Isn't this called procedurally generated content? Not entirely unlike
what they did with .kkrieger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger)
...

On 1/15/07, Or Botton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sorry for the late reply, just noticed this discussion.
>
> Secondlife supports cutting but no boolean. You can link several
> links together, and position them one inside the other to simulate a
> new surface - but in truth, it will still be a group of separate
> primitives, and no boolean operations are possible. Infact, we've
> been asking for it for awhile.
>
> There are several types of graphics i've spotted in SecondLife:
> A terrain bumpmap - for the world's terrain, can be edited via a
> standard raw file.
> A poser avatar mesh - The avatars are poser 2 models. We believe they
> messed with the design abit, but thats what they are.
> Primitives - pretty much everything else, other then the standard
> issue skybox.
> Particles - Clouds, several UI effects, and other effects that can be
> generated via scripted objects.
>
> The physics engine treats all the objects as individual primitives.
> Infact, for this reason, physics-enabled objects have been
> artificially limited to 31 primitives - LL says that too many
> physical objects with more primitives then this can cause the physics
> engine of the local simulator to slow down drastically and possibly
> "deep think" and halt.
>
> Every primitive can stand for itself. Each of them has their own
> personal "inventory" which can contain symlinks to other objects,
> including their own personal instances of script bytecodes - enabling
> each primitive to be individually scripted and have its own
> programmed reaction, including communication with other primitives
> within the same object as they. Most of the complex 3D effects are
> currently achieved by commanding the various primitives to move or
> transform in a certain way to simulate all sorts of motions.
> Commanding the "Root" primitive will cause the entire linked set to
> move in the world itself.
>
> The physics engine is Havoc 1. It is running on the sim, sending
> updates on all objects to connected viewers. Objects will always
> continue the previously given movement and will even clip through
> other objects in the scene unless another command is sent as
> override. (Not very good for games - slow reaction time)
>
> After playing with various streaming 3D clients - from Active Worlds
> to Blaxxun, Plastic Planet, Caligari, Terangreal and even GuildWars
> (Zone art files are only downloaded on demand, when you cross the
> border or enter a building - from that point onward they are
> available on disk), I can safely say that Linden Lab's primitives
> method is pretty good for streaming: It provides the fastest results.
>
> With most systems I had to wait up to several minutes to download a
> complex scene. With SecondLife the wait is limited to 5 seconds at
> best, with everything else finishing to render as you move in about
> 30 seconds to a minute even in a very complex scene.
>
> The problem is - SecondLife have not progressed this technology very
> far beyond adding afew features such as new primitive shapes, light
> sources and flexible primitives.
>
> One feature that would be interesting to see would be the ability to
> "fuse" the edges of primitives together to create a skinned object on
> the client side, boolean operations, or even the ability to specify
> "custom" primitive designs. As long as the server see the primitives
> only as such or possibly "nodes", it should be possible to create all
> sort of interesting effects purely client-side to enhance the graphics.
>
> On Jan 11, 2007, at 4:58 AM, Mark Wagner wrote:
>
> > On 1/10/07, Reed Hedges <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>
> >> Does anyone know if you can do boolean operations with prims?  I
> >> vaguely
> >> recall that you can apply a few "cut out" operations but not
> >> completely
> >> general prim-prim boolean ops??
> >>
> >
> > You can perform various CSG-like transformations on prims, but
> > SecondLIfe does not support CSG.  I suspect that this is because the
> > prims are converted into meshes for rendering: CSG on meshes is a
> > non-trivial problem.  It may also be related to the physics engine
> > they use.
> >
> > --
> > Mark Wagner
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
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