[Opensim-dev] robot simulation

[Diva Canto]

ouch, my comment sounded a lot more judgmental than I intended. There's 
really nothing wrong with sex beds and gorean warlords :-)

As far as I know, there is no simulation environment that is both 
accurate in terms of physics modeling, and affordable and social at the 
same time. An environment like that would be a major enabler for lots of 
cool stuff -- the word used these day is "transformative". I'm also 
thinking of special-purpose, not necessarily affordable, clients for it 
like the "cave" down at UCSD, a fully immersive 3D environment where you 
can physically move around the objects, using special goggles -- it's 
such an intense feeling! Just imagine the wonders that that would do for 
real world systems engineering! (ok, and for sexual and warlordy 
fantasies too, but you don't need good physics for those :-)

The sophisticated modeling tools used at NASA, Boeing, etc don't have 
the affordability and social parts. The ones that do -- and I know of 
early experiments there using Active Worlds -- aren't that accurate for 
the physics part. So we're talking about pushing the boundaries here, 
sci-fi stuff, really. It's not easy to do; it's not obvious at all how 
to do it, for the concrete reasons already mentioned.

The good thing about OpenSim and libsecondlife is that they're open 
source, so there's the opportunity to make side experiments that diverge 
from the main track, as long as there are motivated people to do it. I'm 
sure whatever is learnt in the process will be of enormous value, even 
if the actual code is thrown away and rewritten 1 year later so that the 
ideas can be merged. This process of experimentation is usually done in 
universities, but I see no reason for it not to happen in a project like 
this, with highly motivated, highly skilled part-time people. Those 
people just have to keep in mind that they're still experimenting, and 
not get frustrated that their code is not being integrated right away. 
So, a parallel project sounds really good!

dan miller wrote:
>> WRT to SL being a "game" platform, therefore using physics for added 
>> realism but not for function: that may be true of Linden Lab's SL. I 
>> hope the people here in OpenSim break away from that whole "fantasy 
>> game" philosophy. Some fantasies -- social, technical and scientific -- 
>> end up having a huge positive impact in the real world. Those are a lot 
>> more worthwhile supporting than sex beds and warrior tales (not that 
>> there's anything wrong with that, but ... choose your game!)
>>     
>
> Ditto and Amen to that.
>
> If we can get a quorum of developers interested in this, I'd love to get our
> own IRC channel (opensim-physics?)
>
> I think I was a bit cup-half-empty with jordi last night.  I want to
> reiterate that what he wants to do is very much something that I feel
> Opensim should *eventually* support.  My concern is really just the state of
> the code, and the fact that I know from experience that most of the core
> developers are much more concerned with getting the underlying architecture
> together than in worrying about the subtleties of physics and simulation.
>
> I almost hate to suggest this, but it may be the case that some sort of
> development branch focusing on more sophisticated physics would be in order.
>  I've found that the constant flux of development at the db and
> client/server layers makes it rather difficult to try anything radical -- by
> the time you have something interesting going, you have a big hurdle in
> merging it back into trunk without mucking up something people are depending
> on.  This forces physics development to be rather conservative.  Teravus and
> others are doing great work, don't get me wrong -- but they are basically
> just trying to add SL-compatible features, and keeping current with the rest
> of the team.  There may be room for a more speculative branch of
> development, that isn't worried about grid mode or inventory, but just
> focuses on how the physics layer actually works, and how it could be
> improved.
>
> Just a random 2.5 cents
>
> -danx0r
>
>   

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