Using assets hosted on a server

Panda3D features a very advanced virtual file system that makes it possible to transparently handle and load file data from various sources, such as directories in the local file system or archive files that contain resources themselves (See Chapter 12, Packaging and Distribution for more info on multifile archives and packages). Every time you call loader.loadModel(), the engine tries to find and load the requested model from one of the sources that have been added to the file system structure before.

However, files do not have to be stored on the local system to be used by Panda3D. The virtual file system also allows mounting directories hosted on web servers. Files that reside on the remote system are downloaded transparently as needed whenever they are requested by your application, without having to write any extra code apart from the call that adds the resources on the server to Panda3D's file system.

This can be very practical for games that feature constantly...