[vos-d] status and scheming

[Peter Amstutz]

On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 03:04:36PM +0100, Karsten Otto wrote:
> 
> So, IMHO, the server should establish a generic common time among  
> clients, sending out regular ticks for that only. Starting an  
> animation then is just a reference to this virtual time, maybe with a  
> speed factor etc., same as stopping it. It is up to the clients to  
> interpolate the animation, adjusting it based on the genenric virtual  
> time.

Yes.  This is what I meant by having a "world clock" that's separate 
from the "real" time and maintained on a per-virtual space basis, and 
typically started when the server is booted up.  However, since you can 
have multiple virtual spaces, you will have multiple clocks.  So now you 
need some context to determine which "now" to use when looking at a 
particular thing.  This is where the example of animation is 
instructive.  You have the same 3D model instanced several times (say a 
walk cycle) and they are not synchronized, you can think of each 
instance as a separate view of what "now" is with respect to the 
animation.

> This approach is also much better from a semantics point of view.  
> There is a sense of "now" (well, at least "now-ish"), and an  
> indication that "[dog] starts [barking] [now]"... with proper  
> identifiers for [dog] and [barking], an agent can understand whats  
> going on.

Good :-)

> Oh, btw... we are speaking of a "server" here, but VOS is still  
> conceptually P2P, even if in practice it degenerated to client-server  
> due to firewall issues. Time coordination among peers is nasty; I'd  
> suggest the site hosting the sector vobject should act as a time  
> coordinator (read "server" above) then.

Yes, that's just what I was thinking.

[   Peter Amstutz  ][ tetron at interreality.org ][ peter.amstutz at gdit.com ]
[Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the Internet]
[ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http://interreality.org ]
[ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu  18C21DF7 ]

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