[Opensim-users] Hoping for a fearless comparison of opensim vs unity 3D

[Alan Miller]

We’ve developed a system which translates an OpenSim region into a UNITY scene. If there was interest it could be made available. Though support would be low key.

Best,

Alan

From: opensim-users-bounces at opensimulator.org [mailto:opensim-users-bounces at opensimulator.org] On Behalf Of Dahlia Trimble
Sent: 18 July 2014 22:12
To: opensim-users at opensimulator.org
Subject: Re: [Opensim-users] Hoping for a fearless comparison of opensim vs unity 3D

Unity and OpenSimulator are not designed to cover the same application space. Uinty is designed for mostly single player gaming and adds a few features to help support multiplayer; whereas OpenSimulator is more designed for multi-user shared collaborative experiences. You can build a multi-user shared collaborative environment with Unity but it would require extensive development as it's not really designed for that purpose.
Regarding physics, Unity has client-side physics. Whether this is "better" really depends on the application. For a single user game, client side physics can provide a more realistic experience as it's not affected by network communication time and physical actions/reactions occure relatively instantly. However, client-side physics brings about a new set of challenges in a networked, collaborative environent. Consider the following scenario: You have a space shooter game where asteroids are moving towards earth. Players fly around in spaceships and fire weapons at the asteroids trying to deflect them. Player A fires a weapon and the projectile strikes the asteroid, deflecting it and scoring a point for player A. While this happens, Player B also fires at the asteroid, destroying it. Due to networking delays, player B's computer did not receive the event signaling player A firing at and deflecting the asteroid until after player B had destroyed it. Both players believe they deserve the score but only one could have hit the asteroid. Had these events been processed by a central server, both players would have observed the events in order and it would be clear which player would deserve the score. Such situations are why multi-user shared environments usually rely on central physics and event processing. This is one area where Unity could use additional development. There are, however advantages to having some client side physics even when many interactions are controlled by a central server, such as some avatar animation effects. I believe there's a lot that could be done to make the SL/OpenSimulator experience appear more realistic by adding more client-side physics in areas where it clearly helps.
I've had a fair bit of experience with interfacing Unity to OpenSimulator in the past; I wrote a Unity based web viewer for OpenSimulator a few years ago for a company named "Rezzable". Around that time I was also experimenting with mixing client-side and server side physics and I learned quite a bit about what can go wrong with trying to share client-side physics over a network.
Regarding collaboration, Unity's editor is a single-user application. Editing your environment and using it are completely different situations. In OpenSimulator, they are combined into the same experience and others can observe world building in real time and participate in the process.

To recap: Unity is really designed for games, and OpenSimulator is designed for shared, collaborative experiences. If you want to develop single user games or limited multi-user games, Unity is probably the best choice. For shared experiences, OpenSimulator pretty much works out of the box.

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 10:07 AM, Dr Ramesh Ramloll <r.ramloll at gmail.com<mailto:r.ramloll at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hello,
I am starting this thread so that I can get some of your thoughts on this matter.
Most of the time, from what I read, and from what prospective clients tell me, Unity 3D is so great! why don't you develop in unity 3D. Yes it runs on tablets is a big plus. This I do understand. It has better physics, yes clearly.
What I am not sure about, and I hope you can share your thoughts,
is whether it would be possible to create a collaboration centric, avatar centric application in  unity 3D. What I mean, is that whether you can have within a unity 3D world, avatars using objects to create new ones *collaboratively* , whether you can provide users with the ability to change their environments in natural ways, whether objects can be collected and shared, whether you have a shared white board, or collaborative document editing within a unity 3D world. And if yes, how long will it take to make these happen, may be it has already happened, do let me know with pointers to examples.

And btw, why is it that I havent come across any voice chat demos of unity 3D applications that  run in a browser. I am thinking if Unity3D is really top notch, why have these things not appeared already as applications (may be they have, and I haven't seen them, please point to examples, if you know of them).

And most importantly, what does opensim offers that unity 3D does not, that you think is important for users out there, from various domains, such as education, training etc...

p.s. the thoughts about HighFidelity and all these new stuff coming up .... I still don't know, if all these wheels are going to be reinvented, the scene is really too messy to contemplate. It is becoming really hard for us developers to pick platforms. We don't have infinite resources, and we feel that we don't even get a chance to discuss application level stuffs, when the underlying platforms are already shifting so arbitrarily.
Thanks
Ramesh
--
'Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin.'
Rameshsharma Ramloll PhD, CEO CTO DeepSemaphore LLC, Affiliate Research Associate Professor, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209 Tel: 208-240-0040<tel:208-240-0040>
LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/in/rameshramloll>, DeepSemaphore LLC<http://www.deepsemaphore.com>, RezMela<http://www.rezmela.com>, Google+ profile<https://plus.google.com/103652369558830540272/about>

_______________________________________________
Opensim-users mailing list
Opensim-users at opensimulator.org<mailto:Opensim-users at opensimulator.org>
http://opensimulator.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://opensimulator.org/pipermail/opensim-users/attachments/20140718/a7c1d87b/attachment-0001.html>