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Some good posts with links here I look forward to reading!<br>
<br>
---- voice ---<br>
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!"<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
--- physics --<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
-- props and clothes --<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
-- multiuser mode --<br>
<br>
I optimistically set out to master multiuser mode, first using
SmartFox3D and then Photon. <br>
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.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.elance.com">https://www.elance.com</a> <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
-- shared whiteboard --<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 -- <br>
* 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. <br>
* 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. <br>
* Third, it was not possible to UPLOAD documents or DOWNLOAD them
via Second Life shared whiteboard. <br>
<br>
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" ( <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.instructure.com/">http://www.instructure.com/</a> )<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. :)<br>
<br>
Wade<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/18/2014 10:07 AM, Dr Ramesh
Ramloll wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAHi41xJpYpmZQrWCXv4UJAJaOeJ6xhAVoUp07Ym_2MZcPenWKg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hello,
<div>I am starting this thread so that I can get some of your
thoughts on this matter. </div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>What I am not sure about, and I hope you can share your
thoughts,</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>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...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>Thanks</div>
<div>Ramesh</div>
-- <br>
<div dir="ltr"><font color="#999999">'Consider how the lilies
grow. They do not labor or spin.'</font><br>
<b>Rameshsharma Ramloll</b> PhD, CEO CTO DeepSemaphore LLC,
Affiliate <i>Research Associate Professor</i>, Idaho State
University, Pocatello, ID 83209 Tel: 208-240-0040<br>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/rameshramloll"
target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.deepsemaphore.com" target="_blank">DeepSemaphore
LLC</a>, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.rezmela.com" target="_blank">RezMela</a>, <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://plus.google.com/103652369558830540272/about"
target="_blank">Google+ profile</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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