[Opensim-users] verse (Re: realxtend integration)

[Toni Alatalo]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2008, Jeroen van Veen wrote:

> "I do recall that Eskil himself didn't use it for his MMO"
> this doesn't seem to be the case(Unless the info on the quel solaar website
> is incorrect). From the quel solaar site:
> "Love is also an experiment in how games can be developed drastically more
> efficient using technologies like Verse, procedural generation, new tools

Certainly what he writes there is correct, being the first hand account of 
an honest person :)

.. but I think that still says that he's using it in the development, not 
for the actual running of the game, but am not sure (don't remember from 
where got the info that it would not be used in the game itself).

> community as an example). Isn't he cooperating with the khronos group to add
> wider support for verse?

Don't know, can be - I think either the Verse mailing list (i'm on that 
too) or the irc channel (#verse on freenode) would be the ways to find 
out.

~Toni

>
> 2008/12/11 James Stallings II <james.stallings at gmail.com>
>
>> 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 :)
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Opensim-users mailing list
>>> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ===================================
>> The wind
>> scours the earth for prayers
>> The night obscures them
>>
>> http://osgrid.org
>> http://del.icio.us/SPQR
>> http://twitter.com/jstallings2
>> http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/770/a49
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Opensim-users mailing list
>> Opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
>> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
>>
>>
>