Really interesting post on HyperGrid Business about an HTML5 viewer for the MOSES project, the US Army's OpenSim grid. Set for release this fall, it's developed to be usable on any device supporting HTML5 and WebGL, and even more crucial, will be released as open source. Another intriguing hook is that they're aiming to greatly improve the graphics with some new back-end:
The new viewer uses the Babylon JavaScript framework, used for building 3D games, and which has complete support for “full-immersion stereoscopic viewing and virtual reality head gear” according to the framework documentation. For an example of what’s possible in the Babylon framework, check out thisAssassin Creed Pirates demo. [Above]
As OpenSim folks have probably guessed already, this isn't your father's OpenSimulators, and comes with a lot of changes. Fortunately, the project lead Douglas Maxwell is in the comment thread fielding questions about them.
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You have to admire the Army team, they could , and maybe even should have moved on from OS years back, but they stick to their guns and keep trying to make it work through thick and thin. Of course they are most likely funded to do so. But somehow it all has that slightly sad feeling of having missed the boat. You think sims in SL are empty, try finding someone in OS. It is a great place for personal use and small closed groups such as universities and schools, but no seriouse company can afford to invest the huge amounts of time and money into it that would be needed to raise it out of the hobbyist/ cheap educational choice, doldrums that would attract new people beyond the disillusioned SL user. Only Inwordlz have taken it by the throat and attempted to make a new product from it that is not weighted down by the SL legacy. But even they get criticized by many users for not being in the spirit of the "Metaverse" idea.
Posted by: JC | Friday, September 09, 2016 at 11:42 PM
JC, that's the point. I'd still be using OS in education had it been more stable when I last tried.
I don't want 100 people on a sim for my purposes. Any Metaverse I need would be through Hypergrid. What I needed was 20 logins and them running a simulation with premade avatars + the ability to build. I needed a platform with in-world building tools that did not require Maya or Blender.
I didn't need a commercial success; I would give away content in the Creative Commons. Community? Already got it with RL known colleagues and students, doing things in a simulation impossible or hideously difficult IRL, such as exploring Tut's tomb, going to Mars, being on stage at the Globe Theater in 1603.
And it needed to be stable, as stable as any other educational app. OS was not that then, and SL had too many other problems, notably tier and X-rated content on the same grid that tainted the very name within higher-ed.
Posted by: Iggy | Monday, September 12, 2016 at 10:36 AM