[Opensim-dev] rex auth & avatar systems (Re: future rexviewer merger)

[Michael Wright]

I would rather see something like this too (what Melanie described).

I think we should be heading in the direction of decentralising things rather than having central components. 

I think hyper grid has made a start in the direction of decentralising, and hope that we can move further in that direction in the future.

My vision has always been of more of a peer to peer system of regions rather than large central servers making a Grid backend. 

I also don't think there should be so much effect on trying to cut out the region server from having a role in so many things. Like LL are trying to do, with inventory and their whole agent domain.

If we see the 3d internet as a big linked set of region servers running various applications. Then having them allowed at least a limited role in management of a users inventory (and the avatar system) allows much more flexibility.

One application that ourselves at TribalMedia did, was where a user's inventory could change depending on what region the user was in.

So upon entering a region, the user might get given a new inventory folder with items/clothes related to that region. But as that part of the user's inventory was never stored on any central inventory server, it was removed from their inventory when they left that region.

I think this sort of approach has a lot of use in games for instance.

I know I've most likely moved off topic too much, but I'm just saying that I think its the wrong approach to try to centralise things too much, and then have the client talk to those central servers directly without the regions/applications being able to be involved in those areas. 

I believe the heart of any 3d internet has to be the world/region servers so that each one can implement whatever application is required. In that sort of approach, having the user's own computers store as much of their personal data as possible makes more sense than central servers.

Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote: Hello,

Toni Alatalo wrote:
> Melanie, the avatar storage server is a piece of software that you can  
> host in any way you want - if you want to run one coupled with a  
> viewer, just do.
> 
> About keeping avatar appearance data on the client, what would that  
> mean for a user that uses several different clients on different  
> machines?
> 

I believe that there are several possible scenarios where the rex 
avatar storage concept can be commercially exploited in ways 
detrimental to the users' needs.

I believe that the user's needs are best served if they upload their 
appearance from their local system, on connect, to the world server, 
which then lets others download it from there.
Otherwise the avatar appearance service gains a "gatekeeper" role to 
the 3d internet that I am not ready to assign to it.

Users using several different clients could use a USB key or other 
means of local storage. Avatar-on-a-keyring might even be the 
solution for Internet Cafes there.

Opensim should be able to accommodate all these viewpoints, which is 
why decoupling mesh support from avatar login service support is 
very important to me.

Melanie
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