BS Contact J FAQ
General questions
Do I need to install any additional software
to use BS Contact J ?
Can BS Contact J harm the security of my
system ?
Technical questions
How can I embed BS Contact J into my
homepage ?
Why do I see only a black screen in BS Contact
J - Contact displays the world without problems?
BS Contact J doesn't support VRML
Script-Nodes. How can I add interactive behaviour to my scene
?
How can I navigate through worlds displayed in
BS Contact J?
Can I receive and control events out of BS
Contact J?
I can't manage to start/stop timeSensors with
BS Contact J's API. What's the problem ?
Why do I hear nothing although the sound node
is supported by BS Contact J?
The spec mentions that the use of transparent
GIFs is considered. When can I use transparent GIFs?
Can I animate a viewpoint with nesting it
into an animated Transform node?
What type of 3rd party software can I use to
create contents with BS Contact J ?
General questions
Do I need to install any
additional software to use BS Contact J
No, BS Contact J is implemented in Java and does not require any additional software to be installed. The only requirement is a Java 1.1 compliant internet browser.
Can BS Contact J harm the security of my system ?
No.
Technical questions
How can I embed BS Contact J into my homepage ?
See Authoring Guide.
Why do I see only a black screen in BS Contact J - Contact displays the world without problems?
Please check whether you used protos in your world. Protos are not supported in BS Contact J. BS Contact J will simply ignore unsupported nodes. Geometry inside protos will never be displayed.
How can I navigate through worlds displayed in BS Contact J?
BS Contact J offers no built-in navigation control. Nevertheless you have several ways to navigate through worlds displayed with BS Contact J:
BS Contact J doesn't support VRML Script-Nodes. How can I add interactive behaviour to my scene ?
Use BS Contact J's APIs to add interactivity. There are two ways of emulating your VRML Script nodes: You can build your scripts as JavaScript on your HTML page or develop another applet which serves the functionalities you want to add.
Can I receive and handle events out of the scene displayed by BS Contact J?
Yes, you can! Either use a JavaScript observer or implement the EventObserver interface if you prefer using a Java extension applet.
I can't manage to start/stop timeSensors with BS Contact J's API. What's the problem ?
The problem might be the different time handling in Java and VRML. VRML time is measured in seconds while in Java time is always measured in miliseconds. That's why you have to divide the SystemTime by 1000.0 so that it is in seconds and a 'double' value, before setting it to the startTime of the TimeSensor.
Why do I hear nothing although the sound node is supported by BS Contact J?
BS Contact J only supports Java's ".au"-files sampled with 8000hz (8-bit u-law). There are tools to encode audio files in this Java specific format, for example JaWavedit.
The spec mentions that the use of transparent GIFs is considered. When can I use transparent GIFs?
Transparent GIFs are supported. Simply set the appropriate material node within your appearance node to NULL and use the GIF as imageTexture.
Can I animate a viewpoint by nesting it into an animated Transform node?
No, you can't. You have to explicitly ROUTE an interpolator to it's position or orientation fields. BS Contact J doesn't support viewpoint animation through setting viewpoints as children nodes of animated transform nodes.
What type of 3rd-party software can I use to create content with BS Contact J ?
You can use every tool that has a VRML export option. Use the blaxxun Wizard to optimize the output to BS Contact J. The BS Wizard is part of the BS Contact J package.