I’ve been working on LookingGlass which is a stand-alone, you-have-to-download-it viewer for the OpenSimulator virtual worlds. I really wish one didn’t have to download the viewer. Viewing should just happen as part of the web.

I’ve looked at this several times and it looks like the infrastructure is maturing. WebGL is appearing or will soon appear in most browsers. This provides the basis for getting accelerated, 3D graphics on the screen. Additionally, it is standard in the browsers (IE is a problem, Microsoft being who they are, but Google has a plugin to fix that).

Recently, Google has decided to move their O3D project to being a scene graph wrapper for WebGL. This makes JavaScript connect to the 3D world reasonably while keeping all the 3D technology in the standard browser.

The new O3D is early in its development but it is coming. 3D on the web is just around the corner.

I had been fretting about whether avatars and their attachements are first class objects or subclasses of entities. I am now thinking the latter. That is, World just deals with Regions that contain Entities and the Entities have sub-classes that are created by Comm and sensed by the Viewer.

The pattern I’m working with at the moment is (using an Avatar as an example) for there to be a World.IEntityAvatar which defines the operations beyond the base entity. For LLLP, there is a World.LL.LLEntityAvatar that implements the IEntityAvatar and IEntity for an LLLP avatar. Additionally, LLEntityAvatar does a

RegisterInterface<IEntityAvatar>(this);

to add the interface to the IEntity. Later, the Viewer will do a

TryGet<IEntityAvatar>(out anAV)

to see if the underlying entity is an avatar or not. If it is, it will call the avatar specific methods to view the avatar.

Over time, methods will be added to IEntityAvatar and LLEntityAvatar to try and hide the implementation details of an avatar and create an abstract interface for a boned mesh with animations. I figure that the specific positioning logic that is now in RendererOgreLL will move into LLEntityPhysical with a generalized interface for RendererOgreLL to call into the entity to compute the location and parent.

The goal would be to extend Viewer to handler IEntityPhysical (a regular object in the view), IEntityFoliage, IEntityAvatar and IEntityAttachment and all the protocol and item type specific logic will move into protocol specific implementation of classes with those interfaces.

I updated my page on dynamically loading meshes, materials and textures in Ogre with information for textures. Turns out that the requests for the textures works out but that, again, the containing mesh has to be reloaded to get the texture to pop up in the scene. The code for finding which meshes need reloading is included.

In trying to get LookingGlass working with Ogre, I had to figure out how to dynamically load resources (meshes, materials and textures). Ogre’s default methodology is to have everything preloaded. Loading meshes and materials on demand is not obvious. Especially materials.

I’ve figured some of it out and wrote up Dynamic Loading of Ogre Resources. Hopefully this will save some other people many frustrating hours.