[Opensim-dev] thinking about a viewer

[Frank Nichols]

Mister Blue, I would very much prefer a "new" renderer for avatars - if
using the existing one means we are stuck with the SL avatar mesh/model.
Something much more modular and modern that would work with more
"standard". In fact, the renderer, I think, should be modular and pluggable
and designed so when you visit a foreign grid/region/sim you automatically
get a copy of the renderer required to display that grid if you don't
already have it.


On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Mister Blue <misterblue at misterblue.com>
wrote:

> Good stuff.
>
> @Gunther: I have toyed with building an OpenSim module that adds an
> OpenSim region to the HiFi hierarchical object tree. Then I spent a week
> trying to build the HiFi viewer to conclude that they are creating a new
> integrated viewer in the same sort of form as the SL viewer. While I like a
> lot of their grid and object system, I'm not happy with the viewer.
>
> @Tochner: RealXtend contains a lot of good work and it is now wrapped into
> the Fi-Ware European project which will provide it funding and momentum.
> Like OpenSim, there are companies using RealXtend and, for smaller worlds,
> it works pretty well.
>
> You are right that starting from scratch would be a long road. But, since
> we are in the open-source world and many necessary parts are available to
> build on.
>
> I've been thinking along the lines of building a browser based renderer
> using asm.js for performance and borrowing rendering logic from HiFi (they
> seem to have people who know about rendering arch) and three.js (which has
> an efficient, generalized renderer) and Radegast. RealXtend has developed a
> flexible WebSockets transport system (protocol versioning and
> multi-channels, ...). Add to that a 'space management' system like
> Sirikata's or the hierarchical tree of HiFi but with a generalization for
> girds and different authentication systems. I like Macaroons for bearer
> certificates or passing around permissions. Avatar renderers would come
> from HiFi and Radegast although I wonder if avatar rendering could be cut
> out of the LL viewer as a separate LGPL'ed library. The interface to the
> backend would be cloud-ish -- all REST interfaces that can use all the
> scaling tech of modern web applications (notifications, CDNs, managed APIs,
> versioning, ...).
>
> An eventual research project would be the storage and manipulation of
> objects in spaces. I wonder if only 'digested' objects can be sent to
> viewers? 'Digested' in the sense that they have been combined, formatted,
> enhanced for viewing (added light maps or occlusion maps) or merged to
> build views of that city in the distance. If intermediate processors
> (between the client and the object stores) can make 'views' for the client,
> what would they do? What is the 'map/reduce' operation for 3d world
> objects? Now could procedural rendering fit into this?
>
> Anyway, that's a long way of saying that starting from scratch would be
> hard. Not only in the amount of work but also in building both new
> developer and user communities. As @Justin pointed out, I am being very
> optimistic on the amount of work involved.
>
> A first step would be a simple viewer that shows promise and connects to
> existing grids. A baby step.
>
> -- mb
>
> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 6:49 AM, Frank Nichols <j.frank.nichols at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "make it in a way it can better support functionality for handicapt
>> people."
>>
>> Absolutely - this will go a long way towards gaining acceptance!
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 7:16 AM, R.Gunther <rigun at rigutech.nl> wrote:
>>
>>> Afree with this, i think its just a bit to early for a viewer.
>>> Its better if possible to adjust opensim to make it High Fidelity
>>> compatible.
>>> And als use there viewer, or write one thats based on high fidelity code.
>>> If you now write a viewer for opensim you possible have to many bandages
>>> needed later to adjust it for High Fidelity.
>>> High Fidelity can give a few parts that openmsim is now missing.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2014-08-07 09:05, Ilan Tochner wrote:
>>>
>>>> I highly recommend that we avoid trying to start a viewer project from
>>>> scratch. Doing so without a dedicated group working full time for an
>>>> extended period of time will result in the viewer project's failure and the
>>>> growing irrelevance of the OpenSim project that will pend the availability
>>>> of this modern viewer.
>>>>
>>>> I suggest we either adopt and extend the realXtend project for our
>>>> needs (with or without its server architecture) or invest our collective
>>>> R&D resources towards pushing High Fidelity in the direction we want it to
>>>> evolve to. These liberally-licensed open source projects have already had
>>>> many developer-years worth of effort invested in them and are actively
>>>> developed by more people than are currently contributing to the OpenSim
>>>> codebase. It would be very unwise IMO to spend years reimplementing the
>>>> type of viewer they already have working.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Ilan Tochner
>>>> Co-Founder and CEO
>>>> Kitely Ltd.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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