for only one developer, if you have a team it can be much easier. Remember other than parsing you have to incorporate network communications, configuration on how to run it and threading structures also.
Developing your own FIX engine is not easy, specially if you will be dealing with FIX session level details yourself. Synchronizing sequences through ResendRequest, GapFill and SequenceReset is not easy and it would be nice if you can just use a FIX engine that is already doing that for you.
Another problem with the FIX protocol is REPEATING GROUPS. It is not easy to parse them quickly as it requires recursion or alternatively a complex iterative implementation.
Moreover, most Java FIX engines produce a lot of garbage when they are parsing the message, which increases variance and latency due to GC overhead.
Lastly, an intuitive API design is crucial to accelerate FIX development. If you want a good example of a clean API, you can check CoralFIX.
Disclaimer: I am one of the developers of CoralFIX.
You certainly want to look at QuickFix.
I'm working on a application that requires a feature-rich media view, including images, videos, and smooth sequencing based on capture time. The backend is currently written in Rails.
What's currently the best, most mature option for implementing RIAs with Rails on the backend? I've looked at Flex, Laszlo, and ExtJS. ExtJS is interesting to me because I'm really not a fan of pure Flash UIs, but it seems highly targeted towards business apps, not entertainment applications like this.
Any suggestions or insights from others doing similar efforts will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
I second zdmytriv for that book Flexible Rails, it's awesome. It's fairly outdated now though but lays out how simple it is to create a solid Project Management application with Flex and Rails. Everything in there has now become "RestfulX".
Check out RestfulX, it's a must. The RestfulX Google Group is very active too and they've made a lot easy.
We built this website in Flex with RestfulX and it was very easy. That application uses the Rails Paperclip gem to do image processing in a Flex admin panel like ScrapBlog (Scrapblog was built in Flex), and we could use some cool layout effects built into Flex 4. RestfulX made that pretty easy, and the gems made it even easier :p. They have generators too like Rails so it's real easy to get up and running with a DataGrid/CMS-like interface in 5 minutes.
I don't know anything about the other things you've mentioned, but I do know that it's pretty fun and easy to integrate Flex with Rails now-a-days.
As a side note, you can do hardcore SEO with Flex and Rails too, thanks to SWFAddress. We're doing that with that site above.
Cheers
I can recommend Flex and also this book Flexible Rails, whole book dedicated Flex with Rail cooperation. List of sample applications from the book here
Flexible Rails http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QysfVDlVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
If you're serious about considering Ext as an option, you should really search and maybe post in their forums about others using Rails, I know there are quite a few doing so successfully. I just ran across this example that seems like a pretty fully-baked app doing just that, so it's definitely possible.
Without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I think that saying Ext is "targeted towards business apps" is a fair general statement, in terms of the widgets that come with it out of the box. It's highly geared toward window/form-based Ajax apps. That said, Ext Core is very similar to jQuery and other core frameworks, and everything in Ext is built to be highly extensible (hence, "ext"). In terms of being able to build what you need off of it, it is very powerful and flexible. You can certainly implement a flash viewer easily, and there are existing plugins that will do exactly that.
Sounds like Toby had a bad experience with Ext, but many other people enjoy it and find it very natural to code in. The syntax definitely has a Java/C# flavor to it in some ways (although it's really hard to directly compare any JS framework to a static language), and it has roots in YUI (which is even more verbose). For someone coming from C-ish backgrounds, it will likely feel very comfortable. If you're more used to Python or Ruby or something else, then it might not be as enjoyable, I don't know. Something you'd have to try for yourself.
Take a look at WebOrb from themidnightcoders.com. Among many features, it allows for AMF protocol for serialization of data. It is smoking fast.
IMO, if you want a true RIA experience, you'll need to focus on either Flex or Silverlight. There are pros and cons to each.
I did a GWT project a while back and am working with Ext right now. I have some C# / Swing GUI experience, none in Flash.
I like Ext a lot. It looks great, and I found the programming model close enough to the C#'s and Swings of the world as to be familiar and fairly pleasant. The documentation is not excellent, but definitely good enough. For Java at least, there is a solid remoting mechanism (third party, called DJN... most likely there are others, too). A couple of minor bugs here and there.
The major negative is support. They have a forum but there are a distressingly large number of questions and problems that go unresolved. They have paid support in theory, but were sufficiently unresponsive to basic 'how does your paid support work' type questions that I was not encouraged to buy any. There is only one book that I know of, it looks promising but it is not out yet.
I found GWT impressive and had no real problems, but at the end of of the day I am much happier with Ext.
Have you taken a look at Google Web Toolkit yet? In my opinion it's a great way to build rich and performant web applications. The toolkit is quite mature (Google Wave is build with it) and has a lot of good tools to make development easy.
Here's a previous Stakoverflow post.
I don't know about best, but I did a project using ExtJS and hated every minute of it. Frustratingly verbose code, overly complicated programming model, confusing documentation, and difficult to make it do anything it didn't want to.
That said, it looks very awesome, has incredibly powerful widgets and the client and users loved it.
I haven't helped at all, have I?
I think if you requirements include doing anything with video and audio, you are going to need a Flash solution.
Take a look at netzke -- client-server components with Sencha Ext JS and Ruby on Rails.
Netzke is a framework that allows for a beautiful blend of client- and
server-side code (JavaScript and Ruby, respectively) into ready-to-use
GUI components. It's most useful for creating complex data-rich
backend applications with Ruby on Rails on the back end, and Sencha
Ext JS in the browser.
This is a pretty deep topic I guess, so any url's with insight info is also gladly accepted.
I've been working a lot with native directx, never managed. On the other hand, mostly when developing other type of applications that don't have any need for advanced gpu rendering I usually stick to managed code such as C#. Starting to favor C# more and more, I've been thinking about trying out some managed directx.
So my question is if there are any remarkable cons and pros of using managed directx. Of course I'm mostly interested in potential drawbacks.
If I don't answer I probably had to go. Then I'll make sure to answer first thing tomorrow!
I look forward to hear your replies.
Jonas
Managed DirectX has been deprecated by Microsoft. You can still use it but it's probably not your best choice any more. Alternatives include XNA, SlimDX and the new managed wrappers in the Windows API Code Pack.
Another alternative to the now deprecated "Managed DirectX" is SharpDx. This has been benchmarked against XNA, SlimDX and the windows API code pack with favourable results.
What tools are available for metamodelling?
Especially for developing diagram editors, at the moment trying out Eclipse GMF
Wondering what other options are out there?
Any comparison available?
Your question is simply too broad for a single answer - due to many aspects.
First, meta-modelling is not a set term, but rather a very fuzzy thing, including modelling models of models and reaching out to terms like MDA.
Second, there are numerous options to developing diagram editors - going the Eclipse way is surely a nice option.
To get you at least started in the Eclipse department:
have a look at MOF, that is architecture for "meta-modelling" from the OMG (the guys, that maintain UML)
from there approach EMOF, a sub set which is supported by the Eclipse Modelling Framework in the incarnation of Ecore.
building something on top of GMF might be indeed a good idea, because that's the way existing diagram editors for the Eclipse platform take (e.g. Omondo's EclipseUML)
there are a lot of tools existing in the Eclipse environment, that can utilize Ecore - I simply hope, that GMF builts on top of Ecore itself.
Dia has an API for this - I was able to fairly trivially frig their UML editor into a basic ER modelling tool by changing the arrow styles. With a DB reversengineering tool I found in sourceforge (took the schema and spat out dia files) you could use this to document databases. While what I did was fairly trivial, the API was quite straightforward and it didn't take me that long to work out how to make the change.
If you're of a mind to try out Smalltalk There used to be a Smalltalk meta-case framework called DOME which does this sort of thing. If you download VisualWorks, DOME is one of the contributed packages.
GMF is a nice example. At the core of this sits EMF/Ecore, like computerkram sais. Ecore is also used for the base of Eclipse's UML2 . The prestige use case and proof of concept for GMF is certainly UML2 Tools.
Although generally a UML tool, I would look at StarUML. It supports additional modules beyond what are already built in. If it doesn't have what you need built in or as a module, I supposed you could make your own, but I don't know how difficult that is.
Meta-modeling is mostly done in Smalltalk.
You might want to take a look at MOOSE (http://moose.unibe.ch). There are a lot of tools being developed for program understanding. Most are Smalltalk based. There is also some java and c++ work.
Two of the most impressive tools are CodeCity and Mondrian. CodeCity can visualize code development over time, Mondrian provides scriptable visualization technology.
And of course there is the classic HotDraw, which is also available in java.
For web development there is also Magritte, providing meta-descriptions for Seaside.
I would strongly recommend you look into DSM (Domain Specific Modeling) as a general topic, meta-modeling is directly related. There are eclipse based tools like GMF that currently require java coding, but integrate nicely with other eclipse tools and UML. However there are two other classes out there.
MetaCase which I will call a pure DSM tool as it focuses on allowing a developer/modeler with out nearly as much coding create a usable graphical model. Additionally it can be easily deployed for others to use. GMF and Microsoft's Beta software factory/DSM tool fall into this category.
Pure Meta-modeling tools which are not intended for DSM tooling, code generation, and the like. I do not follow these tools as closely as I am interested in applications that generate tooling for SMEs, Domain Experts, and others to use and contribute value to an active project not modeling for models sake, or just documentation and theory.
If you want to learn more about number 1, the tooling applications for DSMs/Meta-modeling, then check out my post "DSMForum.org great resources, worth a look." or just navigate directly to the DSMForum.org
In case you are interested in something that is related to modelling and not generation of code, have a look at adoxx.org. As a metamodelling platform it does provide functionalities and mechanisms to quickly develop your own DSL and allows you to focus on the models needs (business requirements, conceptual level design/specification). There is an active community from academia and practice involved developing prototypical as well as commercial application based on the platform. Could be interesting ...