I agree with you completely, Stephen, which is why I follow,and wish to
eventually contribute to, Vnet. I, too, have been following the various
online multi-user virtual world approaches for 3+ years.
There are literally worlds of difference between an open source,
freeware approach, and a proprietary approach. Their stuff is indeed
very cool, but I don't see Active Worlds dominating online perisistent
virtual worlds in 10 years, simply because they are proprietary.
Regards,
Bruce Stephenson
stephen f white wrote:
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > By the way, what you have done is nothing new, in fact Active Worlds has done
> > this effectively for over 4 years now. They are now closing in on 1 billion
> > polygons worth of objects in hundreds persistently shared and in-world avatar
> > updated worlds. Their system works well with low latency on 14.4 modems
> > supporting up to several thousand users simultaneously. Take a look at active
> > worlds at www.digitalspace.com/avatars under "active worlds".
>
> i have followed the alpha world/active worlds stuff since the beginning,
> and it's pretty cool. however, there are some limitations:
>
> 1) it's proprietary.
> 2) last i checked, you have to pay to run the server.
> 3) the client only runs on one platform -- windows.
> 4) the building client is awkward at best.
>
> there is also very limited occlusion culling, which makes it impractical
> to build complex indoor areas. given those limitations, though, there
> are still a lot of things it does better than the free systems.
>
> stephen
>
> --
> stephen f. white
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/sfwhite/
> i'm not a complete idiot; some parts are missing.
