Best for 3D network visualization: panda3d or Crystal Space 3D?

Question

I am interested in creating a 3D visualization of network packets. A few years ago these things sold for tens of thousands of dollars, but now I think that I can hack one together in a few hours using an open source 3D kit.

I've looked around and have found two kids that look good --- one is Panda3D and the other is CrystalSpace.

My requirements are:

• Fast to learn
• Able to run from python or C++
• Able to work with 50,000 polygons. (I want to represent each packet as a little brick in 3D space.)

This visualization doesn't need to run in a browser.

So I'm looking for advice. My questions:

1. Which is better for my application, Panda3D or CrystalSpace 3D?
2. Is there another engine that I should be looking at instead?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to get something going in only a few hours I think your only viable option is Visual Python. It is much faster than Panda3d/Python for large quantities of primitives and has a much easier API. It does not have an option to work from C++ but since it is a very thin wrapper of a C++ back end I don't think you would be able to add too much performance dropping the Python. I can compute and display 8000 lit/shaded rotating boxes at 15fps on my system.