RB3D Also Missing from REALbasic 2007 R4
I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that RB3D (REALbasic 3D) was also eliminated from REALbasic 2007 R4. RB3D was a 3D implementation that was effectively a wrapper around Quesa. Quesa is an open source 3D framework (using OpenGL) for MacOS X, Windows and Linux. Except its for the most part a clone of dead Apple technology and never got much traction anywhere except on the Macintosh.
The problem with Quesa was that REALbasic’s RB3D was its strongest and best implementation. REALbasic is an excellent cross-platform development tool but it has never been optimized for speed. The promise of RB3D was that it would be possible to develop 3D games and deploy them across operating systems - which would have required Quesa to have received equal treatment on all platforms.
Since the appearance of RB3D though, a remarkable number of cross-platform 3D specific systems and frameworks have become available. One excellent example is Blade3D. While Blade3D is not available for the Macintosh, it does allow you to compile for both Windows - XP and Vista - and Xbox 360.
