Present3D Help :

You can now include a VNC window within your P3D presentation. This has a huge number of uses and we are using this feature to get the results from our voting system, which runs on our MacBook Pro, into a P3D, 3D school show, running on our MacPro.

Adding VNC into your P3D show :

This can be very simple, just use the following tag within a layer.

<vnc>network_address_of_your_Mac</vnc>  for example <vnc>192.168.0.5</vnc> 

on the Mac you can also use the Mac name : <vnc>myMac.local</vnc> 

This has the advantage of working even if the network address of the Mac has changed, as long as both machines are on the same network.

You may find that a password is required to connect, if so, you can add the password tag :

<vnc password="mypassword">myMac.locall</vnc> 

The above will make the vnc window fill the screen in your P3D show. You can change its size, location, fade etc;  just as you would for an image or movie.

<vnc password="mypassword"  position="0.3 0.9 0.1" scale="0.5" fade="0 0 2 8 1 10 0" 

>myMac.local</vnc>

With some VNC servers you might find that there is a colour change issue this can be resolved by adding the options="value" control. Possible values are : "RGB", "RGBA", "BGR" and "BGRA".

Using ScreenRecycler :

When working with our voting system we use ScreenRecycler.  This is a cheap application that creates a second display for your Mac that you can then view using VNC on another Mac or PC. There is a working demo, so try before you buy :-)

ScreenRecycler will work with any VNC client and once you have it installed you can test that it is working by going into Safari on the Mac entering the following url which uses the network address of the Mac running ScreenRecycler.

vnc://network_address_of_your_Mac  for example vnc://192.168.0.5

or vnc://myMac.local

or you could use any VNC client. JollysFastVnc is very good and from the same developer.

If ScreenRecycler doesn't work, then open its preferences and check that the portnumber has been set to 5900. You can play with the other settings later. Once it is working you can open your display preferences (on the mac running ScreenRecyler) and either turn on mirroring or adjust the display settings. 

We have found that we need to use the options tag to fix the colour problem with ScreenRecycler :

<vnc password="mypassword" options="BGRA" >myMac.local</vnc> 

Known Issues :

1. Loss of VNC connection will cause your P3D show to exit.
2. Colour within the VNC window can be altered dependant on the VNC server, this can be fixed by using the appropriate options="value" as shown above.
3. Moving objects in the scene can become slow.

Current Workarounds :

1. Use the <click_to_run> tag to open slides where you want to use VNC as a new show on top of your "base" show. 
2. Use the options="value" fix above.
3. Design the show/slide so you don't need to move it.