By Avatar JayR Cela
Last weeks OpenSim Developers meeting has some not to surprising opinions expressed about the future of OpenSim based viewers and a downplay on the viability of FireStorm moving forward. In other words, there has been a loss of faith in FS, and finally some serious discussion about throwing support behind some of the minor players in this shrinking field. You can read the entire transcript here : http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Chat_log_from_the_meeting_on_2018-10-23
I have below several of the FireStorm comments discussed.
1. Have the syntax errors in FS been reported to them?
2. good luck with that :p
3. you have to write a JIRA
4. me? no thanks.. been there.. no more
5. for all practical purposes FS is now a department of LL
6. like we have to do Mantises?
7. im out looking for viewer devs
8. if any viewer dev wants to really support opensim, they should talk to us
9. just as a matter of interest is there any viewer out there that sort of maybe might be semi-up
-to-date wrt. opensim?
This is long overdue in my personal opinion, as I do not care for FS when using anything OpenSim, I much prefer to use the Singularity Viewer, sadly that may soon become a thing of the past as can be witnessed by Siana Gearz ( creator - maintainer of Singularity ) recent outreach for Patreon funding : https://www.patreon.com/sianagearz/overview
I personally am not a developer, but I do attend these weekly meetings from time to time, when I am unable to attend I keep up with what is happening by reading the weekly Chat Logs located here : http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Office_hours
JayR Cela
13 comments:
I've long considered this issue for several reasons:
* Firestorm has pretty much disavowed Opensim. That means it's time to look for a more supportive viewer-- one that works directly with and in harmony with the Opensim project
* As a UI developer, I've been aware for more than a decade that the interface of the Linden Lab style viewer has been unfriendly to users from the very beginning. It's overly complex, cumbersome, presents beginners with a straight up learning curve, and does not have a distinct beginner / advanced user mode. The entire UI needs re-designed so that it is highly intuitive, has an extremely friendly beginners mode-- switchable at the click of a button to an advanced user interface.
* Firestorm has bugs and as the article above states-- good luck in getting the Firestorm team to pay any attention to those issues. My experience is it's difficult enough to get them to take bugs seriously in regard to Second Life, much less Opensim.
* Opensim NEEDS a viewer of its own so that we can stop asking the question "Is it the viewer or is it Opensim?" That question needs to be turned into "Whichever it is... we'll find the bug". No more passing the buck. Ever.
Regarding where to begin: I believe the Firestorm platform is a good one to start with. No need to re-invent the wheel. We completely re-do the user interface, remove the redundant complexities and options no one needs or uses, then get to fixing the major bugs.
I don't think the devs could have discussed a more timely subject. Opensim needs its own viewer. Without such, we will be continually hitting the Firestorm brick wall.
-- Wayfinder
Hi there Wayfinder,
Thank you for taking the time to comment and make your opinions heard. I agree 100%, furthermore I feel FireStorm is a good example of code ( feature ) bloat gone wild. There are a number of included features that do not even function in OpenSim, and still most OS users that I associate with think it is the best thing since pre-sliced bread was invented.
OpenSim deserves it's own unique custom tailored Viewer. However this is easier said than done, for instance the Alchemy Viewer started out out to accomplish this, sadly that project has seen no activity for about 1 year. A similar situation is the Kokua viewer.
I have recently tried out the CoolVL viewer a few times but it lacks so many of the things I find essential that are present in Singularity.
JayR Cela :_)
Kokua Viewer might actually be an option, now, for becoming OpenSim centric, now that it has passed the lead development over to Chorazin Allen. It will be difficult for Chorazin to keep up with the pace of LL's changes and try and keep a whole bunch of versions going such as With RLV/Without RLV, Win, Mac, Linux versions, experimental versions, and so on....it's why the previous developer gave up on it...oh, and to make a whole separate version for OpenSim...is just too much for one person. Which is why Henri Beauchamp doesn't try with his Cool VL Viewer to try and make so many 'flavors' of the same viewer...it's too much work for one person to keep up with all those things. But, if I were someone like Chorazin, I might be tempted to offer my viewer as an OpenSim only viewer...if someone made it worth my while...which has always been the issue for viewer developers...time is money and if they don't have a stake in OpenSim then there isn't much interest in doing it. In the next short paragraph I will provide you with yet another choice to consider...
A while back I floated the idea of cozying up to the developers of the Tundra platform, the RealXtend organization, to make a viewer that could be used in OpenSim and Tundra. Their initial response was positive and they offered up their Naali viewer (a very unique viewer originally developed for use in SL and OpenSim) as an available basis for OpenSim viewer development, with the thought that it could be easily adapted to work with current OpenSim. It was originally used in Tundra's early days, but has been left behind in favor of lighter, use-based, viewers for Tundra of modern day. But, the technology is sitting there, available, and open-sourced, in the Naali Viewer. It certainly would make a major break off from LL while still being compatible with nearly all of Opensim. Check it out ! --> https://code.google.com/archive/p/realxtend-naali/downloads?page=4
I just thought of another viewer developer you could contact...besides Chorazin Allen or using the Naali Viewer...and that is Kirstenlee Cinquetti of Kirsten's Viewer fame. Kirsten would want to be paid of course, but would be capable of the things you want from an SL viewer developer to be able to change an SL viewer into an OpenSim viewer: https://sourceforge.net/projects/kirstensviewers/
@Lord
Hi there Lord / nice to hear from you again / as far as Kokua is concerned, according to the discussion during the meeting Bill Blight of OpenSim Life says he can compile the it for Windows, perhaps / I'll be sure to bring this up during the next meeting. As far as the Naali Viewer goes I had forgotten completely about Real Extend, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Also I recently tried Henri's CoolVL viewer on both Xubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 forks and it works very well, no problems at all, however for my tastes it is lacking a few features present in Singularity that I use on a regular basis. But you have to hand it to Henri, he does an amazing job at proving LL wrong that the original V1 based viewers were ( are ) obsolete.
As always thanks for taking the time to post your comments
JayR Cela :_)
@Lord.
Chorazin has not taken over the OpenSim version of Kokua. He has not shown any interest to, or contributed a single commit to that version of the viewer. All the work on the OS version was and is still done by me, Gavin Hird.
The primary reason for why I prioritized the macOS version only is both because that is where my interest are and have resources for keeping the development ongoing, but also because after my heart surgery I have limited bandwidth to concentrate on viewer development (getting tired very fast).
The macOS version is reasonably up to date, but I have not made any commit to the OS version for all 3 platforms since last year because it needs continuous testing bother building, functionality, crash rate and performance on each platform. Sure I could do like NickyP did and do it all in virtual machines, but you really don't get to test it properly.
One more thing about the Kokua viewer that is maintained by Chorazin is that the OpenSim code has been stripped out of it and it cannot log on the OpenSim at all any more.
The reverse has been the long time plan for the OS version, but has not been done as long as it is possible to log on the SL with it. This will, however, stop on January 6, 2019 when LL switch off what they call legacy asset support. The immediate plan is to stip out Pathfinding and marketplace code, which will simplify things a bit. It will also contribute to better performance on region crossings where pathfinder is rearing its's ugly head.
@Lord, Hi again Lord, Oh yeah I remember Kirstenlee Cinquetti of Kirsten's Viewer fame, I don't recall the Famous part though :_(
I went to the link you provided ( I even tried her main Blogs Home Page ) and downloaded something I thought was going to be the S23 Viewer, instead I got a tarball called "boost-1.66-win-x86-vc144-KV.tar.bz2(22.4 MB)" seems to be just a bunch of Lib files, and although it is a tarball of a supposed Windows program I do not see a win executable ( aka .exe ) anywhere in archive, maybe I'm missing something here.
I am not a developer myself, but I will be sure to mention her name at the next meeting, Thanks again.
JayR Cela :_)
@Gavin
Hi there Gavin, thanks for taking the time to post here.
Bill Blight of OpenSim Life at 12:06 of the chat log
[12:06] Bill Blight: if it will compile on windows I can compile it
[12:06] Gavin.Hird @grid.xmir.org:8002: the current repository will compile as is
offered to compile the source to Windows. He's pretty good at doing this sort of thing. So at this point seems like a viable path to explore further.
Thanks again Gavin, I'll see ya soon.
JayR Cela :)
@JayR It is brilliant if Bill can compile it for Windows.
I can say that he's got the work cut out in front of him as the repository as-is only will compile 32-bit, as the bulk of the commits that are required for 64-bit builds have not been applied to it. Most of these commits exist in the macOS version of the repository, but not all, as changes to primarily Windows builds are left out there. These will have to be picked up and applied separately.
In order to build both 32 and 64 bit Linux and Windows versions the repository must be split in a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version as it becomes too complicated to handle it all in one. Thankfully the Kokua SL 64-bit repository will be of great help here as there is still a lot of commonality between the OS and SL versions. NickyP has also done a significant job of building the required 64-bit Linux libraries and providing a 64-bit Linux version of Kokua SL.
But as you understand, this is a complicated puzzle and lots of work.
@Gavin
I have met a lot of people over the years in OpenSim, if any off them that I know of it would be Bill that can pull it off. We just have to see what happens.
Thanks again for expressing yourself and posting / see ya soon
JayR Cela :_)
It seems that there is now a fork of the Kokua Viewer called the Dayturn Viewer that is especially made for use with OpenSim grids: https://www.dayturn.com/viewer/index.php
Hey there Lord / Long time no see, yeah Dayturn is a fork of Kokua, I've tried it under Wine 4.4 and 4.5 on Linux it's OK, Mehh that's about all I have to say so far.
It uses the CHUE chat interface which I cant stand, it is Grumpity Lindens scourge on the Virtual World chat interface. It Sucks !!
So right off the bat I give it a pass, better off with FireStorm or CoolVL or Singularity.
Just my opinionated opinion :_)
JayR Cela :_)
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