Official Transcript

AMD and Metaversatility present: "Open source movements in Second Life: Challenges and opportunities"

Panel and Q&A featuring: Christian Prior (OpenSL), Gigs Taggart (OpenSL), and Frank Bogomil (Metaversatility), Mingan Munro (AMD)

Location: AMD Developer Central (surl)

Time: 1:00-2:00 p.m. PST/SLT

Join some of our community's leading authorities on open source projects in Second Life for an afternoon of substantive discussion. This event is bound to fill up quickly, so please be sure to join the AMD.Developer group to secure priority admission. Panelists will answer the following questions as well as speaking on their projects' specific goals.

• In what ways might open source software enrich the experience of Second Life residents who do not consider themselves to be programmers? • What significant initiatives have been launched within the development community since Linden announced it would open-source the client? • What pathways will lead to the creation of standards-compliant virtual world programming tools? • What will virtual worlds look like five, ten and fifteen years from now?

Audience members will have the opportunity to pose their own questions to the panelists. Don't miss this opportunity to speak with some of the leaders in the SL Open Source community.

[Introductory comments missing from log]

[13:07] Dually Goalpost: With that, I am going to go tweak the repeaters and turn it over to Mingan Munro, my AMD colleague,

[13:07] Dually Goalpost: to say a few words about AMD's open source initiatives.

[13:07] Dually Goalpost: Mingan?

[13:08] Mingan Munro: Hello all. I'm AMD's open source relations manager. I've been working at AMD for the past 6 years. I wanted to start off by saying a bit about AMD's open source activities in the last few years.

[13:09] Mingan Munro: In 2001, AMD released the specifications to an unreleased processor architecture then called Hammer, now called AMD64.

[13:10] Mingan Munro: Two weeks later an open source programmer had the first simulated AMD64 hardware booting in Linux and getting to a command prompt.

[13:10] Mingan Munro: That served as a wake-up call to us as to the power of open source programming.

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [13:11] Mingan Munro: Since then, AMD64 has become one of the leading architectures for open source operating systems, and is as much a commodity as the x86 platform.

[13:12] Mingan Munro: AMD is now a prominent voice in the Linux community, leading the direction of The Linux Foundation (formerly the Free Standards Group and Open Source Development Labs).

[13:12] Mingan Munro: We sponsor some of the most important events in the open source development world including but not limited to the USENIX Kernel Summit, the Linux Symposium, and Linux World events all over the world.

[13:14] Mingan Munro: This is our first venture into Second Life. We realize that open source technology is a prominent force in the field of softwrae development, and that open source development in Second Life can be just as important of a force in the future of not only this virtual world but the very fabric of the Internet.

[13:14] Mingan Munro: Welcome to our inaugural event into the open source development of Second Life.

[13:14] Mingan Munro: With that, I turn the floor back to Dually Goalpost.

[13:15] Dually Goalpost: Great, thanks Mingan!

[13:16] Dually Goalpost: Our next panelist is Christian Prior of the Electric Sheep Co. Christian, over to you.

[13:16] Adri Saarinen applauds!

[13:16] Christian Prior: thanks Dually

[13:16] Christian Prior: hello everyone, thanks for coming, and thanks also to Adri/Peter and everyone at Metaversatiliy and AMD

[13:17] Christian Prior: I'm Christian Prior / Christian Westbrook for those of you on SLDev ;-) and I am a Sheep with the Electric Sheep Company

[13:18] School Mascot: w00t!

[13:18] Christian Prior: we are working to spin off OpenMetaverse.org as a not-for-profit organization to facilitate metaversal open source initiatives such as OpenSL, libsl, and OpenSim

[13:18] Randall Lynch: woot!

[13:18] Jesse Malthus: yey!

[13:18] Christian Prior: woot indeed :)

[13:19] Christian Prior: much as we often hear SL called the 3-d web, the organization is analogous to the Mozilla foundation

[13:20] Christian Prior: OpenMetaverse.org is an effort that began with OpenSecondLife.org -- and actually our wiki still reflects this :) -- which was launched the day the SL viewer source was released

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [13:21] Christian Prior: I was speaking with Prokofy Neva at the Metaverse Meetup here in Brooklyn last night, and he asked "Are you for the world or the platform"

[13:21] Christian Prior: This stuck with me; at the end of the day, I can see *why* this question appears to be valid, but I fundamentally disagree that the world and the platform are not one and the same

[13:22] Christian Prior: I certainly don't discount the value of the SL community, but I think improving the platform is the *only* way to support our community

[13:22] Jesse Malthus: uh oh. prokofy. >.> <.<

[13:22] Christian Prior: So, I should most likely preface my comments with a "these are my opinions, not necessarily those of ESC," and mention that I absolutely respect LL and their work, but I think the SL platform does have some serious issues facing it

[13:22] Soft Noel grins.

[13:22] otakup0pe Neumann: Heh.

[13:23] Christian Prior: and I know Rob and the Lindens are aware of this and I very much appreciate that they are opening up gradually, but I don't think this can happen fast enough :)

[13:24] Christian Prior: One of the efforts on which a lot of the community has focused is a plugin infrastructure for the SL viewer.

[13:24] Christian Prior: This may seem to speak to developers, but ultimately I see plugins as a way to allow all users -- most notably non-programmers -- to achieve the SL experience they desire

[13:25] Christian Prior: and afford an extensibility that isn't what one gets with shrink-wrapped software, and this is what we expect with user-created content and virtual worlds: there's not a single point dictating the kinds of experiences one can have

[13:26] Christian Prior: and am absolutely open to talking more about this =) but will stop here since we are 25min in and two speakers down, and I'd rather hear from all of you!

[13:26] Christian Prior: thanks so much :)

[13:26] Adri Saarinen applauds!

[13:26] Jesse Malthus claps

[13:26] Esprite Xavier claps

[13:26] Kesseret Steeplechase: *clap*

[13:26] Dually Goalpost: Thanks very much, Christian!

[13:26] Villi Meili: claps

[13:27] Villi Meili: hoot

[13:27] Dually Goalpost: Next, we have Technologist Frank Bogomil. Frank!

[13:28] Frank Bogomil: I was part of the original Inktomi/Hotbot team which now is part of Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL, etc

[13:28] Frank Bogomil: I am going to talk a little about the metaverse of 2025

[13:29] Frank Bogomil: So what will it look like?

[13:29] Frank Bogomil: But it will primarily be a distributed computing environment

[Simulator crash due to high concurrency level and scripted objects]

[13:56] Christian Prior: I certainly don't discount the value of the SL community, but I think improving the platform is the *only* way to support our community

[13:56] Christian Prior: So, I should most likely preface my comments with a "these are my opinions, not necessarily those of ESC," and mention that I absolutely respect LL and their work, but I think the SL platform does have some serious issues facing it

[13:56] Christian Prior: and I know Rob and the Lindens are aware of this and I very much appreciate that they are opening up gradually, but I don't think this can happen fast enough :)

[13:56] Christian Prior: One of the efforts on which a lot of the community has focused is a plugin infrastructure for the SL viewer.

[13:56] Christian Prior: This may seem to speak to developers, but ultimately I see plugins as a way to allow all users -- most notably non-programmers -- to achieve the SL experience they desire

[13:56] Christian Prior: and afford an extensibility that isn't what one gets with shrink-wrapped software, and this is what we expect with user-created content and virtual worlds: there's not a single point dictating the kinds of experiences one can have

[13:56] Christian Prior: and am absolutely open to talking more about this =) but will stop here since we are 25min in and two speakers down, and I'd rather hear from all of you!

[13:56] Christian Prior: thanks so much :)

[13:56] Jesse Malthus claps

[13:56] Kesseret Steeplechase: *clap*

[13:56] Dually Goalpost: Thanks very much, Christian!

[13:56] Villi Meili: claps

[13:56] Villi Meili: hoot

[13:56] Sean Buridan whistles

[13:56] Dually Goalpost: Next, we have Technologist Frank Bogomil. Frank!

[13:56] Frank Bogomil: Hello, this is John Plevyak (Frank)

[13:56] Frank Bogomil: I was part of the original Inktomi/Hotbot team which now is part of Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL, etc

[13:56] Frank Bogomil: I am going to talk a little about the metaverse of 2025

[13:56] Frank Bogomil: So what will it look like?

[13:56] Frank Bogomil: But it will primarily be a distributed computing environment

[Simulator crash]

[14:09] Frank Bogomil: Ok, as I was saying :)

[14:10] Frank Bogomil: One second while we work out the technical issues...

[14:10] Adri Saarinen: Alright, folks, give us just a moment as we reset the mic. :)

[14:10] Soft Noel: If you just shout, or come stand up where the audience mikes are, we don't need the repeater :)

[14:10] Dually Goalpost: OK, Frank - take it away

[14:11] Frank Bogomil: So, the metaverse of the future

[14:11] Frank Bogomil: It will be a generalized distributed computing platform

[14:11] Frank Bogomil: And rather than a virtual world or worlds, more of a "consensual reality"

[14:12] Frank Bogomil: So, like the way TIVO allows us to control television, or spam filters e-mail

[14:12] Frank Bogomil: the future metaverse client will permit each individual to see the world the way they want to see it

[14:12] Frank Bogomil: that is the challange that is before us

[14:12] Frank Bogomil: so where does open source fit in?

[14:13] Frank Bogomil: Well, in the early internet, we had HTML and TCP/IP

[14:13] Frank Bogomil: simple standards which permitted individuals with widely different capabilities of hardware to communicate

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [14:14] Frank Bogomil: open source platforms still provide much of the backbone of the internet through implementation of standardized protocols

[14:15] Jack Moseley: hrm..

[14:16] Frank Bogomil: What we need from open source now is alternatively clients and servers and an open protocol

[14:16] Frank Bogomil: we need to address not more features, but more flexability

[14:16] Frank Bogomil: In particularly we need to deal with the current master-slave server-client relationship

[14:17] Frank Bogomil: A more flexibile collaborative model which permits individuals to see the metaverse as they want and to communicate directly is needed

[14:18] bushing Spatula shouts: What about stability / scalability?

[14:18] Frank Bogomil: We need to learn from the explosion of p2p appliations and the current "web 2.0" which is just about a limitted form of distributed computing

[14:18] Adri Saarinen: We'll take questions in just a few minutes.

[14:19] Frank Bogomil: The current server-client model is not scalable to the 1000s of people we would like to be able to accoumidate in public forums, concerts and the like

[14:19] Frank Bogomil: instead we need to look to a croquet (the open croquet project) for ideas on distributing aspects of the computation

[14:20] Frank Bogomil: so that each element is not broadcast from a central server

[14:20] Frank Bogomil: Thanx, I'll be here for question

[14:21] Dually Goalpost: Thanks very much, Frank.

[14:21] Frank Bogomil: questions later

[14:21] Adri Saarinen applauds!

[14:21] Dually Goalpost: Next, Adri Saarinen will stand in for Gigs Taggart. Adri?

[14:21] Esprite Xavier claps

[14:21] Adri Saarinen: Hi everyone. Let's pretend Gigs got a whole lot more spotted. :)

[14:21] Adri Saarinen: He had to run, but passed his comments on to me.

[14:21] Soft Noel: And curvier :)

[14:22] Adri Saarinen: Until I say otherwise, everything after this statement is Gigs's own words.

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [14:22] Adri Saarinen: Hi, I'm Jason Giglio, aka Gigs Taggart. I'm a contract developer inside and outside SL. I'll be talking today about the opportunities that open source provides for the Second Life platform.

[14:22] Adri Saarinen: The current efforts of open development of the SL client fall under the umbrella of the OpenSL project. This project is not so much a single organized effort as it is a loose collaboration between all the programmers that are interested in working with the open source code that Linden Lab has provided.

[14:23] Adri Saarinen: Open source creates new opportunities for features that Linden Lab may not be able to devote development resources to. Linden Lab currently is pouring nearly all their resources into stability, lag, and scalability. This is important, of course, but they are fighting just to tread water with the explosive growth of the user base.

[14:23] Adri Saarinen: Open source helps in two ways. One way is that open source programmers are often SL users too, and hate lag and performance problems just as much as anyone else. There have already been several patches submitted that improve client performance, and several more in the works.

[14:24] Adri Saarinen: The other way that open source helps Linden Lab is that viewer feature development can continue while they devote their time to increasing platform stability. We are working with Linden Lab to find ways that the OpenSL project can prototype new features that might require new server-side changes, without a development commitment from Linden Lab on each new feature before it's written.

[14:24] Adri Saarinen: Right now everything is more or less hard coded. Linden Lab is moving away from this to settle the API. An extensible section to the client-server protocol will give us more flexibility to develop new complex functionality. One of the major current initiatives of the OpenSL project is a plug-in architecture, similar to the way that Firefox can be customized with third party extensions.

[14:25] Adri Saarinen: This plug-in architecture will allow open source and commercial developers to extend the client without Linden Lab spending resources on the new features. It will also allow users to choose which new features they want. In the past, a new feature might have introduced new bugs, but users had little choice whether to accept it or not.

[14:26] Adri Saarinen: The exciting thing about this is that users will be able to choose which new features they want, avoiding ones they don't need or ones that might cause instability or lag. Plug-ins will not necessarily be tied to one particular programming tool. One vision for the plug-ins is that many plug-ins will offer other language bindings.

[14:26] Adri Saarinen: For example, a plug-in might be created that ties a Python or Mono interface to the native C++ that the client is written in. In this way, the actual meat of the plug-in could be written in Python or Mono. It will be some time before this plug-in architecture is ready for prime time, but it is many developer's prime concern right now.

[14:26] Adri Saarinen: The future of virtual worlds is an exciting one. Things can change quickly. Linden Lab knows this, and I think this is one of the reasons they have devoted so much effort into open source. Open source can offer Second Life agility to compete against any future virtual world. Instead of only user-created content, the platform itself becomes partly user-created.

[14:27] Adri Saarinen: If anyone wants more details about the technologies and initiatives I've talked about here, please let me know later [by IM or email] and I'll provide some URLs.

[14:27] Adri Saarinen: Thank you.

[14:27] Adri Saarinen shakes herself. "Oh, I think I'm me again."

[14:28] Soft Noel: Let you know, or let Gigs know?

[14:28] Adri Saarinen: Gigs :)

[14:28] FlipperPA Peregrine: That was a lovely out of body experience :-)

[14:28] Dually Goalpost: Thanks Tigs, er, Adri

[14:28] Esprite Xavier: ^^

[14:28] Nite Zelmanov: haha

[14:28] Peter Newell: hhaha

[14:28] FlipperPA Peregrine: You're the John Edwards of Open Source ;-)

[14:28] Adri Saarinen: I think that's John Edward. :D

[14:28] FlipperPA Peregrine: Okay okay, I take it back :-)

[14:28] Dually Goalpost: Before we take questions, let me invite each of you to visit our developer site:

[14:28] FlipperPA Peregrine: Adri: Ah, yes :-)

[14:28] Dually Goalpost: http://developer.amd.com/

[14:29] Dually Goalpost: With that plug out of the way, we are now open for questions.

[14:29] Adz Childs raises his hand.

[14:29] Dually Goalpost: Hi Adz, thanks for that! Go ahead.

[14:29] Peter Newell nods to Adz

[14:30] Todd Greer: is Rob coming back?

[14:30] Adz Childs: if the client is os, and the server is os, and the protocol is os, how will LL make money? or should we not worry about that?

[14:30] Adri Saarinen notes she's not a good enough Gigs channel to answer questions as him. :)

[14:30] Frank Bogomil: I'll take that

[14:30] Frank Bogomil: As the internet companies have found out, content is king

[14:30] Adz Childs smiles

[14:31] Frank Bogomil: LL will make money to host sites that want to be hosted by pros

[14:31] FlipperPA Peregrine: Let's not forget the L$ micropayment system, and someone will have to figure out who gets to plug in where on the grid, almost like registering a domain. :-)

[14:32] Frank Bogomil: in .com

[14:32] Frank Bogomil: Yes, verisign makes money from every site

[14:32] Seg Baphomet: Eh, what does physical location have to do with a virtual world?

[14:32] Peter Newell notes: "Robla has not returned since secondcrash"

[14:32] otakup0pe Neumann: one word : lag

[14:33] Soft Noel: Rob said he had to go as well on #opensl

[14:33] Seg Baphomet: Independent sims can link up however they want. Just like hyperlinks on the web.

[14:33] FlipperPA Peregrine: hehehe, true that otaku. For example, a lot of us in the colored "old old" sims in SL like our neighborhood as a whole, and have long-term stable neighborhoods where the landscape doesn't change daily; that certainly has a value. :-)

[14:34] Frank Bogomil: yes, there are still relative land values, even in the great plains states

[14:34] Adz Childs: LOL !!! :D :D :D !!!

[14:35] Seg Baphomet: ...

[14:35] FlipperPA Peregrine: hahahaha, great parallel :-)

[14:35] Seg Baphomet: Anyone still using copybot has patched around your "protection" by now.

[14:36] Peter Newell: next question?

[14:36] Seg Baphomet: I have a question for AMD.

[14:36] Peter Newell: by all means :)

[14:37] Dually Goalpost: Please go ahead, Seg.

[14:37] Seg Baphomet: Given that AMD now owns ATI, will the X.org project ever see full specs to ATI hardware so proper open source OpenGL drivers can be written?

[14:37] otakup0pe Neumann: =D

[14:37] Copyright Protection Version 3.000671: !quit

[14:37] Copyright Protection Version 3.000671: CopyBot Protection Mark III

[14:37] Copyright Protection Version 3.000671: Featuring:- Dynamic Protection with Low Spam.

[14:37] Mingan Munro: I'll answer that one.

[14:37] Dually Goalpost: Thanks, Mingan.

[14:39] Mingan Munro: You won't see open source drivers real soon because ATI (and now AMD) are under legal restrictions regarding some of the content of those drivers. There is 3rd party IP in the drivers.

[14:40] Mingan Munro: On top of that, the specifications of the devices are excessively complex. Having said this, we are working to create a friendlier image with the open source community by delivering what we think most customers really want --

[14:40] Seg Baphomet: Yes, they are complex. Thats why we need them.

[14:40] Soft Noel: Don't think anyone asked to see the existing drivers.

[14:41] Mingan Munro: Better quality drivers, better documentation on how to troubleshoot drivers, and better integration with other open source projects. We're also working with the Linux kernel maintainers to make Linux drivers easier to build, which enhances driver support overall for open source environments.

[14:41] Jack Moseley: heh.. v3.000662 .. lots of development for !quit

[14:42] Mingan Munro: ...but specifications are an extremely sensitive issue due to the IP involved. Many ATI-powered devices contain IP from other vendors. So getting specifications would require all vendors' cooperation. That's unlikely to happen in the short term.

[14:42] FlipperPA Peregrine: ...and that was just a myth anyway. :-)

[14:42] Mingan Munro: ...but we're doing what we can. :)

[14:42] FlipperPA Peregrine: (!quit that is, not ATI drivers.)

[14:42] otakup0pe Neumann: What brought !quit up ?

[14:42] Adri Saarinen: Someone's wearing an anti copybot device, apparently.

[14:42] Adz Childs: someone rezzed one over here

[14:42] otakup0pe Neumann: haha.

[14:43] otakup0pe Neumann: :|

[14:43] Mark Barrett: the copy bot spam protection that only needs three messages boasting how low spam it is

[14:43] bushing Spatula: mingan, unfortunately you'll still end up tainiting the kernel

[14:43] FlipperPA Peregrine: the copy bot non-protection is more like it, heh.

[14:43] bushing Spatula: er, xserver

[14:44] otakup0pe Neumann: or the kernel, in the case of framebuffer

[14:44] Seg Baphomet: Its a bit silly to be touting Second LIfe as open source when it still depends on closed source OpenGL implementations.

[14:44] Seg Baphomet: Oh well, the reverse engineered r300 drivers are pretty usable. But now we have r500 being introduced.

[14:45] Soft Noel: Point taken, but it doesn't need to be all or nothing to derive benefit from public contribution. :P

[14:45] Mingan Munro: Yes, very unfortunate side-effect of proprietary drivers is tainting the kernel. ...but propietary drivers are not going away for some time.

[14:45] Seg Baphomet: For AMD and Linden Lab to benefit, perhaps.

[14:46] Peter Newell: next question?

[14:46] SpacedOut Frye: alk the talk, walk the walk, as we are talking about open source there are a couple in the audience that are running second life without the priprietary libraries (kdu jpeg2000 decoding), are any of the panelists? Or is everyone logged in with the binary downloaded client? I'm running in Linux on AMD 64 Turion x2 myself.

[14:46] Adri Saarinen: Ah, Gigs was on his own compiled client.

[14:46] otakup0pe Neumann: Once it's easier to use an "open" client I probably will. As of now, I'm sticking with the retail first look

[14:47] Peekay Semyorka: A question and a followup, if I may?

[14:47] Peter Newell: certainly :)

[14:47] Todd Greer: I am curious what channels are open to building to exponentially larger concurrencies?

[14:47] Seg Baphomet: Yes, I should mention I'm working on getting slviewer merged into Fedora Linux. I am running a fully open source build, native x86_64 on the open source r300 DRI drivers.

[14:47] otakup0pe Neumann: Awesome Seg.

[14:48] Peekay Semyorka: Much of the early interest in open SL has been very technically driven. How do the panelist envision the greater community to participate in the direction of an open source client?

[14:48] FlipperPA Peregrine: Cool work, Seg.

[14:48] Seg Baphomet: SpacedOut Frye deserves mad props for patching up SL's OpenJPEG code to make it actually usable. Lets hope LL actually merges his code soon.

[14:49] otakup0pe Neumann: yes ! the openjpeg stuff warmed the cockles of my heart.

[14:49] Todd Greer: and where are we with the plugin arch Frank?

[14:49] Frank Bogomil: However, ultimately we need to include more open assets

[14:50] Frank Bogomil: It is still early. There are technical issues to solve :)

[14:50] Dually Goalpost: Would someone care to address Peekay's question about greater community involvement?

[14:50] Frank Bogomil: Part of the problem is that LL is moving to CLR (.NET/Mono) as the core scripting language

[14:50] Christian Prior: Peekay: sure; with the ability to change your viewing experience in SL will come the ability to share that experience,

[14:50] Peekay Semyorka: However much of the plugin discussion again has been very technical; we haven't heard much for example on what kinds of plugins users would ultimately like to see. The discussions have been limite dto things like DLLs vs COM, C API vs C++, etc.

[14:51] Christian Prior: I think we'll probably see the equivalent of the WoW skins for different activities

[14:51] otakup0pe Neumann: I think that once we get mono/better server performance we'll see a WoW =clone=

[14:51] Christian Prior: right -- the first round of plugins will be very rudimentary, but there's quite a bit of interest in building a plugin at that most basic level that runs an instance of mono, a python interpreter, etc.

[14:52] FlipperPA Peregrine: Has everyone seen the video mono demo Babbage did? Quite impressive performance wise.

[14:52] Nite Zelmanov: Where can we find that , Flipper?

[14:52] Christian Prior: and as these layers are built and stabilize, more developers will be able to contribute

[14:52] Frank Bogomil: Technically we ultimately want to unify client and server side scripting and allow for mobile computation

[14:53] FlipperPA Peregrine: Let me dig up a link. The first half is Cory O. giving an SL 101 - the second half is Jim/Babbage talking about the overall structure of mono in SL, then the final 15 minutes are him demoing the fibonacci sequence on the current LSL interpreter versus mono

[14:53] FlipperPA Peregrine: brb

[14:53] Frank Bogomil: in the sort term Christian is right... skinning with a simple client side layer

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [14:53] Esprite Xavier: I'd like to create a unique gaming experience in SL, I think plugins might help alot with that ^^ get past limitations that we currently suffer from

[14:54] FlipperPA Peregrine: Mono video: http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/4/1/94138e2a- d9dc-435a-9240-bcd985bf5bd7/Jim-Cory-SecondLife.wmv

[14:54] Peekay Semyorka: Thanks. My followup is the open source model itself. Currently developers seem to be concerned whether their work will ultimately get checked "back-in" to the mainline code. However such worry seems to prevent taking the client to "new bold directions" perhaps to Franks' 2025 vision. Should there be a different model? Forks of the SL client without regard to the official version?

[14:54] FlipperPA Peregrine: (Sorry about the WMV, but it was at a .NET conference)

[14:54] otakup0pe Neumann: Thatis an awesome talk that Cory / Babbage did.

[14:55] Frank Bogomil: We need an open source server or a standarized protocol to be able to move the client in new ways

[14:55] Mingan Munro: My apologies all, but my 1st life calls. It's been a pleasure talking with you all...

[14:55] FlipperPA Peregrine: I've got a question when we're ready :-)

[14:55] FlipperPA Peregrine: Take care Mingan

[14:55] Seg Baphomet: Open source developers do not worry about such things.

[14:55] Peter Newell: thanks Mingan

[14:55] Frank Bogomil: That work is ongoing, but I think that there is still a place for client only work as well

[14:55] Peekay Semyorka: Thanks mingan

[14:55] Dually Goalpost: Thanks, Mingan!

[14:55] Frank Bogomil: thanx!

[14:55] Adri Saarinen: Thank you for being here, Mingan.

[14:56] otakup0pe Neumann: gah

[14:56] otakup0pe Neumann: who is wearing that copybot thing. so weak.

[14:56] FlipperPA Peregrine: Ready for a Q or are you still answering?

[14:56] Mingan Munro is Offline

[14:56] Peter Newell: I believe we're ready for the next question.

[14:57] FlipperPA Peregrine: One thing I've noticed is that many developers don't really cross over to see the social side of SL.

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [14:57] FlipperPA Peregrine: Another thing I've noticed is that the social side of SL tends to create most of the lag that causes servers to slow down.

[14:57] otakup0pe Neumann: Bling !

[14:57] Dually Goalpost: And dolphins

[14:57] FlipperPA Peregrine: Would a team of those who do cross over to suggest certain features that would really help cut down on avatar-based scripts running be a help?

[14:57] Adri Saarinen hides her prim hair with... a prim hat. Damn.

[14:58] FlipperPA Peregrine: For example... in social sims, there are cases where 90% of the avatars present are wearing an animation overrider that runs a 10-per-second timer checking the avatar's current anim state.

[14:58] FlipperPA Peregrine: The ability to override default anims should have been in the client in v1.4 ;-)

[14:58] otakup0pe Neumann detaches his ZHAO

[14:58] FlipperPA Peregrine: Nice p0pe :-)

[14:58] otakup0pe Neumann: i hate that penguin walk :|

[14:58] FlipperPA Peregrine: Is that something the devs could use fomr those who do some of the social side more as well?

[14:59] Frank Bogomil: With a distributed computing core, we would not have to worry about what other sims are running

[14:59] Frank Bogomil: The problem is that, currently, we all care if someone down the road is using an expensive AO

[15:00] FlipperPA Peregrine: hehehehe, true. I'm just thinking of easy ways to take load off the sim and onto the client.

[15:01] Frank Bogomil: a lot more could be run on clients, but doing so will require deep changes.

[15:01] Seg Baphomet: Yes, there should be callbacks to hook into, rather than having to poll. Polling bad, and is the worst thing a scripting language could possibly be doing.

[15:02] FlipperPA Peregrine: Gotcha. As much as I would have loved to, I must admit I haven't taken more than a cursory glance at the code so far.

[15:02] FlipperPA Peregrine: Thanks for the input.

[15:02] Dually Goalpost: Logistical Note - We do plan to post a transcript of today's discussion. Look for it on developer.amd.com, openmetaverse.org and the MV blog.

[15:03] otakup0pe Neumann: hooray !

[15:03] Peter Newell: next question?

© 2007 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. [15:03] Seg Baphomet: Just adding some new avatar state change callbacks for LSL scripts to use wouldn't be a huge change, and improve things greatly.

[15:04] otakup0pe Neumann: a new event... avatar_changed

[15:04] otakup0pe Neumann: or the link

[15:04] Nite Zelmanov: These are server side issues, right now we only have viewer source

[15:04] otakup0pe Neumann: s/link/like

[15:04] Seg Baphomet: But that's a server side change, unfortunately not part of any open source code yet available.

[15:04] Nite Zelmanov: :)

[15:05] Peekay Semyorka: For each panelist: what's your idea of a 'cool' plugin? If we had the API ready, what plugin would you wish someone would write?

[15:05] Peter Newell: I think we'll take one more question, then not hold you all up any longer :)

[15:05] Dually Goalpost: You all are welcome to hang out afterward, as long as you like

[15:06] Frank Bogomil: I would permit assets to be downloaded from remote sites (in answer to Peekay's question)

[15:06] Seg Baphomet: Offloading streaming music to ${media_player_of_your_choice}.

[15:07] Peekay Semyorka takes notes

[15:07] Soft Noel: I just wanna play Frogger with a handful of my SL vehicles :P

[15:08] Christian Prior: good question -- there's so much :) i want to keep more from my SL experience -- everything i can't know about real life but want to -- how far did i walk (or fly ;) ) today, who did i talk to, what did we do...

[15:09] Christian Prior: slstats and more -- lifelogging of things that happen in this medium, really

[15:09] Peter Newell: slifelogging

[15:09] Christian Prior: perfect

[15:11] Peter Newell: I think Mark might have heard a thing or two about taking stats though...

[15:11] FlipperPA Peregrine: hehehehehe

[15:11] Adri Saarinen grins

[15:11] otakup0pe Neumann: mmmmmmetrics

[15:11] Christian Prior: and i can't deny personally i'd love to see better audio support as well; SL allows collaboration for building more effectively than most tools, but lacks so much when it comes to making music (or just noise)

[15:12] Frank Bogomil: true, and voice support as well

[15:12] otakup0pe Neumann: Heh. Yes.

[15:12] Christian Prior: soft: agreed

[15:12] Seg Baphomet: fmod needs to die. OpenAL is the most suiting replacement.

[15:12] Dually Goalpost: /optional/ voice support :D

[15:12] Dually Goalpost likes text chat

[15:12] Adri Saarinen: Voice support with voice changing built in. :)

[15:12] FlipperPA Peregrine prefers text as well.

[15:13] otakup0pe Neumann: Text has it's place, so does voice.

[15:13] Frank Bogomil: voice to text and text to voice

[15:13] FlipperPA Peregrine shudders as he remembers There with voice, heh.

[15:13] Soft Noel: fmod supports all kinds of features not being used. It's a solid library.

[15:13] otakup0pe Neumann: The lack of voice support is holding SL back more than people realize in the educational world.

[15:13] Dually Goalpost: Yes, that's very true.

[15:13] Celierra Darling: text-to-speech and speech-to-text but not direct speech :p

[15:14] Seg Baphomet: No its not. At least, not the buggy old version that its currently using. Nor is fmod open source. Hell, not even LL gets to see the source to fmod.

[15:14] Mark Barrett: anyone working on Skype integration?

[15:14] otakup0pe Neumann: Skype integration has already been done Mark

[15:14] otakup0pe Neumann: There is also voxilla, vivox

[15:14] Mark Barrett: in a decent way?

[15:14] otakup0pe Neumann: Plenty of apps.

[15:14] otakup0pe Neumann: Uhh.

[15:14] otakup0pe Neumann: <_<

[15:14] Mark Barrett: Vivox has their Second Phone, but it's still not *really* integrated

[15:15] otakup0pe Neumann: None of the applications that we have seen are fully integrated

[15:15] Dually Goalpost: By the way, we do have an open membership group where we'll send future announcements - search for 'AMD'

[15:15] Mark Barrett: i'm looking more for voice with spatial sound

[15:15] otakup0pe Neumann: That would be ideal Mark

[15:15] Adri Saarinen: The group is called 'AMD Developer Central' :)

[15:15] Seg Baphomet: Also of note, OpenAL is the only hardware accelerated 3D sound API on Vista.

[15:17] Dually Goalpost: Thanks, again, everyone for attending.

[15:17] Dually Goalpost: Check developer.amd.com in the coming days for a trascript

[15:17] Dually Goalpost: And don't forget to play our treasure hunt game! You could win a smokin dual-core Dell system!

[15:17] Adri Saarinen: It's so nice.

[15:17] Adri Saarinen drools

[15:18] Peter Newell claps for panelists :)

[15:18] Celierra Darling: Oooh, where? :p

[15:18] Adri Saarinen applauds!

[15:18] otakup0pe Neumann claps

[15:18] FlipperPA Peregrine: Great work folks :-)

[15:18] Esprite Xavier claps

[15:18] Peekay Semyorka claps... thanks everyone!

[15:18] Dually Goalpost claps

[15:18] Celierra Darling claps :)

[15:18] Adri Saarinen: If you go to the front of the main building, there's a poster to the right, clicking on it will start the game. :)

[15:19] FlipperPA Peregrine: Alright, back to fighting with SL texture mapping. :-) See you all soon, thanks again.

[15:19] Celierra Darling: Thanks Adri :)

[15:20] SFC Zsigmond is Online

[15:20] FlipperPA Peregrine: My pleasure :-) Take care.

[15:20] Christian Prior: thanks again everyone -- night flip

[15:20] FlipperPA Peregrine: Catcha soon, Props

[15:20] otakup0pe Neumann: Cool. It was neat.

[15:20] otakup0pe Neumann: Glitches aside.

[15:20] otakup0pe Neumann: But. You know what they say about the bleeding edge

[15:21] Adri Saarinen: Double sim crash is my favorite way to kick off an event.

[15:21] Soft Noel: Willt here be refreshments? :)

[15:21] Soft Noel: Other than whatever's left of the dolphins?

[15:21] Mark Barrett: You can open a window :)

[15:21] otakup0pe Neumann dissapears in a poof of logic

[15:21] Dually Goalpost: steaming coffee in the lobby. haha

[15:21] Soft Noel: Dat works :)

[15:21] Seg Baphomet: What, no tea?

[15:22] Adri Saarinen: We should get some Mountain Dew, Dually