[sldev] [VWR] What about Dillo

[Negroponte J. Rabit]

On Fri, 2 Nov 2007 10:42:09 -0700
Kamilion <kamilion at gmail.com> wrote:

> Far, farrrr too late -- SL's preexisting Quicktime support supports
> Flash version 5 displays on media textures. I've got a nice scrolling
> flash clock as my media texture at my workspace parcel:

Sorry, I did this about year ago, using dynamically generated SWF. :)
But then Apple quietly decided to set Flash5 support to default
disabled in Quicktime unless people set it back to on in QuickTime's
properties panel.  *grumble*

I ended up throwing together a script that listens for http requests
from in-world, dynamically generates JPEG files based on SVG templates
using the wonderful Batik library. 

Unfortunately, I ran into another problem when I hosted a dance.
Several users were complaining that every time my sign updated, their
computer froze up seconds at a time, or even crashed.  Reducing the
size of images to about 20k seemed to eliminate any noticeable impact
but I lost my enthusiasm for this technique quickly after that.

By the way, you can use SMIL as a media source.  While not as fluid as
Flash, it is still a very capable format for constructing dynamic
visuals in-world.  Only problem is reading the specs will give anyone a
migraine. 

> The only problem with flash-as-media-texture: No input allowed.

It depends on how you use Flash.  If you generate the swf content
dynamically and keep all your logic in LSL, use invisible prims
'buttons' for interactivity, and maybe generate Flash loop points
which you can jump to via PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TIME, 
you can probably do nearly anything.  

You could even divy up the single parcel media texture into blocks
displayed on multiple prims to give the appearance of multiple
dynamic textures, but I've found that doing this really slows the
framerate.

To cut to the chase, I want SVG-rendered textures!  

That is all.  >:)

Bunny Brewster