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

[Ethan Gardener]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019, at 3:59 PM, Ethan Gardener wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2019, at 1:29 PM, Haravikk wrote:
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> I don't see the problem here.  Even taking the simplest possible case: 
> roleplaying or personal chat on IRC, the server and your local computer 
> (which may have malware) are already handling lots of very personal 
> expression.

[I pressed the wrong key combination on my Twiddler & sent it before it was done, sorry.]

Apart from that one point, I've given up paying attention whenever any corporation or blogger announces a "game changer" because there are so many announcements and so very very few which make any real difference.  I'd pay a little more attention if I was in the biz, just in case it's got a chance, but I've seen so much hype that the very words "game changer" no longer brighten my day! (chuckling)  A true game changer can only be recognized in hind sight.  Perhaps Google have got some sort of price drop in the offing, but I don't see how they could bring it to everyone in the same way that the price of remote storage was suddenly hugely cheaper when AWS and GCS appeared.  

Taking a guess, I think this announcement is a political move against certain US states with internet access worse than the third world and effectively protected by law.  If lots of companies jump on the streaming bandwagon it will widen the gulf between states with reasonable and unreasonable internet laws, increasing democratic pressure for change.  Until that change happens, a streaming service will be accessible to less people, not more.  

Aren't viewers built with SDL for display?  There's an SDL library for Android.  OpenTTD is a C++ program built with SDL, and has an Android port which plays just the same.  It has some extra UI options to facilitate use with a touchscreen and no keyboard.  I don't know how much other work they had to do to port it.