[Opensim-users] Google stadia game changer for opensim?

[Haravikk]

> On 20 Mar 2019, at 12:39, Dr Ramesh Ramloll <r.ramloll at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> At the last OSCC, there was a lot of positivity around a new modern viewer
> using Unreal Engine.  Now with Google Stadia, it appears  that it will be
> possible for opensim builders to access the same audience as other
> platforms on any device. I know  'streaming' is pretty old now, but for
> Google to go in this way suggests that they might have made it affordable.
> Do we know what's happening with the Unreal Engine viewer effort?
> 
> Best regards,
> Ramesh

I keep looking at streaming offerings but every time I do I'm not convinced; while there are some games where it's "fine" the quality just never lives up to claims and for twitchy games it's a non-starter.

While opensim is arguably not a twitchy game where response times are key, you're still talking about adding another layer of lag between the user and the simulator which feels like a recipe of extra-strength headaches to me.

There's also something to be said for privacy; a true virtual world is so much more personal than games like Call of Duty, Fortnite etc., you're not just dressing up the same basic player(s) that everyone else has, you're creating an avatar that *is* you, or an extension of you, in a virtual world. Introducing another party into that pipeline (other than grid, sim and you) feels weird to me.

So yeah, I dunno; if streaming can be used to help people with less powerful hardware to get better visuals then sure, streaming could be of benefit to them, but for anyone with a half-decent machine streaming is to be avoided IMO. I'm also not sure how useful mobile support via streaming would be for a platform like OpenSim, in terms of controls there's a lot to try and boil down into a mobile device; if you want to support in-viewer build tools then that complexity is even greater.

I don't think streaming platforms are a "game changer" for virtual worlds, they're an option for increasing accessibility given how demanding viewers tend to be on hardware, but the streaming aspect doesn't fundamentally change the difficulties of presenting a complex, malleable virtual world to users, streaming is really just a change in delivery method. I also don't think there's anything specific to Google's offering that makes it fundamentally different to all the past services that have tried; technology to implement it has improved, but you're still adding input and output latency plus video compression no matter what you do.

It's worth remembering as well that aside from the initial rush of assets downloading in a new sim, the actual back and forth messaging is relatively light; video streaming on the other hand still requires a fair bit of bandwidth just to look good, as well as modern processors for full h.265 support in hardware (or a dedicated GPU in which case you could probably handle a local viewer), so streaming isn't necessarily cost-free in terms of performance and hardware requirements either.

Does anyone know if there's much demand for virtual worlds on the go? I don't know that it's something I'd fully want to do on my smartphone, though the ability to chat with people in-world would be useful; does OpenSim currently support a way to do this without having a zombie avatar sign into a region?


Sorry for the text-wall and if I come across as too negative; it's an interesting technical space, I'm just a bit skeptical how much it really affects something like OpenSim.