Ryan McDougall kirjoitti: just chiming in to elaborate on of the reasons why Naali and Idealist are not the same:
> The reason why realXtend couldn't proceed with Idealist, although the > idea was seriously considered is the following: > 2. language and rendering engine: more than half of realXtend are > professional C++ programmers with years of experience with Ogre3D; > tossing that out for C# and Irrlicht is not a trivial matter > Also the idea with Naali was to quickly get something that is compatible with the existing server on a protocol level. At the same time the server implementation refactoring from a fork to an opensim module was completed, but the protocol and asset formats etc. stayed the same, so both the old rexviewer and Naali work with both the old rexserver and current opensim+modrex. And we got there relatively quickly: after programming started in March, in May we could see Rex scenes at least partially how they ought to be. So with that idea it certainly seems that it made sense to continue using Ogre, and not switch the gfx engine at the same time. Like someone already said in this crazily exploded discussion on the various lists, it is also good to have options. The Idealist techs: .net, c#, Irrlicht, .net gui libs etc have certain characteristics that fit certain usage environments, developers and libraries. Naali techs: c++ native code, Ogre, qt for ui and increasingly for other things, and cpython for non-native extensions (and javascript as qtscript) are a different family. I do agree that there is and has been too much fragmentation, given how little resources most of these projects have (like lookingglass seems quite nice but is one guy, Idealist 2-3 occasionally?). It certainly would be nice if there was at least one complete enough open modular viewer that would be actually usable for stuff. It was interesting to hear on irc one day that some (teacher?) found Idealist already complete enough so that he could use that with his students - wanted something simpler and more restricted than full slviewer. But in some places the differing also makes sense, due to different platforms like described above. At least we can learn from each other, like thanks to pyov and Idealist (which I think inherited it from pyov) we know one way to do multiregion support, which we don't have in Naali at all yet (and I don't know how it should / will be done, given that the whole SL way with regions is perhaps not a good idea). In any case there will be several viewers, with different graphics engines etc. -- even if some of the open, modular, bsd-like things would merge, at least also the slviewer and others based on that will be there. So like said the questions about format standards and such interoperability are topical. For standardization it is good that there is a lot of different kinds of innovation first in many places, so that people get to know what actually needs to be standardized (mr. Tannenbaums networking book has a nice diagram about this) - some of that is already known now (mesh and scene data I think, animations to a lesser extent), but not everything I believe. But I sure also hope that we keep sharing design ideas, perhaps code too, and who knows perhaps have some parts where have merged subprojects from different efforts. ~Toni --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend http://www.realxtend.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
