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ouch, my comment sounded a lot more judgmental than I intended. There's
really nothing wrong with sex beds and gorean warlords :-)<br>
<br>
As far as I know, there is no simulation environment that is both
accurate in terms of physics modeling, and affordable and social at the
same time. An environment like that would be a major enabler for lots
of cool stuff -- the word used these day is "transformative". I'm also
thinking of special-purpose, not necessarily affordable, clients for it
like the "cave" down at UCSD, a fully immersive 3D environment where
you can physically move around the objects, using special goggles --
it's such an intense feeling! Just imagine the wonders that that would
do for real world systems engineering! (ok, and for sexual and warlordy
fantasies too, but you don't need good physics for those :-)<br>
<br>
The sophisticated modeling tools used at NASA, Boeing, etc don't have
the affordability and social parts. The ones that do -- and I know of
early experiments there using Active Worlds -- aren't that accurate for
the physics part. So we're talking about pushing the boundaries here,
sci-fi stuff, really. It's not easy to do; it's not obvious at all how
to do it, for the concrete reasons already mentioned.<br>
<br>
The good thing about OpenSim and libsecondlife is that they're open
source, so there's the opportunity to make side experiments that
diverge from the main track, as long as there are motivated people to
do it. I'm sure whatever is learnt in the process will be of enormous
value, even if the actual code is thrown away and rewritten 1 year
later so that the ideas can be merged. This process of experimentation
is usually done in universities, but I see no reason for it not to
happen in a project like this, with highly motivated, highly skilled
part-time people. Those people just have to keep in mind that they're
still experimenting, and not get frustrated that their code is not
being integrated right away. So, a parallel project sounds really good!<br>
<br>
dan miller wrote:
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<pre wrap="">WRT to SL being a "game" platform, therefore using physics for added
realism but not for function: that may be true of Linden Lab's SL. I
hope the people here in OpenSim break away from that whole "fantasy
game" philosophy. Some fantasies -- social, technical and scientific --
end up having a huge positive impact in the real world. Those are a lot
more worthwhile supporting than sex beds and warrior tales (not that
there's anything wrong with that, but ... choose your game!)
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
Ditto and Amen to that.
If we can get a quorum of developers interested in this, I'd love to get our
own IRC channel (opensim-physics?)
I think I was a bit cup-half-empty with jordi last night. I want to
reiterate that what he wants to do is very much something that I feel
Opensim should *eventually* support. My concern is really just the state of
the code, and the fact that I know from experience that most of the core
developers are much more concerned with getting the underlying architecture
together than in worrying about the subtleties of physics and simulation.
I almost hate to suggest this, but it may be the case that some sort of
development branch focusing on more sophisticated physics would be in order.
I've found that the constant flux of development at the db and
client/server layers makes it rather difficult to try anything radical -- by
the time you have something interesting going, you have a big hurdle in
merging it back into trunk without mucking up something people are depending
on. This forces physics development to be rather conservative. Teravus and
others are doing great work, don't get me wrong -- but they are basically
just trying to add SL-compatible features, and keeping current with the rest
of the team. There may be room for a more speculative branch of
development, that isn't worried about grid mode or inventory, but just
focuses on how the physics layer actually works, and how it could be
improved.
Just a random 2.5 cents
-danx0r
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