Hi all, we talked about Tundra with Peter/Pedro, he tested the demos and sent in some comments and questions. We agreed to continue here -- I'll quote enough so that you see the nice comments too:
On Feb 10, 2011, at 11:02 PM, Peter Steinlechner wrote: > this is brilliant and I start to grasp and embrace the whole tundra idea. > Certainly I have to tinker around with it a bit more, but I think this will > really become the firefox and apache for virtual worlds! To make the > GUI a part of the application, rather then having it in the viewer is a > rock solid feature that opens some new horizons. Yep, and not only the GUI but basically all functionality .. like whether a client connection gets an avatar or something else etc. > There is not much missing to make the opensim based taiga server very > soon obsolete :-) We'll see, Opensim has nice aspects too, I'm not surprised if both stay around and develop for different purposes. But it seems to be that many applications don't need the Opensim featureset (like grids), and indeed that we can easily enough port the basics like chat and avatars to Tundra as application level scripts. One point I'd like to clarify: the customizability of the client, loading code from the net as a part of the service for custom GUIs etc., is there always in Naali. It doesn't basically matter if you use a Tundra or Taiga server, the EC system and the API for adding keybindings and menu entries from e.g. EC_Script Javascripts loaded with http can work similarily. So you can make also opensim+modrex worlds so that the service/app there defines the GUI. The difference currently is that Naali releases have the default UiModule always enabled, whereas in the builds from the Tundra branch it is disabled. But we could for example make it so that for Taiga worlds the default UI is shown only if modrex tells so (and when logging to vanilla opensim have it automatically on). Also, the new Asset API and the current EC_Script implementation that handles code loaded from the net are in the Tundra branch only so not in the 0.4 release. We may later get the things merged so that have the current things for all usages, discussed it in the meeting today, but that's to be seen and also depends on what people actually need. But there sure are unique points in Tundra usage, like: 1) ease of authoring of e.g. meshes on a local standalone app, which automatically updates textures in the 3d view when they change on disk and 2) network game dev where it makes sense to run same code partially both in the server & client 3) custom messaging for advanced feats. Just to note that the ECs and client side Javascript works against Taiga as well, can be useful if someone has made e.g. a complex app as an Opensim region module and wants a custom GUI for it. > - Would it be possible to attach an alternative collision mesh to objects? > This might be helpfull in case of adding ramps to stair meshes for example. > Similar it was in rexviewer 0.42 Yes I think that already works, EC_RigidBody (which is how we communicate things to Bullet) supports putting a collision mesh ref IIRC. I think we should make the dotscene pipeline support that (or did someone do that already?) so that you can define the collisions meshes in your modelling app too. > - Poking around a bit in the ogre website I stumbled over hydrax water, which > looks quite neat - but didnt got further into the details and wonder if > this > would be very difficult to add or if you folks allready have something more > stunning in mind ? Ali tested SkyX and Hydrax already a year ago or so, was it so that either is even in somehow as a compile time option? He's been waiting for the guy to make a release so could look at using them again. I think with Hydrax there was problems with using it for large waters, was too heavy? > - The terrains resemble about the same size like in opensim but could I asume > that > it would allow easy for bigger spaces or loading a few terrain tiles, > without using > meshes ? I could think of more then just a few use cases where possibility > of > using bigger, real world elevation data based terrains would be welcome. Yes the EC_Terrains can be of any size and you can add as many as you want. For the client side that works even against Taiga, we had an extra terrain on world.realxtend.org:9000 earlier as a test, flying on the sky :) But on the Tundra server it really works for collisions, EC_Terrain just has a EC_RigidBody of type Heightmap. Indeed a good demo would be to make a large area with real world elevation data. I think should work ok 'cause Ogre does decent visibility culling, so rendering shouldn't be too heavy. Otherwise people have for long made advanced scene managers and terrain systems with Ogre for large worlds, someone was making a spherical system for earth scale planet etc., but I think with the current simple EC_Terrain system we can already do a lot. > Pedro ~Toni > 2011/2/9 Toni Alatalo <[email protected]> > part 2/2 > > note: in bird game you fly with arrow keys, but in fishgame currently > the same rightclick-drag to rotate as in av movement (i should remove > the need for that mousepressing and just use mousemove directly) > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Toni Alatalo <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:33:37 +0200 > Subject: Re: tundra demo scene with minigames > On Jan 19, 2011, at 1:13 PM, Toni Alatalo wrote: >> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3589640/Tundra-1.0-demo.exe has a recent build from >> the Tundra branch of Naali, with > (...) >> I will send another mail later this afternoon with a link to a bundle of >> the demo content and instructions on how to get it started locally. > > Ok it's now up at http://www.realxtend.org/download/lvm_20110119.zip > > The basic instructions for Tundra usage are at > http://www.realxtend.org/doxygen/tundradocumentfiles.html . All that applies > for this document/scene as well. > > So after installing that Tundra demo, which is just a new version of the > Naali with the server included, you can open the demo scenes just by clicking > on them in windows explorer. This opens the scene in a server, which is > basically Naali running in standalone mode. It has a free camera script > loaded by default, so you can move around in the scene etc. To get more > things, you need to load the so-called plugins to the server. This is best > done now by using the scene structure window which you can open from the > menu. You can either drag&drop e.g. plugins/animals_LVM.txml and optionally > the fish and osprey games to that window, or do right-click -> import scene > in scenestruct. If you drag&drop to the 3d view, it places the sceneparts in > the place of the drop, which can be confusing with these plugins. The other > plugins like day&night are included already by default in the main lvm.txml. > > When you load the animals plugin, you should immediately get some deers > running (or floating due to a bug) near the small river. This you see on the > server as well. > > To get to move as an avatar, and to play the work-in-progress crude > minigames, you need to connect with a client. You do this by running > viewer.exe, but it needs to be configured so that it knows where you have > your local copy of the demo assets. This is easiest done by right-clicking in > windows explorer in the LVM scene folder, the one where you have lvm.txml, > and choosing 'open tundra viewer in this directory'. There is a screenshot of > this in the doc linked above. By default a minimal little connecting form is > used now, there type: localhost (defaults to port 2345 like the server too) > and put any *single word* as username, password is not needed. If you put > "firstname lastname" it tries to connect with LLUDP to opensim, and > "something@something" would be using a reX account. > > Once connected you should get an avatar. This demo scene actually has an old > version of the avatar application which doesn't have flying and such -- the > current version is included in the tundra installer itself. > > Then on a client, after you have loaded the Osprey game, a statue of that > eagle like bird should appear by the beach near where the avatar first > landed. If you click that statue, it starts the game where you fly as such a > bird, and can try catching some red bass from the bay to bring to the two > nests. If you load the fish game, a table appears floating over the air :) > and you can click that to get to swim as an tiny anchovy fish .. which must > eat some plankton and avoid a big bass fish that eats the anchovy. The fish > game has no GUI graphics for info screens yet (apart from a work-in-progress > radar for which the image ref is broken for you now so it shows as an empty > white box), it just prints score in the console when you succeed in eating. > And ands when you get eaten by the big fish, when you return to your avatar. > > Hopefully you get somewhere with this info! > > Some basic Tundra info for authoring, from a discussion with a modelling & > texturing artist :) > 18:30 <antont> and the awesome thing for authoring is > 18:30 <antont> that you can just edit the content, and it updates > automagically > 18:30 <antont> for example if you open a scene like that with some object > that has a texture > 18:31 <antont> you can then paint that texture in photoshop > 18:31 <antont> and just save the file > 18:31 <antont> and it immediately refreshes in the naali/tundra view > automatically > 18:31 <borisrrrr> great! > 18:31 <borisrrrr> that's brilliant! > 18:31 <antont> same for materials and qt ui files and js game logic code etc > 18:32 <antont> and you can just drag&drop a .mesh or .scene file from your > desktop and it shows > 18:36 <antont> this article i've written explains the EC idea etc > > https://github.com/realXtend/doc/raw/master/arch_article/simple.pdf > 18:36 <antont> also documents one of the examples, the avatar application, in > some detail > >> on behalf of the realXtend project, >> Toni Alatalo (+358407198759) >> Playsign Oy > > same. > > > -- http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend http://www.realxtend.org
