[Opensim-users] Hoping for a fearless comparison of opensim vs unity 3D
Wade
wade.schuette at gmail.com
Fri Jul 18 23:55:03 UTC 2014
Some good posts with links here I look forward to reading!
---- voice ---
Ramesh, from what I've seen there is no off-the-shelf browser-only voice
client that works with Unity. One or two are sold in the Unity store,
but the voice quality is not what I'd call suitable for collaboration,
aside from yelling "shoot! shoot!"
Last time I looked, Jibe was going with Vivox voice, but Vivox needs
an installed client. I'm assuming you are looking, as I was, for a
purely browser based solution, with capacity like Citrix GoToMeeting
or such.
Some people I know with non-technical or one-time visitors/users have
gone with Skype as a voice channel, and OpenSim or SecondLife as the
visual channel. You lose 3-D dimension of sound, but Vivox sound has
proven to be quite erratic for class work, and for a collaboration
either EVERYONE has sound working or it's a failure. Both Vivox and
Linden Labs point at each other. Not much help coming there.
--- physics --
As to physics, speaking as a former physics major, Unity physics is
actual physics, not a piece of junk like Second Life or OpenSim. And,
it's possible, gasp, to make a HINGE or an AXLE that won't explode as
soon as you release it. So if you need to build equipment with complex
moving pieces that are detailed and realistic, Unity wins hands down.
Similarly, in Unity you actually know where things are, to a millimeter,
such as, say, the blade of a scalpel in the hand of a surgeon or
pathologist making an incision. You can do realistic simulations
where there are fine grained interactions of people and objects, or
people and people. This is simply not possible in OpenSim or Second
Life. I built a really nice autopsy table for the Second Life Medical
Examiner sim, but never could get a generic pair-based animation of an
autopsy to work, and don't think anyone can, except in broad strokes,
and certainly not for two unknown avatar shapes.
-- props and clothes --
Moving from Second Life to Unity, things are priced about the same
number, except that in Second Life it's Lindens and in Unity it's
dollars. That is, a nice dress of a particular kind in Second Life
might take you all of a minute to find, and cost $1.50. A workable
mesh-based dress in Unity will probably not be available, aside from
combat or sexy clothes, and going to Mesh real-life stores like
TurboSquid, you are competing with people doing TV ads who think
nothing of spending $300 (three HUNDRED) for an outfit for their model.
Yes, you can get SOME avatars and clothes free from MakeHuman or DAZ,
but the choice is extremely limited. Props similarly, you may need to
pay hard cash for chairs, desks, etc. that work for you.
Unity comes with NO PROPS. Unity is not designed for building props or
clothes or avatars, it is designed for USING them. Generally, you build
stuff, including possibly animations in Blender (free) or Maya or
Autodesk and import them. Or you buy them at expensive mesh-model
stores.
-- multiuser mode --
I optimistically set out to master multiuser mode, first using
SmartFox3D and then Photon.
It's doable, but it is a real pain. If you need to do this, there
ARE a large number of Unity Builders for hire that you can find via the
Unity store or via some shop like eLance.
https://www.elance.com
Elance makes it easy to scan prior work, find people with good
recommendations, deal with payment in a way that keeps both sides of a
short-build-contract happy, etc. It's worth checking out.
-- shared whiteboard --
After several years of using various techniques, including Google Docs,
for providing a shared whiteboard in Second Life (and I think this
would be true in Open Sim as well), I'm finally of the opinion that
it's just not worth the effort.
That is, I had a shared Google Doc on a whiteboard, and if each
student logged into it with a password separately, exactly right, they
could see each other's changes on the board at the front of the room.
There were two main problems --
* first, it was hard to explain to new users how to do this correctly,
so some would see the shared document and others would see their own
document.
* Second, and critically, in order to READ the document either we
needed a large font size ( 24 point or larger) in which case we only had
8 lines of text, or they had to click the board to make it
FULL-SCREEN. OK, once you are going to take over the entire screen
with the shared document, a shared whiteboard INSIDE the application
isn't worth the huge bandwidth required to do it.
* Third, it was not possible to UPLOAD documents or DOWNLOAD them via
Second Life shared whiteboard.
So, conclusion, we're giving up on collaboration INSIDE SecondLife/Open
Sim, and going with collaboration applications open along-side the
virtual world window, specifically Instructure's "Canvas" (
http://www.instructure.com/ )
Canvas is free, entirely browser based, it can be hosted for free or
you can host it yourself, it includes voice and video chat, it has a
shared whiteboard (somewhat), it's integrated with a Learning
Management System, it's oriented directly towards educational use and
collaboration, and has a 200 person development team working with such
use in mind, versus use for pornography, etc.
So we're now trying to prototype a collaborative application with one
screen window open to Canvas, and another screen window open to
OpenSim/Second Life.
I'm not sure it's much of a loss. Avatars can carry around a virtual
tablet, with unreadably small print on it, and clicking the tablet can
link to switch them to full-screen in a shared canvas environment. In
reality, with the possible exception of MD's, EITHER you're looking at
the screen and ignoring the environment, OR you're looking at the
environment and ignoring your screen. I don't see clicking back and
forth between two windows being that much different in terms of it's
impact on the experience of "immersion", but I'm biased by not finding
any other good way to do it. :)
Wade
On 7/18/2014 10:07 AM, Dr Ramesh Ramloll 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
> 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>
>
>
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