Platform Building

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Comment by Steve on June 6, 2009 at 12:00am

"f2 allows you to use the jump function as long as it is held down while clicking."

Sorry, this sentance was suppose to be f3 not f2 ;)

Comment by Steve on June 5, 2009 at 10:57pm

f11 actually saves the scene as it is being displayed to the user. for instance if there is a function that creates vrml from string, all the instances that were created in the scene are also saved in that file. However it is not very neat since it saves EVERYTHING including any avatars that were in the scene. But with a little cleanup you can recreate a world as it was when you hit f11. f2 is a toggle button and toggles between all the various navigation modes. f2 allows you to use the jump function as long as it is held down while clicking.
man, pretty soon we will know all there is to know about contact navigation and key function. it is too bad that bitmanagement's user manual is not this exhaustive! lol ;)

Comment by Doctor on June 5, 2009 at 9:30pm

F8 toggles on and off the world coordinate display in the status bar of the browser.
F7 toggles on and off the display of frame statistics (frame rate, triangles per second, etc.) in the status bar.
F6, F9 and F12 bring up configuration dialogs for things that are also accessible through the context menu (i.e. right cick in the 3D view).
F11 seems to force the scene resources (wrl file, images, etc.) to be saved in the bitmanagement cache.
F1 through F5 do not seem to have any effect as far as I can see.
F10 seems to just activate the File menu of Internet explorer, much as the ALT key does.

I was aware of the Shift key acceleration effect on navigation, but not aware of the Control key effects. Thanks Steve, for the information.

Comment by Steve on June 5, 2009 at 6:54pm

Holding down the Ctrl key while using some of these numpad keys gives the opposite or different effect as well. for instance 4 & 6 will rotate the camera around your avatar in 3rd person view. If you hold ctrl and hit the same key it rotates in a circle away from your avatar rather than around it, thus giving you eyes in back of your head without even seeing your avatar. ctrl + 3 or 9 will not only slide your camera up and down but also take your avatar with it for a bumpy right. (sort of a forced slide) lol.
ctrl + 5 seems to to toggle between 3 different camera positions. one of them is 3rd person facing your av from the front. another is 3rd person as normal and the other is sort of a third person from top angle rear-downward

There are also some other interesting avatar affiliated keyboard commands. If you angle your viewpoint slightly downward and hold down the Ctrl key while using up arrow for movement your avatar will beging jumping wildly. the jumps are so potent you could use this to jump on top of objects that normally you could not.

Also there is a hyper speed button. Shift. it doesnt matter wether you are walking, flying pan, slide, (jumping) etc... hitting the Shift key will give you a very sudden and very potent burst of speed. The fraster you have your speed setting in the right click menu, the faster this hyperspeed is as well. This speed is also sustainable if you are able to control it :)

Alt + enter will toggle full screen mode on and off. these in addition to the f keys add for alot of extra fun effects. I especially like using hyper speed while flying :P

Comment by Doctor on June 5, 2009 at 3:45pm

Thank you fabricator for the "View All" tip. I should have just looked more closely and noticed that link. :)

Comment by Doctor on June 5, 2009 at 3:42pm

Here is what I have on the numeric keypad and 3rd person view in blaxxun Contact and Bitmanagement Contact. Please refer to the following image of a typical numeric keypad.

With the NumLock set to ON:

0 = toggle between 1st and 3rd person views
5 = Reset to default view settings

2 = move camera up around avatar (always looking towards 1st person viewpoint)
8 = move camera down around avatar (always looking towards 1st person viewpoint)
4 = move camera left around avatar (always looking towards 1st person viewpoint)
6 = move camera right around avatar (always looking towards 1st person viewpoint)

3 = slide camera down (with no change of viewing direction)
9 = slide camera up (with no change of viewing direction)
/ = slide camera left (with no change of viewing direction)
* = slide camera right (with no change of viewing direction)

+ = move camera away from avatar
- = move camera toward avatar

1 = unused
7 = unused
. = unused
Enter = unused

I hope that this helps. :)

Comment by Steve on June 4, 2009 at 7:45pm

yes it is. i didnt see the num+ and num- on there. thanks for adding to the knowledge base Fab =D

Comment by fabricator on June 4, 2009 at 7:32pm

Num +
Num -

zoom in and out of the avatar, strange that its not on the bitmanagement website.

Comment by Steve on June 4, 2009 at 6:44pm

OK i was poking around the bitmanagement website and found the answer to my own question. I will post it here in case anyon else was curious as to advanced camera control techniques within contact.

Key strokes for 3rd person view:

These keys are for the advanced user who wants to move relative to their own avatar. They are only meaningfull if an avatar is displayed, of course.

Num 2
Num 4
Num 6
Num 8

Allows user to rotate the viewing position around the own avatar. The direction of movement corresponds to the arrows printed on them.
Num 5 Resets the position of the 3rd person camera to view the avatar from the behind.


http://www.bitmanagement.com/developer/contact/userguide/6.1/KeyStrokes.html

Comment by fabricator on June 3, 2009 at 9:56pm

Doctor, click 'View All' to get the entire list of discussions. eg the link just above this post on the right.

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