[Opensim-dev] Direction of Opensim and its relationship with viewers

[Dahlia Trimble]

It has been and still is a goal of OpenSimulator to be somewhat of a
general purpose virtual world simulation platform. Much of the fundamental
design of the core server reflects this goal. There have also been several
attempts to integrate diverse viewers into OpenSimulator, with varying
levels of success.

However, much of what drives development is community expectations.
OpenSimulator exists in the minds of many users as a "Open Source Second
Life" and those users are quite vocal when any features that SL has are not
accurately implemented in OpenSImulator. Even those which could be
considered bugs in SL are expected when certain content exploits them and
makes them "features". Given these community expectations and influences,
it's very difficult to deviate from the way SL is perceived to work and
thus the vast majority of code in OpenSimulator is there to support SL
compatability, which in turn can reduce it's attractiveness for other uses.

So in essence your statement that building a viewer specifically for
OpenSimulator that does all that the LL viewer does the same way it does it
would be a waste of time is likely true. The only possible benefit from
such efforts would be an alternative license than the GPL/LGPL that current
viewers must abide by. However, even with much effort to duplicate the LL
viewer functionality, there will likely still be subtle differences that
the community will find objectionable and they will continue to prefer to
pick from the many TPVs out there. The only non-LL based viewer I've seen
with 3D capability that has achieved long-term success is Radegast and many
prefer it for low-end use as it's 3D view can be turned on and off and it
doubles as a fairly complete text-only client.

Where alternative implementations may find their niche is in other
applications where end-user content creation and management is not a goal,
such as games. OpenSimulator has been used as a server for such efforts
many times in the past and I suspect will continue to be used. Often,
however, such use may conflict with the SL-ness of OpenSimulator and the
users of such a system may fork off and move in their own direction and/or
abandon OpenSimulator completely for their own design or use some other
platform.

OpenSimulator remains capable of interfacing with non-SL clients and some
of us strive to maintain this capability and use it in other projects. I
hope these capabilities can continue as OpenSimulator development continues.


On Sat, Nov 9, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Mircea Kitsune <
mircea_the_kitsune at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I remember at least one non-SL viewer written from scratch (forgot its
> name though). Last time I tested it years ago, it was only able to render
> terrain and prims against a black background, while I think used a Quake 1
> model for avatars. I believe non-SL viewers deserve the appreciation any
> program does, as well as Opensim keeping them compatible if they have the
> same basic functionality as the SL viewer. All I'm saying is, such viewers
> will 99.9% likely never have someone motivated enough to develop them
> anywhere near SL quality. And even if that happened, they probably wouldn't
> turn out that different, since the base mechanics and features would have
> to be the same. So it's unlikely they'll have a bright future, which is why
> I'm hoping they won't become a focus for Opensim. I'd also be worried if OS
> would ever had to dedicate itself to multiple programs, and supporting the
> changes each unique viewer might add if others aren't going to add it too.
>
> I'll probably look at that video a bit later... missed watching Opensim
> meetings like in the old days. As for the relationship part, I meant
> Opensim not being directly involved with any of the viewer code using it
> (as far as I know). Although it's comforting to know the Firestorm team is
> decided to make sure FS works well in Opensim, it's still a different team
> and a different application. It doesn't solve the situation of a server
> (Opensim) without any clients of its own. It's not that hard to find your
> own viewer of course, but it tends to give the feeling that things aren't
> that stable and in harmony, and if something happens to one side the other
> might not be there to help. And yeah, don't get me started on Linden lol.
>
> > From: cinder.roxley at phoenixviewer.com
> > To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> > Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 14:11:42 -0700
> > Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] Direction of Opensim and its relationship
> with viewers
>
> >
> > On 9 Nov 2013, at 13:38, Taoki wrote:
> >
> > Non-SL based viewers *do* exist though.
> >
> > A lot of these questions were addressed in the OSCC Viewers and
> > OpenSimulator Panel this year http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/38459235
> >
> > Not sure what you mean by colder relationship with viewers? As the
> > OpenSim compatibility developer for Firestorm, I've never felt that way.
> > Whenever I've had a question, many people have been welcoming and
> > willing to help. As far as development for platforms go, Linden Lab has
> > been far more cold, secretive, and outright aggressive towards third
> > party viewers than the OpenSim Core team.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > --
> > Cinder
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-dev/attachments/20131109/be8716b3/attachment-0001.html>