<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><div>Really interesting thread – thanks for asking.</div><div><br></div><div>Thoughts</div><div> <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Humans are at the other end of avatars. People like new toys, but they hate losing old ones. Are the humans the most important factor? What are the implications of revolution for their virtual possessions and their virtual relationships. Even small changes can threaten and alienate us. </div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- The current architecture is severely limited. It makes development of games, interactions, end even clean modern web and app-like content cumbersome and expensive.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- We still know very little about the potential and best applications of several key aspects of vw’s.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>1. <b>Avatars</b> (You could compare VW architecture to web architecture, but ‘presence’ makes the experience entirely different. This is compounded by the clearly arriving new technologies in presence centric interfaces. — optical an haptic.)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>2. <b>Environmental immersion </b>(We have yet to really explore how immersion can be leveraged to communicate new ideas, to alter our perception of events or to enhance our relationships with others.)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>3. <b>Persistance</b> (manipulation and creation of virtual things that can ‘stay’ where you put them – how does that alter our experience?)</div><div><br></div><div>But we know a lot about glossy modern ease of use interfaces and marketing savvy interactive experiences. The absence of these in virtual worlds leaves me with a sense that vw technologies are forever trapped in the 90’s. Should new viewing technologies seek to match the 2d web norm (eg. HTML5) while providing a database and 3d foundation for the expectations and demands of the virtual world?</div><div><br></div><div>I suspect that HiFidelity’s plans have some genuine potential in part because they mirror a web architecture, they crowdsource massive rendering demands, they handoff the problems of data ownership liability to server maintainers (always good to pass your most contentious legal problems downstream. — ;) ) </div><div><br></div><div>That said, the abandonment of many many terabytes of crowd created content seems likely to limit the pace of adoption by legacy users – but the real prize isn’t ‘us’ - the old guard, it’s those who would not consider themselves likely to use a virtual world.</div><div><br></div><div>I’m reminded of Steven Regelous’ brilliant core concept for Massive Software. Steven constructed the core of each simulated intelligence (actor) from a core that is essentially a particle system. The object oriented architecture combined with the natural language like nature of fuzzy logic to easily yield things that grow naturally more an more complex. The structure itself made it possible to create and render insanely large numbers of complex actors in scenes without overloading the simulation.</div><div><br></div><div>In many ways it seems related to the architecture underlying Houdini (not sure if others remember that one.) But it provided potential to create heuristically motivated and driven 3d animations.</div><div><br></div><div>Are innovations in how we get from small scale simulations to insanely large simulations fundamental requirements if you want to push the technology into the mainstream?</div><div><br></div><div>Great food for thought, thanks again for prompting the thread,</div><div><br></div><div>Allen</div><div><br></div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION"><div style="font-family:Calibri; font-size:11pt; text-align:left; color:black; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: #b5c4df 1pt solid; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 3pt"><span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span> Aine <<a href="mailto:aine.caoimhe@rogers.com">aine.caoimhe@rogers.com</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Reply-To: </span> <<a href="mailto:opensim-dev@opensimulator.org">opensim-dev@opensimulator.org</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span> Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at 9:32 AM<br><span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span> <<a href="mailto:opensim-dev@opensimulator.org">opensim-dev@opensimulator.org</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span> Re: [Opensim-dev] thinking about a viewer<br></div><div><br></div><div xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--><div lang="EN-CA" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div class="WordSection1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">I would be in the revolutionary camp as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">It seems to me that many issues and a whole host of limitations are spawned directly from trying to remain fully LLLP compliant and I seriously doubt that many of LL's choices (made ~15 years ago in the initial design phase) would be repeated if you were sitting down to design a system of this nature, today, from scratch, using the technologies of 2014 (not to mention all the things anticipated in the pipeline).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">In many respects Opensimulator development has boiled down to only two things: (1) maintaining "currency" with whatever feature additions LL is offering; and (2) new unique features that can only be achieved if they fall within the framework of LLLP. I can't begin to enumerate the number of excellent ideas I've heard that are instantly shot down only because "that would require a viewer change and we can't do that". Even using existing architecture, many things could be added if there was a dedicated Opensim viewer that could take those steps forward hand in hand with the simulator.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">I would even suggest that if a revolutionary approach were taken, support for LLLP and existing content ought to placed relatively low on the list of design goals to avoid hamstringing the whole process -- LL themselves obviously agree with that sentiment because they've stated that SL2 is unlikely to be backwards compatible other than perhaps in a very, very rudimentary way. I'd follow that lead and design something that meets the needs and even dreams of the people who will be the anticipated user base of the future; and then if it's possible to somehow bring in existing content, super.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">Honestly, I think any product that satisfies the "needs and dreams" goal will probably make 90% of existing content obsolete anyway...who would want to use "old crappy stuff" instead of taking advantage of the shiny new toys? A radical departure and loss of existing content is certainly going to lose some users who simply can't bear the thought of starting all over again -- or who decide on another alternate platform when forced to make that change -- but has just as much if not more potential to expand the user base if done correctly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125);">All of which is lovely; but the question that arises in my mind almost immediately, regardless of which avenue is taken, is where the necessary manpower is going to come from? The number of people actively working on Opensimulator isn't even enough to address the existing bugs or keep up with the latest LL additions, let alone take on a project of the sort of magnitude a new/revamped viewer and simulator would require.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></div>_______________________________________________
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