7.1. About the 3DSOM Pro Flash Viewer

The 3DSOM Flash Viewer is a Flash 9 movie that is used to allow models produced by 3DSOM Pro to be viewed in the Adobe Flash 9 player (standalone or within a web page). The viewer allows the user to examine the model by rotating, zooming and translating.

Key features...

• No additional plug-in to download: End-users do not need to download any additional plug-in other than the very common Flash 9 plugin that is currently installed on the vast majority of PCs (over 95% penetration reported for mature markets in Dec 2007). The viewer scripts are written in the powerful AS3 scripting language allowing real-time display of impressive 3d models.
• Compact compressed data: The viewer SWF movie is under 39K bytes. The 3D model geometry is an impressive 3 to 4 times compressed compared to ZIP compressed X3D, VRML or similar formats (and up to 16x compressed compared to standard uncompressed X3D or similar formats). The textures are tightly packed in a single efficient texture image.
• Streamed cached textures: The viewer supports the use of progressive JPEG texture map images allowing a lower resolution textured model to be displayed quickly whilst the detailed high resolution data is being streamed.
• Multi-resolution geometry: The Flash viewer optionally supports a clever multiresolution solution for improving interactivity when the end-user is moving the model. Two meshes are used: A lower polygon mesh for interactive rendering and a higher resolution mesh when the model is stationary. The same texture map is used for both models so the download overhead is minimal.
• Customisation: The model is displayed in front of any supplied background image or SWF movie. An optional control bar can also be customised as as SWF movie.
• Progress reporting: The amount of model data downloaded is displayed as a percentage. As soon as the model is ready it will be shown - an engaging progress animation is shown otherwise.
• Easy to use: Exporting in the 3DSOM Flash Viewer format does not require a Flash authoring environment or any Flash scripting expertise. A fully usable Flash based web page can be published directly from 3DSOM Pro

Viewer controls

The model is controlled by dragging with the left mouse button down or with the single mouse button on a Mac. The effect of mouse interaction can be controlled by selecting the buttons on the control bar (below).

To Rotate: Select the "rotate" mode button (the default) if not already selected and drag with the (left) mouse button down.

To Pan: Select the "move" mode button and drag with the (left) mouse button down.

To Zoom: Select the "zoom" mode button and drag mouse with (left) button pressed. Drag up to zoom-in and drag down to zoom-out. Alternatively use the magnify-glass buttons to zoom-in and zoom-out with a single click. Alternatively the mousewheel can be used to zoom in and out at any time.

To Reset to initial view and rotation: Hit the "reset view" button to get back to the default view with the default rotation.