By design, bandwidth requirements for playing RealActor animations are minimal: the plug-in itself is less than 200K in size, and the RealActor technology utilizes a type of compression streaming that can handle audio and video files over Internet connections as modest as that provided by a 28.8k modem.
According to Imagination in Motion, RealActor differs from other Web player technology in that it can optimize the polygonal structure of models to a user's particular bandwidth. It also enables developers to create content with complex facial animation, lip syncing, real-time bone deformation and skinning, and scalable, movable, and rotational objects. Real time 3D rendering is accomplished through OpenGL, and includes flat shading, smooth shading, UV texture mapping, transparency mapping, reflection mapping, and anti-aliasing.
The minimum requirements for using the RealActor player are a PC with a 200mhz Pentium processor, 32mb of RAM, a 28.8K modem, Windows 98/NT/2000, and Internet Explorer with Media Player. An OpenGL 3D acceleration card is recommended. The cost to use the RealActor technology to create content is on a per-license basis.
(Imagination in Motion; Brussels, Belgium;
www.realactor.com)
-JD