Re: Google Summer of Code: For potential students

Hi Soumitra,

about the project on planet simulation, if this is something that you
are really interested in then you can consider switching to a project on
that topic. Another possibility is to propose two separated projects
(terrain editor + planet simulation), this would increase your chances
to be selected although this would need more work for you to prepare
both proposals.

Some comments about the terrain editor:

* Yes, the terrain2 plugin in CS uses a classical heightmap texture. But
you shouldn't have to manipulate it by yourself but use instead the
iTerrainModifier tools such as in csterrainedtest. One of the advantages
of those modifiers is that they will allow to implement easily undo/redo
functionalities.

* About decals, you are not forced to implement a solution by yourself
and the one that I will commit should be good enough, at least to start
with. The one that I implemented doesn't use shaders but instead an
additional mesh for the decal. It would be possible to implement another
one using shaders, and you can add this functionality if that is
something you are interested in, but this can be kept as optional since
this is not a priority.

* About wxSmith, I guess it can be problematic to use it here since it
will be a bit tricky to interface with the cseditor framework that
manages by itself most widgets. Other tools such as wxFormBuilder can be
used otherwise in order to define GUI portions through .xrc files,
although my personal preferences goes often to the manual creation and
manipulation of the widgets.

* About cseditor that you don't manage to get running, you can throw us
your error messages so that we can see if we can help.

* Maybe a functionality that can be added is the check for having
correct saving/loading of all terrain properties. This is supposed to
work correctly but you may find some few problems when playing with it,
and you may have to dig for them by yourself.

* For the proposal, a part of the challenge is clearly to try to find
the equilibrium between concision and completeness, but I guess telling
you that won't help you that much :) The list of tasks and targeted
goals should appear clearly, along a timeline and some global
implementation consideration such as the CS/cseditor tools that you
would use and the way your code would interface with them. Try to show
to the mentors that will read you that you know what you are talking
about.



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