BGE as realtime visulisation tool
Having used multiple development platforms for realtime visualization, I would like to suggest that the BGE (blender game engine) be able to achieve this.
Examples of current cutting edge realtime environments:
Touch Designer www.derivative.ca/
Vuo www.vuo.org
What these environments have in common is the ability to use simple noodles (nodes) to achieve more complex outcomes.
BGE has a unique opportunity to enable its use as a realtime visual engine, (not only game engine) given Blenders already exceptional usage of Python, its deep 3D tools, and the proposed PBR shader viewport.
What would cement BGE as a visualization tool would be to enable multi-window rendering, with multimedia video tools, (such as HAP playback, GLSL shaders etc).
Please review Touch Designer or Vuo for more detail of their implementation of realtime rendering.
3 Comments
Its my understanding that currently the BGE or UPBGE is currently in a huge state of flux, hence it would be hard for me to give suggestions that are specific.
I will however highlight two suggestions that simplify this feature request:
Video texture playback, specifically a high speed codec such as HAP which is open source.
Multi window openGL views, which would enable creators to to use multiple screens to present work.
I believe that the BGE team probably knows best when it comes to logic integration, using nodes or not etc.
Most of what you are describing is already part of the Blender 2.8 project. Video playback is already in Blender, also as render to texture with the use of FFMPEG. Lack of video acceleration is difficult due to license issues and platform, driver and hardware dependent.
Realtime OpenGL rendering is a big part of Eevee (the current 2.8 viewport project).
It really isn't helpful to make a post that's essentially, "Add this feature from other program." Proposals here ought to be more actionable and have well thought-out and specific suggestions about how such a feature would work and look in Blender. Image mock-ups that show results, UI, and workflow in the context of Blender are a big help.