Hi Toni Happy new year to everyone in the group. Its great to see how the realxtend project progresses.
Some things that come to my mind to wish is about enhancing the COLLADA import by using zipped COLLADA files like the Khronos suggestion of .zae files and a drag and drop feature to upload them like it is in open wonderland. The way how it works right now is allready great, but I think I wasn't the only one that tripped by the upload, before finding out that a placeable has to be assigned too. Maybe it would be a nice feature if a placeable could be assigned somehow automaticly to COLLADA objects. About inworld creation tools I think it's nice and useful to have some basic tools like 3d text, a pointer and maybe a basic sketching tool with line and circle features to draw some planes which could be used for web content or image display. It could also be useful to have sort of a library of basic geometric shapes to use to sketch out something quickly in realtime collaborative sessions, with an option to group selected elements and to export those groups to a COLLADA or .obj file. On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:45 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > we had a semiofficial(*) realXtend association board meeting yesterday, > mostly to discuss and organize further planning on development roadmap for > the new year. > > My full notes are on-line, main point summarized here: We decided to plan > work on two fronts, creation tools and pipelines coming as a new primary > focus. The other area is the tech platform & engines topic which was > already worked on a lot last already (the realXtend roadmap doc from last > spring discusses the three areas there, i.e. current Tundra, browser based > clients and the Mobile Tundra unified light client idea). > > For the creation tools and pipeline we agreed to gather wishes, > requirements and development proposals and meet again on Thursday next week > (17th) to put together a plan. Ludocraft made one report on this already > ages ago, they’ll check if parts of it are still valid. Francois will talk > with Matteo and Francois from Spinningwire and ENER labs. Adminotech has > some concrete needs, I think largely coming from VW use in education. I > think Evocons at least can tell what they need in their work with the > building industry. > > You, anyone, can also use this chance to inform the planning: what would > you need to be able to create applications, worlds or whatever with > realXtend better, or is that even a bottleneck for you now? Even vague > ideas are welcome but the more concrete a plan the better of course. > > Some things discussed in the meeting: more example assets for e.g. use of > different materials / options of the SuperShader, creating a new shader > library. Better scene/ec editor with grouping etc. A question: is tighter > Blender integration, for example with live material preview with a Tundra > window as demonstrated by blender2ogre, a good way to author or is > something else better? > > The full notes with some additional points are in > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IqS7Z9WUy_7jt753oSnt3HE0ISQXhT4zstP71A_6FKY/edit > (not > too structured, sorry). > > I think we can use this mailing list / google group to gather ideas and > discuss, but am also interested in more structured ways. For example > getsatisfaction.com has seemed nice for working on feature requests, I > think I saw Kitely using that long ago and tested creating a realXtend > account there too, but I don't have any real experience on using that or > any other similar service. Github issues serve well for actual todo items > and feature wishes too but I don’t think it suits this kind of requirements > elicitation. Am open for suggestions, either here or privately. > > Finally, I’d like to explain a bit the rationale for the focus on creation > tools as how the common interest focused there surprised me. I have earlier > thought that there is a big divide between a)professional creators and b) > supporting easy end user content creation. Basic realXtend offering, e.g. > the Tundra SDK and the little WebGL and Flash clients, target professional > creators -- people who are comfortable with normal 3d modeling and > programming etc. More Second Life or Facebook style end user creation are > implemented in custom applications, for example the TOY content tools which > are a now a part of the Meshmoon offering, Cyberslide where you can just > create a scene from your Powerpoint slides, or Ludocraft’s sandbox. But > yesterday the common understanding was that there are many things that we > could do to help both professional creators and services with user created > content. Ease of creation is of utmost importance in professional use as > well as it of course affects both the quality and especially the cost > duration of projects. Also we figured that work on creation tools is > relevant in any case, no matter whether we end up using Ogre, some other > native engine, or WebGL more in the future. > > so here’s a starting point for the year! > ~Toni > > (*) not everyone in the board could participate yesterday, so we postponed > some administrative bureaucracy for a later meeting and focused on the dev > planning work > > -- > http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend > http://www.realxtend.org -- http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend http://www.realxtend.org
