[Opensim-dev] LookingGlass Viewer progress

[Mister Blue]

The LookingGlass Viewer forge project[1] has been progressing slowly.
Written in C# with a C++ interface to Ogre, it can now load and display most
regions and it has dialogs for avatar tracking and chat. It's to a point
where I can log into a region, walk and fly around and chat with the people
I stumble across. Details are at the viewer's home site[2].

The latest video[3] shows walking and flying around OSGird/Lbsa Plaza. The
other avatars appear as semi-transparent spheres with their attachments in
the middle. Toward the end of the video, you can see the avatars moving
around as LookingGlass processes the object updates. Camera control is still
jerky and frame rate can always be improved but LookingGlass is getting to a
usable level.

If the LookingGlass binaries are dropped onto the Radegast light-weight
client[4] binaries, LookingGlass shows up on the 'Tools' menu and presents a
view to complement the inventory, chat, map and object controls available in
Radegast.  Navigation can be done with either the nav buttons on Radegast or
the arrow and fly keys in the LookingGlass view.

At the moment, the sources build for the Windows XP and Windows 7 operating
systems only but next steps are for a Windows installation package (for
those feeling brave) and a Linux port. Several people are playing with
protocols and I am intrigued by the possibilities of a better protocol. The
feature of fetching textures directly from the asset server is coded but not
debugged. On the graphics side, I have incorporated the SkyX Ogre plugin for
sun and moon and I am waiting for the new version in a few weeks to have
volumetric clouds. Someone who knows shaders would be a help as I am no
expert and solid colors (and many other graphical features) are wrong at the
moment. Internal architecture work includes generalizing entity containers
and completing the incorporation of Adam's multiple-inheritance-in-C# design
pattern.

Anyway, another viewer for people to build upon is still moving along. If
you do give it a try, there are forums[5] and a place to make bug reports[6]
on the forge site.

-- ra

[1] http://forge.opensimulator.org/gf/project/lookingglass/
[2] http://lookingglassviewer.org/
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaBuRuIHvwc
[4] http://radegastclient.org/
[5] http://forge.opensimulator.org/gf/project/lookingglass/forum/
[6]
http://forge.opensimulator.org/gf/project/lookingglass/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=478
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