Dear devs,
I've been working with a Singularity developer in order to develop a
Singularity-based viewer for OpenSim that can show different UI and user
controls depending on data sent from the server side. It's a little bit
like a Web browser: the browser is to be as generic as possible, the
server sends the application, which changes from server to server. These
viewers obviously aren't Web browsers, so there's only so much that we
can do under this idea. But to the extent that it can be pushed to
behave like a web browser, we're pushing it. This allows for opensim
providers to offer different/simpler interfaces to their users without
requiring a whole new viewer installation.
The viewer is called OnLook, and the few changes we already made prove
the concept. The code is here:
https://github.com/diva/OnLook
There are currently two independent options: (1) a special UI, where the
server can send what buttons to show in the toolbar; and (2) a
camera-only mode that tells the viewer not to render the person's avatar
and to provide a camera control model that is more inline with what you
have in 3d editors like Sketchup (warning: this second mode is going to
make many of you barf! :) This is just the beginning, and much more can
be done.
In order for this viewer to behave any different than regular
Singularity, the sim needs to be extended with modules for supporting
these behaviors. In talking to Justin and others on the IRC, there
seemed to be support for adding these modules to core opensim, under
OpenSim.Region.OptionalModules -- there's already one there made by
Melanie that also subscribes to this design philosophy.
But before I push it, I wanted to let you know about it, and to make
sure there are no issues in having this in core. I need a viewer whose
UI and user controls can be programmed server side, that's why I made
OnLook. Nothing in it is proprietary, but I also don't want to impose it
in core.
Cheers
Diva
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