[sldev] Re: Dynamic Web Textures (Texture bugs, PNG Support)

[Jason Giglio]

Phoenix wrote:
> It should be noted that PNG files will soon not be accepted as textures, 
> and we are unlikely to directly incorporate PNG support into the asset 
> system. We are looking toward making it possible for prims to reference 
> external websites for texture information, which is where PNG textures 
> would start to come into play.

Yes, this would be excellent.

To throw my two cents in:

llSetHttpTexture(integer face, string url);
llRefreshHttpTexture(integer face);

A refresh function would be important.  This feature would be most 
useful if it could be pointed at a web (PHP, etc) script that would 
generate image output.  The LSL could communicate to the script to send 
it instructions for the dynamic image, which it would then create (with 
imaagemagick or such).

This would be most useful for replacing XYText and other hacks with 
something like:

llSetHttpTexture(1, "http://www.myhost.com/imagegen.php?text=" + 
llUrlEncode(text_to_display));

This would open up whole new worlds in dynamic content with dynamic 
textures.

I don't think we should try to prevent this use with proxies, this is 
the most valuable use for it!

I suspect that most images used this way would be purpose built, and 
therefore already a power of 2.  I don't see this as a "link to random 
google images" feature, and that shouldn't be the emphasis.

Regarding web bugs, media URLs are just as trivial to use to collect 
IPs.  Correlating the names of nearby avs with IPs using texture 
requests would be just as difficult as doing it with a media URL, if not 
more difficult, since they may have a long draw distance and be out of 
sensor range!  Besides, an IP address is not generally considered 
personally identifiable information these days.  By sending you this 
email you are getting my IP, and no one freaks out over that.

Thanks,
Jason