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

[Tom]

At the Serious Games Institute the predominant development is done using Unity. This has the advantage that games can be run on mobile environments or that you can use the same developers to develop mobile and non-mobile applications.  Whilst people can interact in these environments one seem to have the same level of interaction in terms of adapting and changing objects.  One for instance involves asking questions of roman citizens or going around a school where fire safety issues are simulated, including burning buildings etc. Unity is therefore used for far more than advertising material or promotional materials and is very popular for the production of indie games. OpenSim and SL really do not make very good gaming environments but great collaborative environments. 

For many educational uses adapting and changing objects is not needed.  Unity also does not have a server environment to any great extent. For large multiuser environments people tend to link it with smart fox as a backend and I understand that Smartfox is now making this easier than when I considered it. And yes I agree with Wade about the scalability.

I adopted OpenSim for my research primarily because of the ease in terms of setting up the collaborative environment and building artefacts without professional skills. Unity as it comes does not have this built in. However it is very limited in the platforms it runs on. It will not run on tablets or mobiles - yes there is an android browser but compared to an unity game the quality is very limited indeed. We are in an age of mobile and augmented reality I would love to have a version that works on a tablet rather than being ties to a quite powerful PC or laptop. 

There are a lot of mesh objects available for sale at a reasonable price, at least for any institution wanting to invest in a robust educational solution or using educational technologists.

I think that Opensim really needs to adapt to be usable on a wider range of platforms, mobile, tablet and web to maintain relevance. Maybe it is time to start thinking of the next generation OpenSim?

It really comes down to focusing upon what your needs are. 




On 19 Jul 2014, at 14:06, Dr Ramesh Ramloll <r.ramloll at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Ai,
> 
> From what I see the Unity blog post was on May 2014 and it appears to be a significant undertaking and they have a larger experienced team (which points that it would probably not be a good idea for me to go on  a unity core development idea ... the odds that I can succeed is close to zero). That probably also explains why I currently have not seen any Unity 3D example that could satisfy my expectations of  deep level collaboration opportunities that is critical for team training. Maria describes the current market for Unity 3D perfectly 'Unity 3D is primarily used by enterprises for promotional materials -- they build an experience, and then they publish it on the web'. And this has wowed a lot of grant reviewers who doled out millions in grant money in the past ... but the collaboration aspect to these projects were lacking. Even users tend to prefer these solutions for only during the initial phase where they are wowed by the fact that they walk straight up with just some form of guess account on an tablet, BUT soon ... enough they start asking for deeper things, that opensim can provide 'easily' with developers with my skill level but not unity unless you have a significant team/or engage in core dev (that's the big irony).
> 
> So I guess it will be a race between how fast opensim can get a browser based viewer solution, or less ideally,  tablet viewers that actually work by providing a PC level experience, and how fast the Unity team can develop their server solution. 
> What will it take for opensim to win this race? I have been successful in raising funding in the past  more so for my ex employer than for myself alone (unfortunately) ... but still enough on a personal level to keep a roof on my head, how can opensim raise funding more 'like' on a corporate level so that efforts can be pushed in that area? Clearly here we have a case, where opensim is ahead of the game in parts, and lagging in others, but it would be really sad, if it cannot evolve fast enough in those areas where unity shines, and see these competing platforms zoom buy. I also imagine that it would not be hard for unity to replicate some form of Hyper Gridding if they succeed in their MMO effort. Well am sure here that opensim leaders are already thinking about funding issues, just thinking aloud here. What can we do here? Should people write govt grants to support core opensim efforts? I have no clue, just thinking.
> 
> Ramesh
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 6:19 AM, Ai Austin <ai.ai.austin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unity 5.x MMO support is called "UNET"... an early blog describing Unity's plans is at
> 
> http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/12/announcing-unet-new-unity-multiplayer-technology/
> 
> SmartFox Pro and Proton are two of the current multi-user support libraries used by developers.
> 
> 
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> -- 
> '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
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