[vos-d] development

[Peter Amstutz]

Quick status update.

Although I've been very quiet (unfortunately) development is moving 
forward.  As of Sunday night, my code runs on Windows, OS X and Linux, 
including embedding the Lightfeather 3D engine, loading and displaying a 
COD file, and browsing the vobject structure.  I want to spend a couple 
more days adding features, then I'm going to lay down the infrastructure 
to make a binary package (.msi on Windows, .app bundle on OS X, .deb for 
Debian) and announce it to a few places and get some feedback.

The goals for the UI prototype is to explore how to present a highly 
configurable user interface based around vobjects, to consider the kinds 
of tasks and workflow a user might perform in the GUI, and to confront 
cross-platform issues (in compiling, in the operation of the GUI and in 
distributing binary packages) up front, so that development "stays 
honest" and as OS-neutral as possible.

My intention is to initially target the agent-based simulation and 
visualization community.  This includes agent-based AI research in 
virtual environments, realtime immersive simulation, visualization of 
results from constructive (noninteractive) simulation, and visualizing 
live data in a virtual environment.  This is a pretty broad set of 
categories, but I think there are enough similarities to bring them 
together under a common architechture.

There are several reasons for using this as a focus rather than games or 
commercial applications.  The greatest and most productive interest in 
VOS in the past has come from people doing agent-based AI research.  
Both academically and professionally, Reed and I have a great deal of 
background in agent-based simulation.  It gives us a focus that is a bit 
more specific than simply "build a game engine", and looking at it from 
a the standpoint of formal simulation design lets us apply a little more 
rigor than goes into the average game or entertainment-oriented virtual 
environment.  Finally, just like the web grew from scientific 
applications to become general purpose, a scientific simulation-oriented 
framework is still applicable to more informal areas like games, 
commerce or education.  We intend to pursue our designs with all these 
areas in mind.

By developing the UI first, I'm also taking a more top-down design 
strategy.  In the past, developing the backend first has led to the UI 
and the sample 3D worlds being an afterthought, which of course didn't 
impress most users.  To avoid making that mistake again, I'm going to 
focus on UI and content creation up front, to make good presentation and 
usability (and usefulness) a priority, and only then develop the backend 
to support those requirements.

(It also helps that I'm getting more comfortable with modeling in 
Blender, and can produce programmer art that is at least marginally 
better than colored boxes).

I'm hoping to have something for you all to see (UI prototype, with no 
network capability) in two to three weeks.

-- 
[   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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