Jonathan Jones wrote: > James Wilkins wrote: > > Anyway, have you considered supporting streaming animations in addition > > to pre-recorded ones? One thing I've noticed about existing 3d > > environments is that making avatars move realistically is rather hard: > > you have to have all desired motions available, find the correct ones > > quickly, and activate the animations in the correct sequence and timing. > > > With the technology the end-user would likely have, the best way to do > this is for the client to have a script that says > "when object x is moving, activate it's walking animation." The key to > getting smooth, realistic animations is to do as > *much* as possible client-side. However fast networks get, it will > *always* be quicker to load something off the hard > disk than the network connection.
A good compromise may be to have certain movements be activated by higher-level scripting (such as walking animations), and others be fully actuated (such as which direction the head is looking). Of course, as motion-sensing VR type hardware becomes more common, more people will want higher actuation in their avatars for immersion purposes. The amount of real-time actuation to use should probably be configurable by the clients and the servers. For instance, the client controlling the avatar can set up how much actuation to send out on the network, the server running the space can have a quota or limit of the amount of actuation bandwidth allowed per client and the types of actuation allowed, and another viewing client can tell the server what kinds of actuation and how much bandwidth it wants to receive. This way, users with the bandwidth can have a rich experience, while those with slower connections don't get totally left behind. Ken _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
