3^rd Eye Scene is at its core a client/server application. A 3es server may be embedded into any application which needs to expose 3D data and cannot easily otherwise do so. A 3es client application can connect to a 3es server to either view or record (or both) the data exposed by the server code.

The 3^rd Eye Scene code base of three key components:

C# core code (client and server)
C++ core code (client and server)
Unity viewer client code (C#)

The C# and C++ code each implement the same core components to support the 3^rd Eye Scene client/server module. This includes message structures to support the 3es protocol, network transport and connection management and core shape definitions and utilities. The C# code also includes a command line recording client application and a library to bridge between the core C# code and Unity. This library also supports the plugin extension model. Finally, the Unity code provides a client viewer application for viewing 3es connections and recorded files.

C# Core Libraries

The C# library organisation is illustrated below.

3esCore (C#)

The core library provides classes to support writing a 3^rd Eye Scene client and server applications. It includes:

Network message structures to support the protocol.
Defines the interface for a server connection.
Implements TCP server and connection management.
IO classes to help package, send and receive network messages and calculate CRC values.
Support classes for sending shape and other messages to connected clients.
Compression classes, based on .Net System.IO.Compression. The standard classes are not supported within Unity.
Some maths utility classes (vector, matrix, etc).
Shape definitions for the core 3^rd Eye Scene shapes.
Support utilities including packet collation utilities and a thread safe queue.

This library is required by both client and server applications.

An application can support a 3es server and remotely render data to a connected client by the following steps:

Instantiate a TCP Server class
Periodically update and maintain the server connections.
Create shapes and send updates as required.

Note that the C# is slightly more difficult integrate and maintain than the C++ use case. Where the C++ server commands can easily be compiled out through the use of the C++ preprocessor, C# code must be more explicitly guarded and removed due to the limitations of the C# preprocessor.

3esRuntime (C#)

The 3esRuntime library is a small extension to the 3esCore library to support bridging between pure C# code and the Unity viewer client. It serves to:

Provide utility functions to convert between 3esCore maths classes and Unity maths classes.
Define a common message handling protocol and base class.

While this code could be wrapped up into the Unity project, it has been externalised to better support 3es plugins. A 3es plugin library can be authored to support custom routing ID through custom MessageHandler classes. Such a library can then be dropped into a pre-built version of the 3^rd Eye Scene viewer.

Note: The C# runtime is deliberately written without exception handling. Raising exceptions would represent a more canonical C# way of reporting errors, however, exception handling always imposes a performance penalty. As such it was decided that message handlers should report errors via return values for logging without imposing a significant performance penalty to the client.

3esrec (C#)

3esrec is a simple 3^rd Eye Scene client console application for recording 3es server sessions. General usage is:

Run 3esrec in persistent mode (-p), specifying the server IP address and port.
Execute the application with the embedded 3es server.
View and analyses the recorded results as needed, identifying potential bugs.
Make adjustments to the server algorithms to address identifies bugs.
Re-execute the 3es server application, review the recordings and iterate.

3esrec also illustrates the simplest type of 3es client application.

C++ Core Libraries

The C++ library organisation is much simpler than the C# libraries as the C++ code does not include a 3es client application. It is intended to supporting 3es server based and embedding 3es commands into such C++ applications.

Note: The C++ server code represents the "leading" server platform, while the C# code represents the "leading" client application.

3es-core (C++)

The C++ 3es-core libary supports a set of features similar to the C# 3esCore library:

Network message structures to support the protocol.
Buffer classes to help package, send and receive network messages and calculate CRC values.
Defines the interface for a server connection.
Provides TCP/IP socket implementations.
Implements a TCP server and connection management.
Uses zlib to compress data when zlib is available.
Support classes for sending shape and other messages to connected clients.
Some maths utility classes (vector, matrix, etc).
Shape definitions for the core 3^rd Eye Scene shapes.
C++ preprocessor macros to wrap functions used to manage shapes and server updates.

This library is required by server applications and could be used to support a C++ client application.

The general use case is for a C++ server application to use only the 3^rd Eye Scene macros. These can easily be compiled out, removing 3es debugging and associated overhead from the program.