[Opensim-users] realxtend integration

[James Stallings II]

Excellent Post Anton! :D

Very informative.

Cheers
James


On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Toni Alatalo <antont at kyperjokki.fi> wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Dec 2008, Ryan McDougall wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Jeroen van Veen <j.veenvan at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> 2. Are there any plans to build on the bsd-licensed verse udp protocol?
> >> (http://www.uni-verse.org/)
> > I am afraid that I am unfamiliar with it. What I can say that when
> > making a new viewer with our resources, there is no opportunity to
> > explore with protocols. We will focus on reX as a module on OpenSim
>
> I have some experience from using Verse (we tested it for movie production
> as a part of project orange.blender.org when made the elephantsdream.org),
> and also discussed it with some people who were involved with openviewer
> last spring (<daedius> if i recall correctly), so try to summary my
> understanding here as it was brought up.
>
> The Verse protocol is primarily not for making virtual worlds, nor
> games, but for connecting different apps like 3d modellers and
> paint programs etc. to be able to collaborate and/or see results
> live. I think the power there is being able to sync things like change of
> a position of a vertex in a mesh, or the colour of a pixel in a texture
> bitmap, so that you can e.g. have a modeller, paint app, and a game engine
> running as Verse apps with the shared data on the server. This would save
> from the typical export-import-restart loop, and allows tweaking models,
> uv coordinates and textures so that you see the actual result in the game
> engine / movie renderer immediately.
>
> It may still be interesting to think of it in the opensim/rex context.
> Daedius had an interesting idea to integrate verse to the viewer, so that
> changes made in e.g. a modelling app would show immediately in the meshes,
> and then after editing the client would upload the version of mesh to the
> server.
>
> Another route we were once thinking was to add Verse support to the
> Opensim/Rex server, so that Verse enabled apps could connect to it for
> authoring (e.g. manipulating the scene, moving obs/prims etc with a more
> powerful interface - i'd sure like to have outliner, multiple viewports
> etc when editing scenes). I don't know which would be easier and better:
> add SL protocol support for a modelling app so it could work as an
> authoring client, or add Verse support to the OpenSim server.
>
> The situation with Verse in general remains tricky as far as I know -
> during the Uni-Verse project they added preliminary support to Blender (by
> integrating it in the insides) and to Max (as a plugin), and tried with
> Maya, and made a plugin for Gimp. One lesson they learned was that adding
> good verse support, especially to a closed source app, is hard as classic
> apps are typically not structured so that network access could touch their
> dearest data. When making a new app with Verse in mind it's all different
> and Eskil has been succesful there with his own toolset. But basically
> Verse seems pretty much dead to me, no one using, no one adding support.
> It's still the only thing I know for such a purpose and seems to work well
> (it synchs vertex movements quickly), and the callback design is perhaps
> good too, so dunno if it'll somehow pick up some day anyway.
>
> Also I don't know where the differences in the actual protocol lie in the
> end - Verse focuses on syncing 2d and 3d data needed for making movies and
> games, meshes, uv coords, textures, shader params, .., and does not touch
> things like avatar animations and even less IM, commerce or anything like
> that which you have in SL. But still e.g. the object movents are similar
> functionality, and the Verse protocol is extensible for custom data, so
> don't know if it could fit despite the different initial focus. I do
> recall that Eskil himself didn't use it for his MMO, so am still guessing
> that it fits just the authoring better.
>
> There are other projects with protocols for virtual worlds with focus more
> similar to OpenSim/Rex, like http://interreality.org and of course Croquet
> etc. so for SL replacements / alternatives those would probably be more
> relevant to consider. Verse might be an interesting complementing tool in
> the set. But like Ryan said, Rex targets now at getting a viewer that'll
> work with the current server using the existing protocol. Anyone else,
> feel free to experiment with Verse and stuff!
>
> ~Toni, not speaking for the Rex project but to inform them too :)
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