VOS/Interreality Long Term To Do List

NOTE: This document is now obsolete. Long-term ideas and wish list items have been moved to IDEAS.txt. Short-term features and bugs have been entered in the bugzilla system at interreality.org

Anything that doesn't have a person assigned is up for grabs (and some that are assigned as well)! Let the vos-d mailing list know if you are interested in working on anything here, or if you want us to add anything to the list.

This list is maintained by Reed Hedges

High Priority Tasks/Bugs:

• Terangreal and CS plugin at a usable state for:
  • 3D Objects: dynamic adding/removing & dynamic mesh and texture data; extrapolated movement; animated objects (frame based and posibly cal3d) neil, et al
  • Portals? neil et al
  • Terrain? neil
  • Chatting reed
  • CrystZilla tetron
• A3DL Converter should use VOSApp framework
• Revision Control Bugs? tetron
• Regression/Unit Tests tetron
• Re-Add terangreal tetron, neil?
• Stable GUI and Metalurgy (More correctly spelled "Metallurgy" though!); fix CS-WX integration problems reed
• New property type names DONE reed
• Rename CVS repositories
• Update OTDs
• Documentation
  • Fix missing/incorrect API docs
  • New tutorials in manual
  • Update manual in general
  • Add kao's protocol document

To Do List

General | GUI Stuff | Misc Metaobjects | Property Metaobject | 2D Images | Hypevos | Documentation | Installation and Deployment | Porting, other languages/implementations/bindings | OTD | Integration With Other Software Systems | 3D Stuff | New intersite communication extensions (network transports) | Far Out Ideas

General

See also README's and TODO's for specific apps in their directories, namely terangreal, metatronic and mesh.

• "Factory" metaobject of some kind (extends site) for clients to request object creation in centralized manner tetron
• Tutorial/example plugins for OmniVOS, mesh, etc.
• tools for applications to recover remote child objects after quit and resume. (i.e. save remote child urls to disk in sigkill handler and reading them back, finding them, and re-inserting them at restart, could just be implemented by a pair of helpful functions; Or, children to recover parents that vanish and come back (due to some failure on a server -- probably this one)
• We should also more completely implement a policy of disconnecting any peer sites that violate the protocol, by (for example) lying about their length fields.
• Distribute some CODs with vosworld:
  • "office" reed, done
  • others?
• More access control policies
  • host name, SSL auth ACL's; local-site-only etc.
• Typehelper:
  • look up MIME type for a file (given name). (query OS/Desktop Environment, or default to look up file extension in /etc/mime.types or /etc/mime-magic or the IANA media types registry: online or local copy.)
  • support various sources of mime/app info:
    • Windows or Mac system services
    • Gnome done
    • KDE
    • Freedesktop.org library libshared-mime-info (http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/shared-mime-info-spec) -- Instead of Gnome or KDE?
    • typehelper.cfg (done).
• mesh:
  • run system commands, with environment set (like a real shell), and to pipe input/output. e.g. "property read | !grep foo"
  • pipe any command to any other? (use string streams)
  • merge command (preserve all objects) command reed?
  • overlay command (ignore children from first object with same name as children in second object) reed?
  • should do a search when possible, especially "ls"
  • read property data from file (DONE), read from command (NOT DONE)
  • special code for interacting with gui objects (mesh as a UI front end)
  • run all commands in a scripting language interpreter (perl, python, ruby), also providing the full vos api
  • command plugins

  GUI stuff reed

  • --> See also the TODO list for Metatronic
  • Float/Formatted sliders and spin controls in progress
  • scrolling containers
  • flag input boxes as written/not written ?
  • drag and drop stuff
  • HTML front end
  • drag and drop objects between lists/tree control
  • Remember window positions (key on object site name?)
  • Metalurgy: reed, inprogress
    • tree of objects, queried on demand, with a pane for editing based an object type (parse otd or load a plugin). OTDs need to be extended to include property datatypes, and other constraints on data
    • lots of functionality will come with tree control in metatronic, incl. drag & drop movement of objects, name change, delete (todo)
    • drag & drop system files to load into properties (or create new ones) (big todo)
    • include as a little collaboration pasteboard (use service discovery to include an object for everyone on the lan running metalurgy)
    • Rename to "metallurgy" (correct spelling)?
  • GUI for a3dlconverter, vosworld, vrmlserver if they are invoked with no parameters (for a3dlconverter, just a load then a save dialog; for vosworld and vrmlserver, first a load dialog for the file, then a pane of options; eventually they should have a log windows: but we will need a little bridge class that is a stringstream to accept LOG output and execute wxWindows logging functions)
  • libvoschatgui reed
    • more complex talk message gui (irc or aim/icq style, buddy lists, threads, etc)
    • also bridge to jabber?
  • need an applib for managing TLS certificates and access control, with a GUI
  • 3D objects and 2D images in TerAngreal that have GUI co-types should attempt to function like plain GUI objects. E.g. click a 3D object that is also a button, or select from a group of 3D objects (like a list control). Need to extend GUI types for e.g. "pressing" state of "button" or "selected" state of 3D object or 2d image? Or can we change the appearance of the 3D object or 2D image generically?
  • load QT file, MS VB file, Apple IB file, wxWin file, etc. -> GUI objects (like VRML loader for 3D)

  Misc metaobjects

  • Servicelist:
    • service entries could have "metatada" type extension for more info.
    • ? Some way do differentiate "localhost" services from "localnet" services from "global" (internet) services? ("misc:service-scope" property?) or should the "gui:user" property of the display be used for this (since there might be more than one user on a machine...)
  • "User/Identity Management" In General
  • "details" subobjects: objects that are loaded/revealed when the user gets close to the object (by some specified distance, in a 3D app), or otherwise asks/ wants the details. in gui and text, this could be a little "expand/contract" ("show/hide") thing (arrow or lever). in 3D use LOD: see terangreal/TODO
  • Avatar/Talkative:
    • Log talk messages in a nice interchange format. For example, see http://www.threadsml.org
    • Improve ChatGUI: display chat as threads with a tree control, more tools to edit your avatar "profile": add "info" pages. (pictures, urls, url-to-content-with-typechain, FOAF form, misc. things like "mood"); locate other avatars on LAN; create chat rooms (and advertise as service); some way to work with other IM services/ clients?
    • idea for talkative: instead of a special talk message, store "last message" as a property that senders can set and multiple talkatives can share. needs a special format to include the diff. components of a talk message, though. Probably this idea will not be implemented.
    • ? In apps, avatar and talkative should be decoupled as cotypes, and intead point to each other as children. Talk messages then need a opt. field to indicate which avatar sent the message if there is more than one avatar to a talkative object.?
    • Avatar needs to be linked to an Identity
  • Message forwarding: Need to filter messages, include max-hops and hop count fields, etc, or forward only on some condition.
• Propagating P2P Messages/Queries/Searches:
  • recursive p2p query. two children: "associates" and "data" match query expressions against data with selected c-name

            if match (all or any, depending on match-mode flag): 
                process message
                if end-on-match flag: end
            else if end-on-no-match flag: end
            maxhops--
            if maxhops == 0: end
            for each child of "associates":
                 send query to child
            

• New object type: friendly
  • list of friends, each with:
    • GUID (FOAF email hash)
    • URL to static FOAF file
    • URL to static HTML info (generated from FOAF/this object)
    • avatar object
    • directory object to search if friend is offline (avatar object missing)
  • anything from FOAF etc. missing from avatar type
  • diary/blog entries or URL of
  • comments to others' blog entries or URLs of
  • other properties, like interests, etc. (queryable)
  • identities
  • utility functions to initiate queries of your friend network
  • local UI (with talk interface included). integrate into terangreal? how?
  • Display graph visually (3D?)
  • shared library (libvosfriendgui)? plugins for chatgui, friendgui, other future applibs?
• Metadata type:
  • add "total-data-size" property for grouping objects (like a3dl:sector)
  • add "expires" date (maybe with a comment here too)
  • add property for confidentiality and other "use" tags
• Should sound store current state in a property, or send special play, pause, etc. messages? How is current time point stored? How can new clients connect?
• Maybe a hybrid: use messsages for play, pause, etc. but new clients can query current state (and recieve e.g. play message containing starting time point in the stream).
• One question, is should we assume that VOS property updates are delivered to the listener ASAP? Or should we say that messages are always delivered ASAP, but property updates may take some time? Does VOS need priority numbers on messages?
• speech comm. using http://www.speex.org/ or something similiar.

Property

• New data type naming
  • use subset of identifiers used in XML-Schemas. (See XML-Schema Datatypes spec from w3c); or may be MIME type; or may be "list <whatever>"; may have parameters at end "(key1=val1,key2=val2...)"DONE
  • API support for getting parameters from type; getting boolean for is a list, etc.
• Truncate trailing zeroes off of numeric values.
• Maybe more options for doing lots of writes (better cache updates, write through scheduling, etc.)
• Extrapolated Property:
  • Math expressions in extrapolated property, with other values available as well as current value and time step.
  • Set max and min for extrapolated property values, and what to do when the min or max are reached (loop, stop, ignore, reverse: or should this just be a math expression?)
• include an md5 hash or some other fingerprint for quick comparison of contents; property's methods can be conditional on matching a given fingerprint.
• Subclasses of property that:
  1. initially is just a proxy to another property until you tell it otherwise, in which case it duplicates the other property's value, and replaces it in certain parents.
  2. is a "copy on write" property. also need to have a particular parent in mind for the copy/replace.

2D images

• Metaobject types for layers of 2d images: bitmaps mostly, also some primitives
• "frames" define coordinate systems (containers), then bitmap, primitives, text, invisible guide lines, etc.
• Design Based on SVG in part, and Flash, SMIL, etc.
• Gimp plugin:
  • Get URL of target object(s) from env, or prompt with a dialog
  • then import existing image metaobjects as layers (one layer if target is an image not a frame) in a new image in gimp
  • 2 modes: synch periodically (choose rate or after every change) or when a button is pressed (with key shoutcut if possible)
• Photoshop plugin
• SVG, Flash, SMIL support for images (as well as bitmaps)

Hypertext

• A mode for the hypervos web server that provides forms and cgi on Vobject web pages for manipulating the objects, and editing property contents.
• hook "filter" scripts onto properties (post-write or pre-read). e.g, a script which closes all open tags in the property data. these scripts are e.g. in python or perl and are stored in other properties with appropriate access control. (or probably this can be a general omnivos plugin: script_hooks)

Documentation:

• Update manual: tetron, reed, et al
  • tutorial code
  • plugin interface, example omnivos plugin
  • access control (including standard AC policies like core:accept-all, site:accept-all, property:accept-all, property:read-only, ...:only-local, etc.)
  • explain identities and groups, and relation to AC
  • extensions
  • vosapp tutorial
• Missing and out of date API docs for many classes tetron, reed
• Document VOP kao, mostly done, needs to be added to manual
• Document COD format
• More detailed programming chapters covering specific topics (object creation, manipulation) in addition to the tutorials

Deployment/Installation

• Need installer packages for:
  • Debian inprg, reed
    • Need to add/remove otd.dtd from SGML catalog
    • Need to include init stript for vosworld, servicelistd.
  • RedHat
  • Windows (using NSIS) inprg, reed
  • Mac OSX reed
  • Gentoo

• Create a CD (a small 185 MB cd?) with VOS installers, source code, documentation, and whatever else will fit, like: mailing list archives, CrystalSpace source code and demos, wxWindows source code & docs, Blender binaries, docs & source code, Wings3D, Boost source code & docs, etc.

  And beyond that, modify a Gentoo boot CD to include VOS and terangreal, perhaps to run at boot, for a real slick demo.

  Pass them out to everyone, through the mail, conferences, etc.

• Need good icons for applications:
  • Terangreal: a jewel or crystal of some kind?
  • Metalurgy: terangreal icon within a little window frame, or with "tools", or wireframe
  • a3dlconverter: a codfish
  • vosworld: a wireframe cube-shaped mesh? a wireframe earth?
  • vrmlserver: the vrml logo (cube, sphere, cone)

Porting, Development Environments, alternate implementations

• Dev C++, update project builder files.
• Swig bindings:
  • Perl Swig wrapper mostly complete
  • Python Swig wrapper
  • PHP
  • Scheme?
  • Javascript?
  • Java Swig wrapper?
• Native implementations:
  • Java (JaVOS) kao, in prg.

Object Type Definitions

• Use RDF for OTDs. reed, kao: inprg
  • specify property data constraints with subset of XML-Schema Datatypes
• update OTD tools reed
• update OTDs for S4 and new objects: reed
  • fix a3dl
  • fix core
  • hypertext/dom objects
  • identity stuff
  • new misc objects
  • update property
  • make sure gui is up to date

Talking to other software systems

• Improve IRC bridge: represent each irc user with a vos avatar and vice versa.
• XML! Everyone uses XML....
  • Simple tools: 1. fetch: given some optinos, make a search query or manually walk some subset of vobjects and output an XML file for it. 2. publish: parse an xml file and create objects, or modify existing objecs, remove missing ones, etc.
    • Need to look at DTD or schema to know if a property should be an attribute or element.
    • Need to look at OTD to know what an attribute or element's type should be.
  • Live editor: write a tool or add to an existing one the ability to fetch and publish online, while presenting "unfolding" XML nodes/attributes/cdata content
  • Now you can use XML types as a base for metaobject types (and vice versa).
  • Use RDF
• ?? Plugins for Eclipse IDE (http:www.eclipse.org):
  • build code using GNU autotools, libtool, and make on Linux and cygwin
  • Edit and create OTDs, and create boilerplate code for VOS
  • Edit GUIs and live object trees.
  • Need Java bindings!
• Gnu Enterprise (http://www.gnuenterprise.org)
  • Use VOS as a datastore in the "Common" library (used by the AppServer)
  • need Database like interfaces, and property "view" remapping.
  • Use Forms tool to create Metatronic GUIs
• Run a GUI server importing different file formats from interface design tools, e.g. wxDesigner, Glade (GTK), QT Designer, Apple Interface Builder, MS Developer Studio, etc.
• VOS plugins for matlab and/or mathmatica and/or other systems where shared 3d (or 2d) visualizations are useful
• A3DL Converter and Exporters:
  • VRML (in progress)
  • Alice3D (http://www.alice.org)
  • Unreal Editor
  • Quark
  • Valve
  • GTKradiant??
  • Maya?
  • AC3D?
  • Lightwave?
  • Hash Animation Master? reed
  • 3DS Max tetron -- ASE done, need .3DS and maybe more features
  • Blender tetron, reed -- needs improvements
• Write a plugin to these programs so that they can run a VOS server in real time:
  • Blender
  • Alice (http://www.alice.org)
  • Verse (Quel Solar)
  • Maya?? Possible?
  • Animation Master?

3D/VR Apps

General stuff

• general robustness when faced with malformed world property structures.
• Load a COD as avatar
• move some of the plugin loading out of TerAngreal::Initialize and into object type classes ("load on demand")
• Using 3d objects as transform groups for children is rather broken.
  • bad clipping and culling in CS, often no object can be seen
  • can's select children
• if an object with children that are meshes is removed, the children aren't removed from the engine.
• Finish implementing client-only mode tetron, inprg
• gzipped avatar model (3ds) is broken? (fixed?)
• Mirror current state of CS engine -> Vobjects automatically; start with object tranformation.

Materials (CSVOSA3DL plugin and A3DL Metaobjects)

• reflection properties (waiting for new renderer in CS)
• Shader programs (new CS renderer will support)
  • Also attach shaders to sector to be used by all objects in it?
• Turn on/off shadows on genmeshes (maybe have a property for it?)
• Texture layers:
  • If a texture layer is a solid color (float-vector), then make a solid color texture to go there.
  • more options for masks and filters?
• optional property to manually set render priority (layers)?
• Snow: select lighting on/off ?
• Canned proctex layers (fire, water, plasma, different kinds of noise), incl. animation.
• animated/movie textures (see Ogg Theoraa and Helix).
• SVG Textures (see http://librsvg.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/) (write as a CS plugin, or maybe handled by pete's mozilla plugin. probably should be a proctex for adaptive rasterizing.) reed, maybe
• new layer blend mode "complement" (need to modify CS)
• edge effect (shader program can do this?)
• Vertex Colors
• flat shading flag

Objects and Geometry: (CSVOSA3DL module and A3DL metaobjects)

• Extrapolated movement
• Portals neil. Each sector should have it's own origin, so portals on the client need to calculate the correct "space warping" transform based on source-sector pos/ori and destination-sector pos/ori
• Terrain? neil
• Frame animation with "Actor" metaobject interface
• Hierarchical mesh animation (based on Cal3D)
• More light objects (dynamic/static; directed spotlight)) [Simple point light done, dynamic lights also added, and sector-wide ambient light]
• "background-image" and skydome/box stuff; background gradient
• Hard Transforms won't work with Billboards. (See comments in object3d_vr.cpp and billboard_vr.cpp)
• Does geometry change dynamically? Do textures change dynamically (no, only billboards do) neil
• Doom style sprites
  • essentially 2d, but with a different image for various angles. use 2, 4, 8 or 10 faces (front, back, left, right, front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right, top, bottom
  • A novel implementation would be to use OpenCV from Intel to interpolate between the sprite faces. http://www.intel.com/research/mrl/research/opencv Treatz
• Splines/Nurbs
• Subsurface polys
• flag an object to follow the camera around rather than be rendered at a specific position? (use CS_ENTITY_CAMERA in crystalspace; but also set correct rendering priority as well...)
• fractal objects (see the IFS plugin in the Gimp for 2D)
• Avatar as child of other objects
  • fix transformations for child-of-avatar objects
  • Objects that are children of avatar are invisible
• Fix reparent calculations; do hierarachical orientations work?
• display HTML for textures (INPRG tetron)
  • make interactive (links etc)
• LOD (level of detail). use CS's "static LOD" stuff -- see manual see also the "details" idea in the main vos todo
  • Set render priority ("layer")
  • Light lists

Terangreal UI

• chatting through CS console or through libvoschatgui.
• animation "actions" in terangreal (from model files) INPRG tetron
  • Need UI to select and select initial action in config file reed
  • When more complex actions are supported, need more complex gui
  • also interpret special talk commands as animation commands (e.g. `smile); also optionally search for emoticons in outgoing public talk messages.
• Settings:
  • Use metaobjects for settings; generate/save to/from CS config files
  • GUI for all preferences (need a notebook tab widget), and saving to the config file. (automatically generated from settings metaobjects)
  • GUI for changing keys and commands, then saving
  • command line, config file, etc. settings for camera offset (pos and ori) (offset from avatar)
• mode for moving camera relative to avatar (adjust previous initial param)
• interpolate orientation in goTo()
• add presence code to avatars' hud tags
• add "misc:title" to objectsin hud
• Avatar pointer has bad render priority.?
• mouseover hud
• Some kind of loading progress report (# objects loaded perhaps)
• Joystick and tracker support:
  • P5 glove support (linux driver/daemon is now available)
  • Make libtracking useful?
  • Extend joystick stuff in CS to N axes with labels, and giving "joysticks" various tags? Use Add/Find methods in iEvent instead of the old joystick struct?
• Display world description in servicelist
• Key commands for operations on selected object (which are currently available only as buttons in object menu. (see also next item)
• action queue: store actions in a list or mask, and apply them when finished. or store them as a macro. or queue up actions, that are applied to an object that is finally selected. will need to add some more abstraction around actions, with a "do" function, passed an action function pointer (perhaps abstracted with typedef and a bunch of #define'd symbols).
• More Editing tools: in prog. rh
  • GUI to list all objects
  • GUI to create spheres, cubes, billboards, etc. (should become selected object), and to load models
  • Keys/GUI to add/remove material/texture of selected object
• Keys to "Orbit" selected object reed
• select multiple objects (with one "primary" selected object)
• Keys/GUI to store "palette" of objects (perhaps conjure objects as children of the avatar, then have command for reparenting those objects into the world?)
• Customizable menu of "tools": commands to run with vos environment variables (with some defaults like gui editor, xterm -e mesh, etc.) reed?
  • ?? Python "startup script" that sets up some variables from the env vars: terangreal could put the path to this script in the PYTHONSTARTUP env var before running a "tool". If one of those tools is "xterm -e python" then it will run before entering interactive mode.
  • Mesh library; terangreal can send commands to it?

                <dfryer> say, can you access mesh from within terangreal?
                <reed> sort of
                <reed> why?
                <reed> i mean, you can use the /system command to run it in an xterm
                <reed> i think "/system xterm -e mesh" will work
                <dfryer> it would make sense to be able to manipulate a VOS environment through
                one channel
                <dfryer> well, thinking of the future, if mesh could be extended to understand
                different object types, or something like that, it would make sense to be able
                to access that from terangreal
                <reed> but you mean, have a mesh-like command line inside terangreal?
                <dfryer> yeah, basically
                

Server tools, extensions and demos

• VRML server inprg - reed
• 3D proximity sensor, etc. (make a library of "sensors")
• live weather world Planned RH
• Self-editing world: includes GUI component to edit its own (perl) code, then run the new world with a hypercard in the old one.
• maitre'd. simple agent that stores messages for people, welcome messages, etc.

Misc other features:

• 2d-image metaobject library; implement in terangreal as an on-screen HUD thing. see "2D Images" section, above.
• "flashlight"/"headlight" (useful for poorly lit worlds)
• See "Sound" section above
• basic sound stuff (continuous and instantaneous, mod, wav, ogg, maybe mp3)
• good sound spatialization/location, using ladspa? drclaw?
• Apply overall "filters" to graphics/lighting of a sector: affect amount of color/saturation; overall brightness, contrast, etc. color filters? (For software rendering, could specify a function to apply to each pixel mbefore drawing? maybe somethnig similar for hardware renderer too?)
• "distance dimming"

Platform-specific:

• Mac:
  • run loop problem reed,dfryer
  • rendering bugs on mac. (mist, ATI cards don't like color materials?)

Dynamics/physics neil, tetron?

• Use a new object type for all physical properties
• Add a float property "solidity". In terangreal, either passs this parameter to ODE, or for now, just only use a collider if solidity == 1.
• Publish cumulitive force vector on an object via properties
object type for

Caching:

• Better caching: store between sessions and don't download property if a value is the cache and the values match (need a compact "fingerprint" on the property)
• Also check "permanent" caches for user and on system. (Then you could have "libraries" stored locally for speed)
• should cached property values be stored by URL or "fingerprint" (the latter supports copying contents)
• if a binary search by url is faster, then store in both schemes, and fall back on the "fingerprint" lookup. otherwise, just store in a hash of "fingerprints".
• Save lightmap on server neil

New network transports (site extensions)

• VIP (UDP transports with different policies, compact "binary" format, etc.) mostly done, tetron<
  • Play nicely with VOP
• Tunnel verbose XML-like format over HTTP
• Tunnel verbose XML-like format over SMTP, with buffering. also need a program or hook for MTA to call with incoming messages.

2:23:<reed_> you want to preserve the way keys and commands are done in s3?
2:23:<tetron> right, I could bring in some of the s3 functionality
2:24:<reed_> i think we should use CS-style config files for everything
2:24:<reed_> one thing i'd like to do is automate the way settings are done...  ideally the settings GUI could be generated automatically from the config file
2:24:<tetron> partly I think we need a vision... what do we want terangreal 1.0 to do?
2:24:<reed_> and vice versa
2:25:<reed_> (so you can actually *save* settings to the files!)
2:25:<tetron> (yes)
2:25:<reed_> key features:
2:25:<reed_> - everything that s3 does
2:26:<reed_> - better chat interface, including private IMs, setting personal status info, etc. (basics of IRC and IM clients)
2:26:<reed_> - avatar keyframe animation
2:26:<reed_> - easy access to companion programs like the GUI editor, etc. 
2:26:<reed_> - portals
2:27:<reed_> - proper caching of data, and online caching of lightmaps
2:27:<reed_> - content libraries (same mechanism as caching)
2:27:<reed_> - keep a little "palette" of objects and object-factories
2:27:<reed_> - misc. improvements to graphics and navigation
2:28:<reed_> - comprehensive settings/config GUI
2:28:<tetron> I agree with all that, what I'm concerned with is the "big picture", eg take one step back from specific features and say "what do we want this to do"
2:28:<reed_> well now that we have csa3dl, terangreal is the swiss army knife
2:29:<tetron> and "3D chat that doesn't suck" is an acceptable goal :-)
2:29:<reed_> you just use it to explore worlds and socialize
2:29:<reed_> and help build world
2:29:<tetron> yes
2:29:<reed_> (though not to compete with better creation tools like blender, or level editors, etc.)
2:30:<tetron> well, being able to pop in premade objects in a far cry from a real modeling program
2:30:<reed_> it should be useful as an interface to games and such that don't
require special logic or control (e.g. online checkers)
2:30:<reed_> and data visualization
2:30:<reed_> since csa3dl exists' specialized clients can be made like the prophecy
2:30:<tetron> yep
2:34:<tetron> oh, I think that we should try and focus on being able to load existing content, too
2:35:<tetron> VRML being the obvious one, but maybe also Quake maps and such
2:35:<tetron> since we don't yet have a huge base on artists banging out door down... we can go steal stuff :-)
2:35:<reed_> we need to determine what the best/most popular quake/doom/unreal editor(s) is(are)
2:35:<tetron> probably Valve Hammer 
2:35:<reed_> those editors are pretty easy to learn
2:36:<tetron> there's a library out there that allegedly reads half life maps
2:37:<reed_> so talking about goals of terangreal
2:37:<tetron> what we really need are some really cool demo worlds, and step-by-step instructions on how to create your own worlds
2:37:<tetron> and how to host them, or upload them
2:37:<reed_> terangreal needs to be the interface through which we can play with ideas like this
2:38:<reed_> so it also needs to do stuff like display remote GUI controls (trivial)
2:38:<reed_> maybe do some 2d graphics
2:38:<tetron> we'll be able to display web documents as textures
2:39:<tetron> I'm just trying to envision what ter'angreal needs to do (and not do) that I could comfortably have it on my desktop all the time
2:41:<tetron> the 3 apps that I most interact with are IRC, a terminal window, and a web browser
2:41:<reed_> well how can you run it with 3d graphics but not use too many resources?
2:41:<tetron> the resource usage issue is the most annoying problem
2:41:<reed_> that's why i mentioned component architectures, or reusing code in libraries vs. apps the other day at your house
2:42:<reed_> one idea is to just "detach" the chat/buddy-list GUI from terangreal
2:42:<reed_> and close the graphics part.  I guess you could iconify just that window and pause it....
2:42:<tetron> one possibility would simply be to throttle CPU usage
2:42:<tetron> one could iconify the 3D window but still use other windows part of the same uber-app
2:43:<tetron> (although along those lines people also don't like uber-apps that do everything...)
2:43:<tetron> (witness the fact that mozilla is being split into several individual apps)
2:43:<reed_> but you also might want to have your chat interface on your PDA, and your 3D stuff on your desktop or something
2:44:<reed_> we will need to think a bit more about replication, so your avatar/talk objects could really be persistant and never die
2:44:<reed_> and you could transfer them from one machine to another
2:44:<reed_> (identity too)
2:47:<tetron> so we need to think about ways we can have the 3D chatroom add to IRC
2:47:<reed_> one thing is an irc bridge that replicates individual users
2:47:<reed_> another is something like an infobot or agent
2:48:<reed_> so when people come online to an otherwise deserted server, there is *something* to talk to :)
2:48:<tetron> the stuff that 3D is going to add will be facial expressions, gestures...
2:48:<tetron> that's what "There" is good at
2:49:<tetron> that's going to require some character animators to contribute
2:49:<tetron> perhaps we can cull some stuff from other projects
2:49:<reed_> well you can start with some game models
2:49:<reed_> though there your expressions are "standing", "running", "attacking", "dead"
2:50:<tetron> but, y'know, for 3D to be interesting I'd like to see your avatar
doing something when you type a message, something more interesting than their
standing loop
2:50:<reed_> like talking
2:50:<tetron> I think that's what we need to strive for, is how we can add to
interpersonal interaction
2:50:<reed_> you could have two things
2:51:<reed_> a "do this while i'm typing" action
2:51:<reed_> and actions triggered by patterns in the text
2:51:<reed_> like !
2:51:<reed_> :)
2:51:<reed_> hmm...
2:51:<tetron> another thing is for two users to able to see the same thing, such
as a web page or terminal window
2:51:<reed_> uh...
2:52:<reed_> lol
2:52:<tetron> syb was talking about how much easier it would be to debug compile
problems if you were standing in the virtual world and you could call someone
over to look at your terminal :-)
2:52:<reed_> part of your object creation library in terangreal should be
creating hypercards to any data
2:52:<tetron> so we have to think about ways of fully takin advantage of user
presence in a space
2:53:<reed_> or creating visible artifacts by cut & paste or drag and drop
2:53:<reed_> ie, a plane with some text on it 
2:53:<tetron> post-it notes :-)
2:53:<tetron> these are the sorts of ideas we need to be thinking about... not
features, uses

Far out, back burner, strange ideas
----------------------------------

- Listener priority. When becoming a listener, the new listener can
  set it's own priority.  When notifying, high priority listeners go first.
  Change priorities dynamically as well.


-  Sites could form a single Borg-site by host-aliasing each other,
and authenticating to each other, and talking to each other. (for example, lots of 
local sites talking with shared memory or domain sockets VOP sessions (VOS does 
not need to operate over network streams, remember, and also being authentic
host aliases of each other). See next node about replication.

- Object replication/relocation.  There is some of this in the "policy"
  metaobject. Tetron has also done some work on this (see the "renaldo" game in
  the CVS tree).  One useful feature is to create objects locally, then 
  relocate to another site when you quit. Or, when a site is heavily loaded
  or detects bandwidth saturation, to relocate objects to other sites. Need
  some protocol for negotiating with sites for relocation, and for recovering
  from the site you just sent your objects to suddenly dissapearing (so 
  all "relocation" should really be "replication, then hide the original but
  keep it up to date?).  This would only work for passive data objects,
  not "active" objects. But imagine a low bandwidth site on a modem which
  is the "originator" of the world, and as more people join, the objects
  start spreading out to the people with more bandwidth. Then as people
  leave, they merge back into earlier "authoritative" origination sites.
  (this can be represented by a hierarchical graph showing the replication
  history, followed back up to merge back to the prime state)

    - Related is the idea of simply doing redundent "gratuitous" replication
      and referring users to the duplicates randomly. (See previous Borg
      note)

    - Users with reliable broadband connections could run helper servers
      that accept replications from other servers (friend's servers, favorite
      worlds, anything on the interreality.org service list, etc.) 
      to balance loads


- Adapt to bandwidth and latency problems by indirect object addressing:
  if some user has less latency than others (WRT you), send all messages through
  them, and let them forward messages to others (though replies go back to you
  directly).  Access control problems here?  Not sure if this is a good
  idea or not.  Would also need to be pretty smart about choosing a user
  to forward through (and deal with him ignoring your messages).  Might
  require some infrastructure changes.
  


- Micropayments and subscription support.
    It would be a good experiment to try and implement a micropayment system 
    in VOS, a'la Xanadu. It would probably be an extension to Property, with
    subobjects to the property containing price and certificate information,
    as well as descriptions of what you're buying, a "free" version, etc. 
    Secure (TLS/SSL) transactions would of course be required.

    On the other hand, subscriptions have been more successful on the net
    so far, so some support for access control based on looking up 
    TLS certs in a database of subscribers would be good too.

    Note that Paypal and even Bitpass are'n't really micropayments, just
    very small payments. You need and intertwingled medium for Xanadu-style
    mircropayments to be possible (and you need to make the payments REALLY
    small). Whether or not people will actually accept uPayments is another
    story entirely.

    Clay Shirky argues againt micro/mini payments here, not a bad article:
    http://shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html

    Here is an interesting new company as well: http://www.peppercoin.com


- we need to network plants with water sensors and avatars that make goofy 
 speach bubbles for being watered. and various other cheap sensor arrays that
 display in a virtual world. X10 interface ? :)  :)
	* Use parapin or this: <http://www.makingthings.com/products/products.htm>
	* Set up a config file to map sensor readings or pin states to
	   property values


Some links, for information
    3D Renderering Libraries:
        http://plib.sf.net
        http://opensg.org (not to be confused with openscenegraph)
        http://openscenegraph.org (not to be confused with opensg)
        http://ogre.sf.net
    Libraries for tracking devices:
        VR Juggler
        OpenTracker