Hi to all involved in Panda3D dev - and to the community as a whole
I have just got back from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2007 which was held in the USA last week. I was representing my country (South Africa) as one of 3 entrants (from SA) out of about 1500. It is a science fair sponsored mainly by intel, but also by about 50 other bodies. There are 17 categories ranging from Bioengineering to Physics and Astro Physics. Each entrant showcases his/her project - and each project has to be current (i.e. no developments for greater than one year). The fair is a pre-college (pre-university) science fair meaning everyone is still in high school - this didnt diminish the quality of the projects though. We had students doing gene sequencing, a sentient android, The Invention of a new rocket fuel and even new discoveries on the nanotech front.
How does this relate to Panda3D?
I entered my project in the Computer Science Section (no surprise there) ; a study on computer aided instruction and its relevance in the modern classroom. What is relevant here is that I constructed a software suite called VirtuaLAB - a 3D Virtual Reality Laboratory/Classroom and it is powered by Panda3D and various other Python libs.
I am posting because the use of Panda3D - and the magnificence of it as a 3D engine helped me to win numerous prizes - including a Gold Medal/1st place prize and the best of category in Computer Science! (including cash and a laptop ) The entire program was constructed using open source tech and was developed in Ubuntu Linux (and debugged on the other platforms too)!
Id thus like to extend a warm thank you to the developers for engineering such a wonderful, powerful and easy to use 3D engine and to the community for all the help, support and feedback given during the program’s development.
Congratulations, another victory for Panda3D
If anyone is interested, I used the following for the program:
Python ( SPE + Linux Terminal)
PANDA 3D
wxPython
Subversion
Blender 3D
Audacity
The GIMP
Also this project is incomplete - roughly halfway at present. I intend to take it further!
Check the program out at its current dev version - as displayed to judges: https://discourse.panda3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=2676&sid=bb51830c0f688c4ff1c3ef5ae1784555