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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Not sure, but maby good to have this
topic on osgrid forum to ?<br>
The biggest problem with makeing own viewer. There are not enough
devs with the right skills.<br>
Thats the biggest problem. the amount of people that want and can
spend time for a special opensim viewer.<br>
<br>
On 2012-12-11 00:08, Mircea Kitsune wrote:<br>
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Hey everyone. I've been away from OpenSim for a while but got
back. Since last time I've been around, I read about Linden's
decision to cut OpenSim support from their viewer due to some
crazy licenses with their physics engine. The rights and wrongs
have been discussed and are not the point of this email. But
this decision means that in some senses, OpenSim will become
completely separate from Linden's SL, and some fundamental
things might change. I wanted both to ask what exactly is going
to happen, but also post my own suggestion. Obviously I'm not
someone who can say what's good and bad, but personally this is
what I strongly believe OpenSim should do and go for.<br>
<br>
The way I see things, OpenSim has primarily been a server-side
for Second Life during its existence. Even if its purpose is a
general virtual worlds platform, SL was the only usable viewer
in practice. Now that LL cut its support, it's in the situation
of having no exact client to be used with. There are many
third-party viewers that will continue supporting OpenSim, but
IMHO they can't be considered a reliable source in the long
term. I assume most of them have their own developers which take
decisions independently from the OpenSim team. If one of those
viewers dies for instance, it's up to the user to go looking for
another one that's still under development. Apart from the fact
that people have to hunt for a viewer, this situation also kept
OpenSim from being able to make changes that would require
viewer modifications as well.<br>
<br>
My opinion is that OpenSim won't get far if it relies on random
viewer forks to be used with at this point. We are not a clear
standard technology, unlike web browsers for instance where you
can use Apache to host and FireFox to browse, both unrelated and
a variety of choices available for each. This is not to say
OpenSim should be unusable with viewers unrelated to SL, since
that would go against its purpose. But the SL viewer is a very
large and complex thing, and there will surely never be anyone
making a client from scratch which will implement all of its
features, look as good, be as fast, as bug free, etc. The
building and prim editing tools, the terrain editor, the avatar
and mesh system, the rendering features, the GUI... it's
unlikely anyone will properly re-write all that from zero when
the SL viewer exists and works fine.<br>
<br>
This is why I believe we need our own official viewer, developed
by and with the OpenSim server, and based on one of the Second
Life viewers. Apart from the fact that people will know they
don't depend on someone else to make them a viewer, it would
allow client + server changes to be done for the first time,
rather than having to stay within the SL viewer's limits. If
that doesn't happen, I don't believe we'll ever become a better
virtual worlds platform outside of SL's shadow. I remember the
days of RealXtend (I heard it's dead now) which took the SL
viewer in one hand, OpenSim in another, and created its very own
project which was completely amazing for those days (SL now has
mesh support and better graphics so it makes RealXtend less
special at this day). My personal opinion is that it's time
OpenSim does something similar.<br>
<br>
If it was me, I'd say grab the latest SL viewer without the
restrictive Havoc library and make OpenSim viewer from that. If
Linden adds a nice feature to theirs which we can copy over,
sure thing, but otherwise it can go its own separate way. On the
other hand, it would be a good aim to allow previous SL viewers
to still connect to OpenSim, though they wouldn't recognize some
of its specific features then. I know OS and SL and under two
different licenses, but that doesn't make it wrong to distribute
both on the same website and as part of the same project.<br>
<br>
What does the core team of OpenSim think about this? Are there
any plans or will to go in this direction? Or does anyone
believe that instead we should continue providing support for
SL's features and have OpenSim users find their own clients like
until now? I believe this is an important question, and would
like to know what to expect in the future. Personally I really
hope something in this direction will be decided, but I'm not
one to know best.<br>
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