Open Forum: What Do You Want To Do With LLMedia API?

Fresh from his new viewer presentation at SLCC (video of that here), Chief Product Officer T. Linden recently announced the LLMedia API, for third party developers interested in creating plug-ins to display rich media in Second Life (besides Quicktime, the only major format available in SL for the last several years.) Here's the feature's geek-heavy wiki page. The most desired media plug-ins (at least cited by the Lindens) would be for Office Documents, PDF, Java, Microsoft(R) Windows Media(R) Audio and Video, Ogg Vorbis, DivX. (A plug-in for Adobe Flash is not mentioned, which is strange, because it's a universal web feature, and T. Linden is an Adobe alum, but perhaps there is a compatibility issue.) Any case, I put the question to my developer readers: What would you like to do with this API?

Update, 2:15pm: To help fire the imagination, via Qarl Linden, here's a suave demo video by Aimee Trescothick of the API in action.

Comments

[Jovin]

Will the API force media to conform to the parcel settings in SL or will they be able to override this? In other words, will an ad-blocker be the next requested feature after any media plug-ins start appearing?

[Robustus Hax]

This new media api should allow us a very dynamic and interactive television/video player, thousands of live channels, real movies off hulu etc..

[theshadow99]

I can give some hint into why flash isn't something your likely to see (or want really).

Why it shouldn't be done? It's to much of a resource hog. A good system running a web browser can have a flash app max out a CPU core and then start eating up ram... To run a loop of animation 15 seconds long that doesn't change over and over. SL's viewers still are very unoptimized for any sort of performance (even patched alternative viewers). Adding flash into the mix would be horrible... More so when just entering an area could have flash run... add in 6 or more flash encoded objects in the same area and it would be a mess...

Also the point of flash is interactive objects for a 2D interface. We can already make interactive 2D (& 3D) objects in SL... Why duplicate existing functions...?

[Net Antwerp]

lol, Linden Fanboys "showing off" their copycat skills.

Complete ripoff of the JavaFX demo videos. Oh yeah, let's spend our time *reinventing* the wheel, over, over and over.

Besides, the video looks more like a PoC (Proof of Concept), not an actual SL context demo video.

[Gattz Gilman]

@Net Antwerp: From the looks of the video, it looks like someone just took the API and made a standalone application to show off its abilities. As in multiple medias playing on 3d objects.

[Ann Otoole]

why is a Disney character (Frozone from The Incredibles) in the picture? Is someone demonstrating unlicensed rebroadcasting of The Walt Disney Company property?

[Whatcha Eaton]

@Ann Otoole: I think those are movie trailers (available from Apple.com and other places with the blessing of the movie studios), not actual movies being played.

[epredator]

Anything that makes dynamic text easier to do in world will be a blessing. Whilst it is a 3d object world there are times when good old text is needed.
Tighter integration with existing content of all types, including the editing and creating of content, interacting with web and flash content not just rendering it will be very interesting.
Plugins that understand structure and content from other places will mean that we can represent content from other environments in SL to have more mixed mode environments.
Imagine a holodeck plugin carrying unity, torque or flash content. KNowing enough about the structure that SL conetent can be represented within it. Views into and around other environments will stop quite so much logging on and off across all the various platforms.
Of course we have to walk before we can run so ppt, word, pdf are bound to come first.

[Loki]

so this will lead to actual proper interactive web on a prim?. virtual arcade machines can play actual games. Virtual laptops can browse websites properly? Prim surfaces will be able to display interactive elements such as buttons, updatable message boards, and animated vendor displays?... i cant be bothered to get excited, ive been in SL too long to be excited about the Lab.

[Aimee Trescothick]

Woah, didn't expect that to end up on here :)

The software you're seeing there is not my work, but just me interacting with some web pages and streaming a number of movie trailers simultaneously, using the QtWebkit and Quicktime plug-ins in the test application Linden Lab have provided for developing them.

@Net Antwerp: I've not seen the demos you're referring to so it would be hard to copy them. This video was only made to show some AWG people I was talking to at the time what the test-harness looked like, so ... whatever. I have more productive things to do with my time.

[techiedavid]

Who be nice if LL release some of this for RL use.

[Pavig Lok]

The funnest thing i can think of would be to introduce a MAME or preferably MESS media plugin. (Or something similar.) The most useful thing, perhaps a whiteboard.

MAME , or Multi Arcade Machine Emulator, emulates virtually the hardware of old arcade machines. MESS, Multi Emulator Super System, goes further to emulate old computers and game consoles. You can find out more abotu them at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESS .

These, if implemented, would allow you to play old games or run old computer programs on a prim. The availability of these emulators has ensured a growing library of completely new retro-style game (etc) content has kept being produced. Though emulation has put many of these games in a legal grey area, there is a significant library of new content and abandonware that is perfectly legal. Besides... it's fun stuff.

On a personal note I'd really like to see a shared whiteboard application built as a media plugin. We can sketch things with prims (as I often do when discussing stuff with folk in SL) but sketching and uploading 2d art is clunky.

An on a prim solution which passed clicks and drags to the media plugin could fairly easily plug the backend into a shared whiteboard experience. Folk could stand around brainstorming and mindmapping and whatnot... leave notes on the fridge... or just freeform graffiti a wall.

I think for educators and buisiness such a thing would prove very attractive - such plugin functionality is already available in Project Wonderland and Croquet. General SL users however seem to love doing things together and showing things to each other. I'd certainly be playing pictionary or Mr. Squiggle with friends who don't have the building skills for primtionary.

Subverting the media system in interesting ways is not outside the realms of possibility. New options for video and audio media are great I guess, but that's something we've already got. Going further to produce useful and interesting interactive plugins could be far more compelling down the track. Just my two cents as per usual.

[Just Some Guy]

One word (name, rather): Webex.

Currently, any reasonably awake boss responds to the "virtual meeting" proposition with "what is Webex?" And truly the thing is far more effective than any current capabilities lead one to believe SL could be for the same purposes.

With the addition of a few media plugins, Second Life is finally on an even level with Webex. Imho it's really that simple (and that profound!)

[Saijanai]

So many things can be done with this in so many different contexts. I mentioned an important issue in SLDEV yesterday: allowing arbitrary URLs to be specified in HUDs, for example. Not everything needs to be shared with everyone. Some things would work best as private views in a HUD, or as semi-private views between 2 or more avatars without going through the server to exchange data. Holographic views of other grids or even other virtual worlds could be created using this setup. Programming environments like Smalltalk could be placed in a HUD. ETc.