[Opensim-dev] User/Agent/Avatar (again) and multiple logins

[Dahlia Trimble]

These are often confusing terms. I'd like to throw out some simplistic straw
dog definitions and hopefully set a path towards a consensus.I haven't
traced through the OpenSimulator code enough to know if these definitions
fit well in this implementation, but rather I am lead to believe these
definitions are somewhat fitting through my experiences with SL I suspect
some will have differing opinions on these definitions so please reply with
any corrections that may help towards a consensus or better represent their
use in the code base.
User - a person who interacts with the service. A user will create an
account, use the service through the viewer software and web sites, and
possibly eventually delete the account.

Agent - that which represents the user for simulation purposes. An agent
would need a consistent means of identification while it is actively part of
the simulation and this identification should be able to link the agent to
the user's account so it can be associated with inventory, assets, and
communication. An agent will be associated with a physics proxy which will
be used to model interactions with the simulated physical environment. An
agent would serve as a communications focal point and relay this
communication between scene chat, group or personal instant messages, and
the user's viewer session.

Avatar - the graphical representation of both an agent and a user that
appears on the viewer screen of those using the service. It operates in
tandem with the agent in that it moves in the scene as the agent proxy moves
in the simulation scene, and it is usually controlled along with the agent
by the user.  Software may interact with both the agent and the avatar, such
as in physical movement and collisions, or it may interact solely with the
avatar, such as in appearance or animation.




On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Diva Canto <diva at metaverseink.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been noticing that there is a certain confusion in the code about
> the names of methods and fields when it comes to denoting a user vs. an
> agent vs. an avatar. That could be cleaned up, eventually, if someone is
> up for a little bit of renaming. But there seems to be a deeper
> confusion in the data structures themselves, and that's much nastier to
> deal with. Specifically, agents take the UUIDs of the users they
> represent, instead of having a UUID of their own and pointing to the
> user. By doing this, the separation between user and agent is defeated.
> Also, AgentCircuitData takes a copy of the first and last names of the
> users they represent, and this is a bit fragile when one wants to
> process the names of users in interesting ways.
>
> I really like the conceptual separation of those 3 things. I can imagine
> situations where it is advantageous for a single user to be logged in
> several times -- e.g. wanting to attend multiple events at the same time.
>
> Is this "id collapse" being done for optimization? Or is this one of
> those things that made it to the code and never got challenged? Or is
> this a well-known TODO?
>
> This is not urgent, I'm just wondering what the story is.
>
> Crista
>
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