[Opensim-dev] OpenSim's direction after Linden cutting support, and the possibility of an official OpenSim viewer

Wed Dec 12 08:15:57 UTC 2012

I personally like the FS viewer especially as there seems to be significant effort behind it. After having looked at the viewer, one problem seems to be the LL bespoke wrappers around OpenGL limiting the number of volunteers. With this not sure there that there are enough viewer developers to be spread over many viewers. sad that we we lose the diversity amongst TPV. I suspect there will come a point where LL will have to re-write the viewer even if take advantage of the latest OpenGL (It  uses of a lot of older versions of OpenGL and extensions) and technologies. LL and Opensim will need this to maintain commercial/university relevance. The viewer technology is key here.

It is also important to remember that companies fund much of the core open source development (although not all) funding the viewer, and for this to occur there needs to maintain commercial or university advantage. This is common MySQL (Sun now Oracle), Open Office (Sun now let loose), Wonderland (Sun now let loose), Moodle (commercial support and training using the Moodle brand).  Intel and IBM have been significant contributors of OpenSim. Others are dependent upon commercial consultancy work. Even with this OS is still only alpha software (although this is another discussion).  Mono is developed by Novel - with tacit support by microsoft. Even with support from companies such as IBM, Intel, Universities and consultancies OpenSim is still at the alpha stage. LL have been the major commercial supporter of the OpenSim viewer and they clearly want to move away from this role.  I suspect there will be ongoing bespoke changes and increasing use of licensed commercial software e.g. Havok. Of course, Opensim users are free to pay Havok etc. the appropriate licence fees but I suggest that the OS user base (as opposed to number of regions) is not sufficient. Many OS development companies e.g. Daden, Reaction Grid seem to be using Unity as their major  platform especially when combined with servers such as smartfox. Unity is able to make use of multiple cameras and run on mobile and web platforms and the three major operating systems (Mac, Windows and soon Linux) and IoS and Android.  Opensim still has advantages (which is why I use it) in the avatar attachments, in-world building tools and SL designer skills base. 

The viewer is key to improving in this are. I would argue that only the development of a bespoke OpenSim viewer is vital. I would argue that an OpenSim viewer is therefore needed. RealXtend is one possibility (having just seen Toni Alatalo's posting) although personally I am not too keen on the viewer frontend. I suspect that the frontend is something that could be readily changed and TPVs are very good at this.  It would be interesting to know how much commercial takeup there has been in using RealXtend.

This is my two penneth worth, and no I am not a core developer - just a user.

On 12 Dec 2012, at 02:03, Adams, Robert wrote:

> The SL viewer model is an all in one application – viewer, editor, chat client, connection manager, …
>  
> Maybe a way of attacking the problem is to separate the parts and not think about building one behemoth application that does everything.
>  
> Some projects (like Radegast or Lumiya) have made interesting progress on a viewer. Maybe content creation can be handled with Blender plugins? Maybe the chat/voice client could be one of the gaming services? Maybe the social connection/interaction framework could be Facebook (OK. No one would ever choose Facebook but any service is possible).
>  
> Then, of course, there is the problem of the client/server protocol. LLLP (my term for “Linden Lab Legacy Protocol”) grew organically and had different problems to solve (remember the days when SL worked over dialup modems?). An organized, partition-able protocol would go a long way toward making new clients (mobile or continuously connected or …) and servers (distributed or dynamically reconfigurable or …) possible. It’s just a new OpenSimulator region module to talk a new language.
>  
> Anyway, just throwing that out there.
>  
> -- ra
>  
> From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de [mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de]On Behalf Of Mircea Kitsune
> Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 5:00 PM
> To: opensim-dev mailing list
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] OpenSim's direction after Linden cutting support, and the possibility of an official OpenSim viewer
>  
> Ironically, Firestorm is one of the viewers I like least. It's actually starting to worry me how it's monopolizing all third-party viewers and being the only v3 fork getting any attention at this day. Earlier I read that the admin of the Teapot viewer isn't updating Teapot any more because he's now working for Firestorm too... ugh >_< I do appreciate their team's effort of course, but I don't like that it's becoming the only alternative, and I'm not sure what else to find and use that I'm comfortable with.
> 
> But like I explained in the first email, I believe the SL code base is the only path we've got rather than a dead end. SL's system (which OpenSim primarily went with during those years) is a very complex thing. Implementing all of its features from scratch in a good and consistent way would be an effort so big there will likely never be anyone doing it when SL is already there. There was an original viewer once which could render avatars, terrain and objects, but that was about it.
> 
> The list of features and details is too big. The building tools with grid snapping, arrows to drag / rotate objects, texture position editing, etc. The avatar customization menu, where you customize worn shapes / skins / alpha masks / clothing. Avatar physics, such as clothing fluttering in the wind. The terrain editor with the raise / lower / flatten / smooth tools. The IM / chat / groups systems with all their sub-features. Voice chat support. Sculpt primitives and mesh rendering. Ability to play media on a prim and use HTML pages on object surfaces. The windlight sky and environment (which can also be set as a parcel property). Particles, sounds, spinning objects (llTargetOmega) and the many things you do with LSL scripts. Post-processing with bloom, depth of field, bump-mapping, etc.
> 
> All this and more would take beyond a decade to re-create from scratch, and I couldn't imagine a new viewer ever doing them all as well as Second Life. If anyone would ever get that done from zero as part of a FOSS viewer, I will consider them a scientist that deserves a job at NASA :) I'm actually surprised even LL did so much in just 8 years, but what was achieved is really impressive. Overall I just don't think it's a possible goal, and at the same time I don't believe OpenSim can expect other dev teams to maintain them a SL viewer (just what I think). With Firestorm taking up everything, I'm already having a hard time finding a viewer good for me to use, and I'd like to know what can be expected in the recent future.
> 
> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:20:15 -0800
> From: javajoint at gmail.com
> To: rigun at rigutech.nl; opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] OpenSim's direction after Linden cutting support, and the possibility of an official OpenSim viewer
> 
>  
> Hmm, it's been Over Two Years since I wrote this on my old blog:
> http://www.daniel.org/blog/2010/09/19/in-unity-a-way-forward/
>  
> I wonder what the state of the art is for any viewers based on Unity, WebGL, or something else?
>  
> The LL code base is an evolutionary dead end.  Firestorm does a great job of making the best of it, and it deserves to be the #1 viewer.  Ongoing Kudos to the FS team!  Having said that, no TPV (or LL) viewer is going to catch up to what is possible on a better foundation.
>  
> It would be great to see two things happen:
> 1)  TPV effort consolidate *even more* around Firestorm.. make it be the one thing that can tide everyone over until there is a non LL-codebase viewer.
> 2) see a good pioneering effort based on Unity, WebGL, or something else
>  
> As far as I know, we're not close to the capabilities I was writing about two years ago.  It's a pretty good bet that the gulf between the LL codebase and what could be done in Unity is even wider now.
>  
> Daniel
> http://daniel,org/cafebucky
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev

Tom Willans  BSc(Hons)  MBCS  CITP
PhD Student
Serious Games Institute, Coventry University
United Kingdom

Senior Research Representative: Faculty of Engineering and Computing
Managing Director Bessacarr Publications Ltd
+44 (0)121 288 0281
email: tom.willans at bessacarr.com
skype: tom.willans
Second Life and OSGrid: Tom Tiros

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-dev/attachments/20121212/a14eed89/attachment-0001.html>