SetTime SNTP Client	[Windows]
SpaceTime SNTP Client (OpenGL 3D)	[Windows]
SpaceTime Screen Saver (OpenGL 3D)	[OS X]
Display3DS Programming Example	[OS X / Windows]
Resources (FAQs, Meshes, etc.)	[OS X / Windows]
iPhone Apps (Help, Sourcecode)	[iPhone / iPod Touch]

SpaceTime Revision History

2005/04/03:

• Updated to use NTP Pool Servers by default as the US Naval Observatory are requesting access to their clocks be restricted to .MIL and .GOV domains, or other Stratum 2 Time Servers.

2002/12/08:

• While creating a Mac OS X Screen Saver, I corrected a long standing problem in SpaceTime's spherical texture mapping code to handle deep field Skymap textures properly, which previously suffered from gimpy polar artifacts.

  Here's the code to the Windows version of LoadSkymap.cpp (assume hTile, vTile, dphi and dtheta = 30).

2002/09/07:

• nVidia's recently upgraded v40.41 Detonator reference drivers have introduced a strange bug in SpaceTime which manifests itself as garbage left on the screen after a new mesh is loaded via the File Open dialog box. SpaceTime now explicitly clears the OpenGL colour and depth buffers when loading a new .3DS mesh file to bypass this bogosity.

2001/11/05:

• Added a Warp Speed feature where keyboard keys 0 to 9 alter the animated starfield effect.
• Added a Force 2-Sided Materials menu option to enhance meshes using unspecified materials.
• Added a basic Frames Per Second indicator to the Status Bar to gauge the impact of enabling options.
• Added a texture mapped sphere as a background Skymap; thanks to Luis Sempe's article on Sky Spheres.

2001/10/15:

• Published Display3DS - a sample Visual C++ application demonstrating usage of my Mesh3DS class.

  Offered freely and without warranties or restrictions to help others seeking a minimal MFC compliant codebase onto which your own features and functionality can be added.

2001/09/10:

• Added a colour selector for the clock digits display.
• Added Compressed TGA and BMP texture file support.
• Optimized SpaceTime's underlying 3DS mesh file loader (Mesh3DS) to:
  • support transparent materials
  • significantly improve mesh loading performance
  • support nVidia's Vertex Array Range Extensions, if available on the user's hardware.
  
  
• Published Mesh3DS - my 3DS mesh file loader class.

  Offered freely and without warranties or restrictions to help others with their OpenGL projects, Mesh3DS is an object-oriented translation of View3DS by David Farrell, and features basic 3D Studio MAX mesh file decoding as well as Compressed TGA and BMP Texture file support.

  Simply add the Mesh3DS Project to your MFC compliant Visual C++ 6.0 Workspace and use code similar to this to parse the 3DS mesh file and display the mesh onto your current OpenGL Rendering Context.

2001/02/05:

• Added Orthographic Projection for the clock digits display.
• Enhanced the starfield to illuminate stars as a function of distance.
• Added some sample 3D Studio MAX mesh files for local downloading.
• Added Gross Scaling Support. Use the Keypad 'D' and 'H' keys to Double or Half the graphic image scale.

2001/01/01:

• Corrected the Lighting Model.
• Added Two-Sided Polygon Support.
• Added Scaling Support. Use the Keypad '+' and '-' keys to scale the graphic image by 10%.

2000/12/16:

• Added View Frustrum Culling support which prevents stars that are not within the viewing frustrum from being sent to the OpenGL graphics pipeline. This has yielded a noticeable performance boost to the animated starfield effect.

2000/12/09:

• Adjusted the SNTP protocol handler to use 232.83064365386962890625 picoseconds per fractional second, rather than the ballpark of 'about 200 picoseconds' as indicated in RFC2030. This has translated into a noticeable improvement in accuracy.

2000/09/10:

• Complete Visual C++ source code to SpaceTime is now offered as a free bonus to anyone who orders the non-time limited version of SpaceTime. Although I still need to work on some lighting and scaling issues, the code is now clean enough to assist others trying to learn OpenGL programming.
• SpaceTime now provides beta support for loading other 3D Studio MAX meshes (.3ds files) although, as stated, work remains on lighting & scaling, saving settings into the system registry, two-sided polygons, etc.
• The animated star field has been greatly optimized which should now yield a more authentic look without major performance penalties.

1999/04/10:

• SpaceTime now includes an animated starfield for greater visual effect and definitely requires an OpenGL accelerated video card, with a complete OpenGL ICD (Installable Client Driver). I use a nVidia TNT based card from Creative Labs, and recommend it highly. Even so, SpaceTime can consume as much as 60% of a 333MHz Celeron, so only well equipped systems should even bother downloading SpaceTime.
• SpaceTime, like the 2D version called SetTime, is now offered only as a fully functional, but time-limited trial version. A non-time limited version is available for US$5.00 (see below).
• I've included a couple 3D Studio Max meshes of my favorite starships (NCC-1701.3ds and NCC-1701-D.3ds) for use by SpaceTime as example artwork. If you want to change the image SpaceTime uses, just replace the file called SpaceTime.3ds with another mesh of your choice. The program will look for SpaceTime.3ds, decode the mesh and render onto the screen as the default graphic. I'll add a file selection dialog box at some point soon, and include controls for colour/lighting/scaling/etc. Be aware that this is a work in progress; some large and complex meshes have been known to crash SpaceTime. Go to www.3dcafe.com for a selection of other meshes to try.

1998/09/05:

• Included in the SpaceTime zip file is a copy of SpaceTime (Mark II), a prototype of my new version featuring a completely redesigned rendering engine. Smaller, faster and with vastly improved image quality, this version allows most any 3D Studio Max artwork to be decoded and rendered to the screen with OpenGL. Stay tuned for some really spectacular improvements to your favorite little clock utility!

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