[Opensim-users] OpenSim Roadmap

[Clive Gould]

Hi Justin

Thanks for the detailed information on project progress :)

Just for information, OpenSim 0.6.8/0.6.9 was reasonably stable whilst
the students were building and using simple scripts. The problems
really arose when they started games development scripting with
scripts rezzing objects such as bullets.

I've just looked at the server logs and reckon I've had to restart
OpenSim 59 times in the last month, which averages out at 2 times a
day :(

Best wishes

Clive


> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 01:28:30 +0100
> From: Justin Clark-Casey <jjustincc at gmail.com>
> To: opensim-users at lists.berlios.de
> Cc: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] OpenSim Roadmap
> Message-ID: <4C31272E.6030706 at googlemail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 03/07/10 12:07, Clive Gould wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> We're presenting the results of Bromley Colleges OpenSim Project at
>> the Future Learningscapes: a 21st Century Challenge conference at
>> Greenwich University (UK) next Wednesday (7th July).
>>
>> Just in case we are asked, can anyone explain OpenSim's roadmap? Why
>> is it still in Alpha and what are the criteria for it getting into
>> Beta and eventually version 1.0?
>
> We haven't had a formal roadmap for quite a while.  I think partly this is because of unpredictability about what's
> going to happen with virtual environments, partly because the project is still very young without surplus developers to
> spend time drawing them up :) and partly because the project isn't controlled by a single organization or person that
> could impose such a thing.
>
> However, I'll hazard a personal guess that in the medium-term future we'll see media on a prim and general compatibility
> with version 2 browsers, continued development of hypergrid, more code modularization, mesh support, continued
> improvements in base performance and reliability and scene object refactoring to enable features such as multi-level
> linking.  Some of this will be driven by viewer development.  And ultimately, everything is driven by user and developer
> requirements, desires and effort/money expenditure :)
>
> I would say that OpenSim is still considered alpha for various reasons, including but not limited to
>
> 1)  Current instability in core OpenSim itself.
> 2)  Instability in supporting platforms (e.g. mono appears to have issues with high load).  This is particularly obvious
> on relatively high-use public grids such as OSGrid.
> 3)  Current instability in some features (e.g. setting multiple textures is hit and miss).
> 4)  Inconsistency in user-facing interfaces (e.g. help on the console is very unstructured).
> 5)  Inconsistency and immaturity of module facilities.
> 6)  The prospect of future changes in some fundamental structures (e.g. scene object refactoring).
> 7)  Reasonably expected features missing (e.g. no coalesced objects).
> 8)  Bad legacy communications interfaces (e.g. the 'wire' protocol for inventory service communication is low quality
> and inconsistent).
>
> This probably sounds rather pessimistic but I think that we've come an awful long way and it's far more valuable early
> on to have rough. working code than spend much time on up-front planning.  But I also believe that we couldn't
> justifiably move to beta without addressing a reasonable number of these issues.
>
> Good luck with the conference!  Hope you make a few OpenSim converts :)
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
> http://justincc.org
> http://twitter.com/justincc
>