[opensource-dev] Snowglobe as an mixed reality platform

[Aleric Inglewood]

Yes, we should concentrate on a general API for plugins before
adding all kinds of specialized code that could and should have
been implemented through that API.

More specifically regarding Kantonen's request to have
"some parts of our work incorporated into the Snowglobe
sources", that would just put the maintenance problem
with us: we have to deal with an "upstream" (Linden Lab)
too, weird as that may sound. Snowglobe is no different
than your code base in that regard (as we recently and
painfully have become aware).

Therefore the only workable option is to create this plugin
API, so you can use that as stable interface.

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:41 AM, Morgaine <morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Merov, further to Kantonen+Suzy and Lawson's posts about Snowglob
> extensions, once the 2.0 code merges settle down, can we please get back to
> the topic of client-side scripting that was rudely interrupted by the TPV
> debacle?
>
> It is precisely that kind of generic scriptable extension mechanism that
> will allow easy integration into Snowglobe of industry-sponsored projects
> such as that of VTT+IBM and well as community projects such as Saijanai's
> work with Cobalt, instead of requiring each new application to be grafted on
> as special cases.
>
> Every special external plugin will need to communicate with an effective
> API in the viewer, and expanding the viewer API for each such external
> plugin is clearly not scalable nor even viable, not to mention inflexible.
>
> This is why a generic viewer API for communicating with pluggable
> extensions is extremely important for the future of Snowglobe as an
> extensible application.  The number of possible extensions is unbounded, but
> the hundreds of eyes focussed on this mailing list are probably sufficient
> to come up with a suitably generic API and a good infrastructure design for
> managing these kinds of extensions.
>
>
> Morgaine.
>
>
>
>
> ================================
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Lawson English <lenglish5 at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm working on mixing Cobalt with SL via the media plugin. Here's a bit
>> of discussion of how it (and future plugins) might work:
>>
>> http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Saijanai_Kuhn/Plugins_discussion
>>
>> Lawson
>>
>> Suzy Deffeyes wrote:
>> > I'm very interested in this work ( full disclosure, IBM is one of the
>> > sponsors of the work), Moriz, I agree that today's head mounted
>> > displays are a bit bulky for widespread use.  It is great foundational
>> > work, and there are some aspects that we could integrate into
>> > Snowglobe that would be useful *today*.  One of those is the gesture
>> > recognition code. It's towards the end of Tuomas' video. It uses a
>> > webcam to detect a user nodding yes/no, and then plays an in world
>> > animation based on detecting the gesture.
>> >
>> > Merov, once the Snowglobe 2.0 code settles down, can we discuss a way
>> > to have a pluggable framework that people could use for things like
>> > AR? Might make a good topic for a Hippo meeting.
>> > Suzy
>> >
>> > On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Moriz Gupte <moriz.gupte at gmail.com
>> > <mailto:moriz.gupte at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> >     This is very neat. Still a bit bulky for immediate use but a great
>> >     foundation for future.
>> >     R
>> >
>> >
>> >     On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 3:31 AM, Kantonen Tuomas
>> >     <Tuomas.Kantonen at vtt.fi <mailto:Tuomas.Kantonen at vtt.fi>> wrote:
>> >
>> >         Hello,
>> >
>> >         I've been working on a project using Second Life as a platform
>> to
>> >         develop mixed reality teleconferencing/-collaboration system.
>> >         A brief
>> >         intro about the project can be found at
>> >         http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/projects/mrconference.html
>> >         and a video demo of our work so far is at
>> >         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNB0_c-5TSk .
>> >
>> >         The project, continuing also in 2010, is split into two parts:
>> >         overlaying a video image with avatars and virtual objects
>> >         (augmented
>> >         reality; AR) and using hand and head gestures to control
>> >         avatars and
>> >         interact with virtual objects (augmented virtuality; AV).
>> >
>> >         We have agreed to release our work as open source. However,
>> >         lack of
>> >         continuous "forward porting" would soon render the released code
>> >         unusable. It would therefore be better to have some parts of our
>> >         work incorporated into the Snowglobe sources.
>> >
>> >         I've tried to keep all our modifications as small as possible.
>> The
>> >         project is separated to our own ACME (Augmented Collaboration
>> >         in Mixed
>> >         Environments) module, vanilla Snowglobe code and an interface
>> >         between
>> >         the two.
>> >
>> >         I'd be ready to invest some time to implement a generic AR/AV
>> >         support
>> >         for Snowglobe if we could come up with a design that could be
>> >         accepted
>> >         by the Snowglobe developers. This would allow anyone to use
>> >         Snowglobe
>> >         as AR/AV research platform, with or without our software.
>> >
>>
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