MAX 4 was released last week and I just installed my copy. I was not on the beta program, so I'm just taking my first serious look. There are some big developments here - fundamental changes that go the heart of the program. I haven't updated my book on MAX 3, and so we'll be devoting a lot of attention to MAX 4 on this site. I'll start giving you my assessment in the next column.

In this column, we'll take a look at some very impressive Web 3D technology from Kaon Interactive

This is a screen shot of a photorealistic 3D model of CD Player running in a Java applet. CLICK HERE or on the image itself to load the applet in a separate page. (Some Mac users may need more memory space and are invited to read a help page.)

The image should be very sharp, but it keeps on getting sharper as more information downloads. You'll be really impressed when you zoom in for close examination. You can read the tiniest printing on the label. How'd they do that?

Kaon's HyperSpace is an extremely compact Java applet. The total download of the player (not the including the 3D content) can be 40 KB or less. HyperSpace is oriented to the use of models mapped with photo-realistic textures. Great textures mean large bitmaps, so Kaon developed a simple, but extraordinarily effective, approach for streaming data to the user.

The applet can reference a sequence of models with textures. The first model and its textures are loaded first, while the next set loads in the background. Once the second set loads completely, it replaces the first in the rendered scene while a third version loads. The model sequence can have increasing geometric resolution, larger bitmaps, or both. In the case of this CD player, the geometry remains the same, and only the texture maps are replaced at each step. By the time the final version is loaded, the user is looking at very large, very high-res photo textures.