[Opensim-dev] Unreal viewer: summoning the coders

Rob Lindman rob at roblindman.net
Thu Dec 20 17:43:36 UTC 2018 

Done. I was wondering why I was seeing two copies of my messages.

Thanks for the detail on the firewalls and the origin of the whole 
gridinfo.

The name of the link is only one specific issue. I have hordes of 
outdated, incompatible-with-modern-php, using-crummy-mysql-function, 
weird implementations of 'helpers'. I'm not convinced that 'have-to' is 
100% accurate. Perhaps somewhere someone has come up with a new one, but 
the last time I looked at the OpenSim Forge it was apparently in a state 
of chaotic stampede. I don't know if it's still around or if anyone ever 
came up with a complete set of 'helpers' that isn't weird.

I don't need to contact the author of the Hippo viewer, it's been 8 
years since I've used that.

On 2018-12-20 12:30, Melanie wrote:
> Please use reply, not reply all. I get two copies of the mail if you
> use reply all. Corporate firewalls generally allow absolutely no UDP
> traffic. Using the LL protocol in corporate or educational setups
> means opening up UDP, which they are unwilling to do because they see
> it as synonymous with allowing illegal file sharing. Go figure. These
> helper programs in gridinfo are mandated by the way LL set up the
> protocol, we wouldn't have them if we didn't have to. I don't see what
> you consider wrong with grid info on the server, unless you are
> complaining about the name of the link. In that case, you need to try
> to find the author of the Hippo viewer, because that is the person who
> invented that. - Melanie ---- On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 17:25:53 +0000 Rob
> Lindman <rob at roblindman.net> wrote ---- I am somewhat confused by the
> representation that the LL protocol doesn't work with firewalls... It
> would appear that LL has worked around this issue:
> https://community.secondlife.com/knowledgebase/english/using-second-life-with-a-firewall-r599/
> What aspects of the protocol do not work within the firewall context?
> On 2018-12-20 11:58, Melanie wrote: > I believe you may well not be on
> the same page as the rest of us. We > have no intention to change the
> Linden Labs based viewers. The viewer > developers are a completely
> distinct team. The grid info dialog used > to be different in the days
> of Hippo, it has since been slimmed down > by the Firestorm team. We
> are the opensim developers, though, and we > don't work on the LL
> based viewers. We are looking to implement a > completely new viewer
> that of course will have a new protocol. the LL > protocol has always
> been a stumbling block for the hypergrid as well > as a number of
> other things. We would not want to base a new viewer on > a broken
> protocol, that, on top of all else, doesn't traverse > firewalls. If
> you have a beef with the way Firestorm is doing things, > you will
> need to complain to them. We don't have any control over it. > -
> Melanie ---- On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 16:36:21 +0000 Rob Lindman >
> <rob at roblindman.net> wrote ---- I am well aware of how these things >
> work, or in this case, fail miserably. The interface is simply not >
> intuitive. The implementation is sloppy, frustrating, and half-assed.
> > 6 out of 10 times when I want to set up a new grid on a viewer there > is some form of hassle involved, whether it's on localhost or in the > cloud. Having to restart the viewer to reload the configuration when > something goes wrong here is a time loop from hell. I have a moderate > to considerable level of experience with technology, and this is > idiotic. No one that doesn't have a serious reason to will go to this > level of effort in order to browse 3d content. And yes, sometimes you > might want to modify an entry. In the case of local loopback, with > DHCP, I get a different IP address sometimes... So I have to open a > firestorm file, among other things, to modify the entry. How about a > reload button? Because once I put that URL in and try to apply a new > grid, if it doesn't go through cleanly, I am restarting Firestorm. > Sometimes I get the wonderful Not Responding. HOW GREAT THIS IS. Ever > accidentally put a trailing / on there? This aspect, which is the > 
 FRONT
DOOR to the entire 'metaverse', is an enormous fail. Whoever > came up with the gridinfo component simply didn't think. How about an > ICON or a THUMBNAIL of the grid you want to connect to, so perhaps > there would be a graphical way of looking at a directory of grids? No, > we're going to put in a crummy text file with no file extension, > XMLRPC 'helpers' and no real detail about the grid, and "we're" going > to pretend that it's all done, nice and tidy, and move on to ruining > something else by ripping out the entire protocol? While you're at it, > let's restructure all of the INI files AGAIN so that migrating to the > new version is a complete hassle. A 10 year development cycle and this > product hasn't even reached a 1.0 version yet. QUIT IT. The solution > is to make the dialog intuitive, add some form of debug component to > track down issues, perhaps some knobs for timeouts -- and not to > reinvent the wheel of the protocols. Reinvent things once the original > thi
 ngs
actually work. If we are reinventing the wheel of protocols, > it's time to set OpenSim on fire, acknowledge it for the failure it > is, and switch over to using A-Frame, Three.JS, Node, and an entirely > different stack. I have already written one of those. So have > others... There are good reasons for leveraging the existing > infrastructure. Perhaps the methodology of OpenSim is never to finish, > but simply to fail, break everything, and start over again? If > abandoning the current infrastructure is on the road map, then please, > let me know, because I do not want to wait another decade for a basic > working solution to what I'm pretty sure is an attainable goal -- a > working 'metaverse' built on the existing infrastructure -- and I'll > happily continue in my estimation that OpenSim development is insane > and will never fulfill such a basic requirement. It would be a relief. > As for x-grid-info, I haven't seen anything with regard to this > implementation. If it's 
 a
proposal and it ultimately fixes the issues > I am bringing up here, bring it on. It could be a quasi-solution. > However, at the present time all I can see is that it is a ridiculous, > failure-prone hassle to add grids to the viewer, and a ridiculous, > failure prone hassle to set them up on the server, and from the > perspective of the end user, it's not going to be worth the > frustration. Even when I'm paid to deal with this sort of thing it's > not worth it. Anyway, I know this won't amount to anything. But > seriously, I was here on day one, a decade has gone by, and this is > the FRONT DOOR, and it does not work properly. And you want to redo > the plumbing. No. On 2018-12-20 10:28, Cinder Roxley wrote: > On > December 20, 2018 at 8:32:52 AM, Rob Lindman (rob at roblindman.net) > > wrote: > > If people are working on these viewers, especially on > matters of URI > handling... it would be nice if there was one (1) ONE > with a decent > gridinfo configuration panel. (Prefe
 rences
-> Opensim > -> Made Of Fail) > > When attempting to add a test grid... It is > exceptionally annoying if > there is some difficulty in adding a new > grid. You cannot manually edit > the individual line items for grids > in order to adjust the different > pages. > > These are constant > parameters provided by the grid. They aren’t > settings an > enduser > should need to adjust. > > It frequently takes a while to fail if > there is some difficulty > reaching the /gridinfo file. I wind up with > redundant 'lost continent > of > hippo' entries. I was trying to > figure out what was going on testing on > 127.0.0.1 (which for some > reason fails 'despite our best efforts'.) > > This is how TCP is > designed. You’ll get the same behavior from cURL. > The > timeout is > prolonged because there are people running grids on > extremely > > latent DSL connections and the timeout period needs to be that long to > > connect. I have encountered regions connected to OSGrid that take >
  nearly
> two minutes to establish a connection to. > > The /gridinfo URI itself is also ridiculous. Check for /gridinfo.xml or > something... I wanted 'mydomain.com' to be all a user had to put into > this panel in order for it to work, instead of mydomain.com:9000 ... > And > so, hey, I am running apache, might as well just put a file up there > called /gridinfo, that way I can omit the port number while fulfilling > the /gridinfo requirements... While it was 'fun' to mess around with > mod-rewrite... this whole process shows that the OpenSim / TPV > community > didn't put much thought into MAKING IT EASY for people to get on grids. > > OpenSimulator hasn’t registered any port numbers in the Service Name > and > Transport Protocol Port Number Registry. Since grid info is served via > http, it is standard to assume port 80. True, most grids host gridinfo > on > 8002 (already reserved for Teradata ORDBMS ) or 9000 (reserved for > CSListener and php-fpm’s default port) but thereâ€
 ™s
nothing stating they > are > the standard port. > > I ultimately had to open the Firestorm user grids xml file and add one > in manually to access the opensim running on my local system. That's > ridiculous. A typical end user is not going to want to go through that. > I am an opensim / second life enthusiast and this hassle was enough for > me to set the computer on fire. There is no easy way to debug what is > happening here. > > This is a DNS resolution issue with Firestorm. Nobody has ever bothered > reporting it to Firestorm, so they don’t even know it exists. > > If I had to go through all this trouble every time I wanted to connect > to A WEBSITE then I am sorry to say I would simply become Amish and > start milking goats. > > You’ll get a lot of the same issues trying to set apache+php up on > localhost and connecting via loopback if you have no experience or > documentation to help you. > > A replacement for LLUDP isn't needed. > > Disagree. LLUDP has many limita
 tions
which are mistakenly blamed as > viewer > limitations. Not to mention, UDP being the chief reason firewalled > clients > can’t connect. The protocol needs changed or at least DEFINED in order > for > client and server to communicate. > > What's needed is for people to > actually think about what they are doing. Try out the software under > different conditions and wonder if a person new to this environment > would REALLY want to contend with the seriously annoying issues that > are > basically in the way of anyone adopting OpenSim. > > As far as your example, that’s one of the reasons I created the > x-grid-info:// scheme (and why ArminW created hop:// though it’s > specification morphed) When x-grid-info:// is properly supported, one > need > only to click a hyperlink in a web browser to add a grid to the viewer. > _______________________________________________ > Opensim-dev mailing list > Opensim-dev at opensimulator.org >
http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev --- Rob Lindman Software Developer https://roblindman.net/ 316-361-6913 _______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list Opensim-dev at opensimulator.org http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev > _______________________________________________ > Opensim-dev mailing list > Opensim-dev at opensimulator.org > http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev --- Rob Lindman Software Developer https://roblindman.net/ 316-361-6913 _______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list Opensim-dev at opensimulator.org http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
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---
Rob Lindman
Software Developer
https://roblindman.net/
316-361-6913

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