chris wrote: > On 1/9/07, Len Bullard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Letting out the viewer is something of a SOP. I think the server-side is >> possibly more important given that there are any number of open source >> viewers out there for 3D platforms that are just as good or better. It is >> the management of the server farm that makes the difference, that and a big >> budget for marketing. > yes the server side services *and* the networking
Cory Linden (I forget his real name) did a Q&A about open-sourcing the client, and someone asked him if they think that also open-sourcing the server would hurt SL from a business perspective, and he said "No". But I wonder if they do have plans on doing it. > X3D > has little in the way of networking capability - direct from the > client. It's true. X3D is basically silent about multiuser stuff. The main way of doing anything like on-line changes is a kind of AJAX approach: use a script to send requests back to a CGI program on the server for more data to display in the scene. There's a function in the scripting API which basically does this, called createVrmlFromString (or createVrmlFromURL?) or something like that. People have made some very workable multiuser systems that used VRML heavily in the past, and at least one or two of those are still around and kicking (VNet2 and VR4All; Blaxxun's thing?) though the networking and multiuser aspects are not standard. I think that VOS could be a good multiuser networking front end for a VRML or X3D world running on the server-- VRML and X3D are designed to describe a scene, with scripts and routes in it to describe animations and interactions. The idea is to have that VRML system running on the server, and have that scene reflected in a set of A3DL VObjects. In designing the A3DL object model we took a few cues from VRML but we ended up trying to simplify and flatten things as well; some of the stuff that VRML does via extra "nesting" of nodes (like seperate Shape and Geometry nodes) we do via the polymorphic types of metaobjects. Anyway, I stopped working on the VRMLServer a while ago to go work on Web stuff for a while. I hope to go back to it soon but if anyone wants to work on it it's in the source repository. It's in a halfway state where it can load a VRML file and create some objects, but it's buggy. It uses OpenVRML to load and run the VRML scene. Reed _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
