[Opensim-dev] AssetServer Observations and Suggestions

[Paul Fishwick]

On the observation that most multi-player games have asset stored 
client-side,
thus allowing huge and feature-rich worlds, it would be nice to have an
option ("private assets", "fixed assets" perhaps indicated by land
parcel ?) that required people who wanted to take advantage of
interacting there to first download all assets prior to launching
the viewer. Having both ends of the spectrum (at one end, all
startup assets are private and non-dynamically shared and at the other
end, all assets are dynamically loaded to each connecting client)
would provide more flexibility and some detailed spaces.

-p

Frank Nichols wrote:
> I like the idea of shifting responsibility for user storage costs closer 
> to the user. Region maybe a good place to do this.
>
> Frank
>
> Charles Krinke wrote:
>   
>> We have been studying the assets table on OSGrid as it heads toward 
>> the "disk full" stage and I have a couple of observations and am 
>> heading towards a suggestion. Maybe this is already accounted for in 
>> the "Cable Beach" project, at which point, this will only indicate 
>> that I did not read all the exchanges carefully enough.
>>
>> It appears to me that we are storing on the MySQL data store at the 
>> assetServer on a grid every edit of every script, terrainImage and 
>> clothingItem amongst other things. So, my first observation is that we 
>> appear to be storing all the older, obsolete items that can no longer 
>> be accessed.
>>
>> Additionally, it appears to me that we are also storing things that 
>> could arguably be stored on the regions datastore, such as the 
>> terrainImage.
>>
>> Now, to the beginnings of a suggestion. It seems to me that each 
>> avatar will have a "home" region. And that perhaps that is the place 
>> to store the items in an avatars inventory. Things like scripts, 
>> notecards, textures and the like.
>>
>> At that point, the assetServer on a grid could be used to store only 
>> pointers (or URL's) to each avatars inventory on his or her home region.
>>
>> So, by doing that, we start shifting the ever increasing disk storage 
>> requirements of a grid back to the regions distributed around the 
>> internet.
>>
>> Again, perhaps Cable Beach is already doing this, and if so, this is 
>> great. If not, I put out these ideas and duck as the tomatoes start 
>> flying.
>>
>> Charles
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-- 
Paul Fishwick, PhD
Professor and Director, Digital Arts and Sciences Programs
University of Florida
Computer & Information Science and Eng. Dept.
Bldg. CSE, Room 301
P.O. Box 116120
Gainesville, FL 32611
Email: fishwick at cise.ufl.edu
Phone: (352) 392-1414
Fax: (352) 392-1220
Web: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~fishwick