[Opensim-dev] thinking about a viewer

Thu Aug 7 15:09:35 UTC 2014

Having spent some time researching asm.js and Emscripten (the project
founder is a good childhood friend of mine) I'd recommend relying on
Emscripten for compiling existing open source code from C++ rather than
trying to rewrite it in JavaScript.

If the goal is to have a browser-based viewer then using Emscripten to
compile realXtend may result in quicker time-to-market then rewriting
things in JavaScript and it will allow us to combine R&D efforts with that
funded project. If this is going to be more than an academic endeavor then
we should base our efforts on existing solutions that have an active
developer community. There have been way too many ambitious open-source
projects that never reached a minimal viable state because the people who
started them underestimated the amount of work required to implement
various components which could have been taken off the shelf.

Forgoing that path, an interesting alternative to three.js may be to use
PlayCanvas, which also contains some Emscripten-compiled components.

Cheers,

Ilan Tochner
Co-Founder and CEO
Kitely Ltd.

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 5:38 PM, 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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>>> Opensim-dev at opensimulator.org
>>> http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
>>>
>>
>>
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