[sldev] Hello everyone! - and a question on Ogre3D

Rob Lanphier robla at lindenlab.com
Mon Jan 8 06:46:15 PST 2007


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Hi everyone!

First a quick intro:  I'm Rob Lanphier; aka Rob Linden.  I'm Linden's
new "open source busybody", which means, among other things, I should
be posting a lot to this list.  I'll probably be posting a longer
intro to the blog later today.

Blues, I'd like to address your comment.  We're very interested in
improving our 3D performance, but we're not (yet) interested in
scrapping everything and starting over.  Please, let people have a
chance to look at the code before suggesting starting over!

Thanks
Rob

On 1/8/07 6:19 AM, Blues Zodiakos wrote:
> First of all, I'd really like to say that I appreciate
> open-sourcing the client.  This move took me completely by
> surprise.  I was starting to give up hope for SL, and this changed
> my mind.  Reading the open source page on SecondLife.com, it was
> quite obvious that this wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision, and
> it looks like LL thought it over, understands the risks and
> rewards, and has a relatively clear view of what they are doing.
> It's a pity that some of the more negative people that comment on
> the blog don't read it and become educated, but I digress.
>
> One of the things that first came to mind when I thought about what
>  features would be most important to me to add to the viewer was
> GUTTING THE CURRENT 3D ENGINE AND REPLACING IT WITH OGRE3D (
> www.ogre3d.org <http://www.ogre3d.org>).
>
> These are the reasons that I suggest this, in no particular order
> (note that I have yet to actually view the source code for the
> client, and thus don't have any clue of the positive/negative
> impact on framerates or such this would have.  I'm basing this
> entirely on assumption.)
>
> * Ogre3D is cross platform.  I assume the client 3D code is already
>  cross platform, but there is another reason why I'd like to switch
>  to it:
>
> * Ogre3D is api-agnostic.  It has rendering paths for both Direct3D
>  and OpenGL.  This is a big one for me, because Windows Vista, like
>  it or not, will be on A LOT of people's computers in the future
> because most new computers will come with it (and is on mine as we
> speak).  I do realize that Nvidia already has an Ogl compliant ICD
> driver, but ATI has yet to release one and is entirely silent on
> the issue.  Changing to Ogre3D alone would solve this issue by
> using Direct3D on Vista computers, without requiring a developer to
> change the underlying code (besides rewriting the 3D sections,
> initially).
>
> * Ogre3D is pretty optimized, and has great performance.  Again, I
> don't really know how optimized the 3D code is in the client, but
> why rewrite the book?  Ogre3D has been around for a long time, is
> really stable, has all the features one would expect from a modern
> 3D engine, and has benefited from years of optimizing for various
> platforms.
>
> * Swapping out the code now would mean less maintenance in the
> future to provide fixes for various 3D cards, as the Ogre3D team
> usually already does it, and duplicating that effort in a custom 3D
>  engine would be inefficient.
>
> What does everyone else think?  Has work on this already been
> thought of, or even started?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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