[Opensim-dev] User/Agent/Avatar (again) and multiple logins
Diva Canto
diva at metaverseink.com
Mon Nov 24 16:13:38 UTC 2008
There's something else in opensim that adds to the confusion:
ScenePresence, which seems to be a composite between client, agent, and
avatar. Specifically, ScenePresence is the thing that makes agents
become root/child. ScenePresences are created when new clients are created.
As far as I can tell, ScenePresence is being treated as Avatar, but I'm
not sure this is conceptually correct. When a scene presence is
associated with a child agent, there is no avatar.
Stefan Andersson wrote:
> Another take;
>
> User - information about the real life meatspace user. This
> information is oftenly pulled from a non-opensim source (like a CMS,
> directory service or intranet) and should ideally only concern
> information needed by opensim.
>
> Agent - the software that is used to upload stuff and interact with
> the world. (if you think about it, it's not the 'user' that uploads an
> asset or modifies inventory, from the servers point of view - and a
> user can have two viewers running...)
>
> Avatar - information about the users representation in-world.
>
> I love that this thread is still alive, +1 on cleaning the whole thing
> up (the confusion harks back to a time when the only four people
> actually coding was rather confused themselves, and to a certain
> degree of rapid-development laziness)
>
> Also, +1 on separating them more. I have posted several times to this
> effect - in anything but an SL-grid, the one-to-one-ness is a mess.
>
> Actually, I would go as far as to say that there should be another
> separated entity;
>
> "Authentication" or "Membership" - since a user can actually use
> several authentication schemes to authenticate his agent, and there
> might not be any RL user at all (as in the case with services).
>
> Also, consider the potential relationships and permutations between
> these entitites. A user can have an avatar, but no agent. Or we can
> have an agent with no user but several avatars (NPC bot services) et c
> et c.
>
> Yays, cheers, whoots et c.
>
> Best regards,
> Stefan Andersson
> Tribal Media AB
>
> Join the 3d web revolution : http://tribalnet.se/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:56:15 -0800
> From: dahliatrimble at gmail.com
> To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] User/Agent/Avatar (again) and multiple logins
>
> 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
> <mailto: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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