User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2009-12-10

== Topic ==
User Experience Interest Group Discussion for December 10, 2009.
Topic: Open Topic.
== Summary ==
We're going to have a meeting on OSGrid in the near future, so we discussed some issues related to OpenSim support and stability of various viewers, among other things.
== Links ==
* Third Party Viewers spreadsheet
* - Ping Interpolate Object Position doesn't work
* MonoXNA
* jabberimproxy
== Transcript ==
[15:03]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hi :)
[15:04]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi Armin :)
[15:05]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hi geneko
[15:05]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi Geneko
[15:08]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hi peoples :-)
[15:09]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hi Morgaine
[15:09]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi Morgaine :)
[15:09]	Armin Weatherwax: 	and hi morgaines butterfly
[15:10]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Impru still rock solid. Not failed once in OSgrid, and only had one crash in SL way back. Think I have the logs.
[15:10]	Jacek Antonelli: 	That's good to hear
[15:10]	Dzonatas Sol: 	hi!
[15:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi Dzonatas :)
[15:11]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hi Dzonatas :)
[15:11]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Whoever coded this butterfly doesn't understand floating point error accumulation. It's now flying backwards, upside down, and underground.
[15:12]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Heh
[15:12]	Morgaine Dinova reloads 	Morgaine Dinova reloads
[15:12]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Looks fine to me
[15:12]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Fine now
[15:13]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Okay, let's start. Open topic today, but I wanted to start off talking about OSGrid
[15:13]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cool!
[15:13]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Last time we were brainstorming topics, Morgaine suggested we could have a weeking on OSGrid some week, so I'm thinking we can do that next week or the week after
[15:14]	Armin Weatherwax: 	yay :)
[15:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hang on ... UXIG without Charlette? Is this possible? ;-)
[15:14]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Speak of the devil ;)
[15:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hahaha
[15:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hiya Charlette :-)
[15:14]	Charlette Proto: 	woot, woot
[15:14]	Charlette Proto: 	hi everyone
[15:14]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I haven't actually logged in to OSGrid yet myself. Is there a good location for us to hold a meeting?
[15:14]	Armin Weatherwax: 	Hi Charlette
[15:15]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I... have no idea.
[15:15]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hm. the last time i was there there was only one region which was all the time stable ...
[15:15]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: that might require a little more advertising, and perhaps a noddy HOWTO for those who haven't grid-hopped before.
[15:15]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Probably at one of OSGrid's public Plazas?
[15:15]	Charlette Proto: 	OSGrid is soo slow not sure what it runs on, but hardly a 'grid'
[15:15]	Armin Weatherwax: 	yes
[15:15]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yeah
[15:16]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Morgaine: Yeah, that's why I want to start planning now
[15:17]	Morgaine Dinova: 	They're all usually empty, except Wright Plaza at meeting times, and Lbsa Plaza 100% of time in community room, which always has someone in it
[15:17]	Charlette Proto: 	maybe we should one day call an extra meeting on OSG
[15:17]	Armin Weatherwax: 	ah. gridhopping: before i forget: is there already something like a "ogp-slurl" ?
[15:17]	Morgaine Dinova: 	No, sadly Armin :-(
[15:17]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Wright Plaza is rather laggy though.
[15:18]	Armin Weatherwax: 	what would it look like? ogp://grid:port/sim/x/y/z ?
[15:18]	Charlette Proto: 	supper laggy and nothing loads eg freebies you pick, even pics
[15:18]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Meerkat was the only viewer capable of TP'ing directly from a live SL session to a given open grid zone, I think.
[15:19]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yeah, Wright Plaza is a bad choice, it's especially designed to be heavy for testing
[15:19]	Charlette Proto: 	why do you say 'was'morg?
[15:19]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Charlette: because I heard that Meerkat was disbanding, and its devs coming to Imprudence. Which reminds me ... is that true?
[15:21]	Morgaine Dinova makes a coffee, brb 	Morgaine Dinova makes a coffee, brb
[15:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I'm not quite sure what the plan is now. One of the Meerkat devs, Patrick Sapinski, has been working on making a rebranded Imprudence with Meerkat features.
[15:22]	Charlette Proto: 	OK I didn't realise, last download I did was a bit flake and it was to be 'optimised for speed on windows'
[15:22]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I think at one point the plan was to either merge with Imprudence or rebase to Imprudence. But now it may be that Patrick is making a new viewer, separate from Meerkat. I'm not sure.
[15:23]	Charlette Proto: 	BTW none of the 'eport' functions worked and i was hoping to move some Second Life™ stuff across
[15:24]	Charlette Proto: 	the weird thing I found with Meerkat was the dev anonimity and lack of docs
[15:24]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Those would be good things to report in the forums, Charlette. We can't fix what we don't know about.
[15:25]	Charlette Proto: 	besides good compilations/setup there is nothing on the wiki
[15:25]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I loved the MK cross-grid teleport and the import/export. But I damn didn't like the bugs. They never stabilized that code.
[15:26]	Armin Weatherwax: 	the MK cross-grid teleport depends on a working relog feature, which is quite tricky
[15:27]	Charlette Proto: 	very true, Meerkat must have a very small user group in Second Life™ too, so not much error reporting (BTW some of it was not true on the MK forums, stated as not working, but problems didn't rep for me)
[15:27]	Charlette Proto: 	yup the relog didn't work in the last MK I have
[15:28]	Armin Weatherwax: 	well if you look e.g. at ahern you'll see a few MK users and a few more emerald users
[15:28]	Charlette Proto: 	actually Morg the Windows builds of MK are quite stable, but...
[15:29]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi Azwaldo, glad you could make it :)
[15:29]	Azwaldo Villota: 	howdy
[15:29]	Azwaldo Villota: 	greetings, All
[15:29]	Armin Weatherwax: 	Hi Azwaldo
[15:30]	Morgaine Dinova: 	What worries me incredibly is that the stability of Imprudence in OSgrid might be due to the 1.22 base. The only other relatively stable viewer in OSgrid is Hippo, which is also 1.22-based. All other viewers crash there, some in seconds, some in a few minutes, some in an hour, but they all crash (in Linux). And I'd hate to see Imprudence start crashing when it goes to a 1.23 base.
[15:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yeah. We'll test it, though, and try to fix it if it crashes
[15:31]	Charlette Proto: 	any idea why Morg? OpenJPEG, Media, those are flaky in Second Life™ too
[15:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hm. lets see at the meeting at osgrid how stable imprudence 1.3 is :)
[15:32]	Charlette Proto: 	like sculpties that don't load OK and have these weird spikes to the far extremes of the prim dimensions
[15:32]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Charlette: don't know why, as I'm usually not debugging when I'm there, but trying to attend a meeting :P
[15:33]	Charlette Proto: 	so we have a 'date' for SOG meet?
[15:34]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: if you want to poke out early 1.3 binaries for us to test there, I'd be happy to try them. Or I could grab a git copy and build.
[15:34]	Charlette Proto: 	I would be pointing the finger at the OpenSource media, JPEG and voice as the main part to debug
[15:35]	Azwaldo Villota: 	15 Alt Viewers listed at SL Wiki (!) So many toys...so little time.
[15:35]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hehe
[15:35]	Charlette Proto: 	these fail on LL grid too
[15:35]	Charlette Proto: 	most of those 15 aren't worth the time to download
[15:36]	Morgaine Dinova: 	OpenJPEG has memory leak, certainly --- I've poked the KDU libs into Imprudence's bin/ and lib/ to avoid using it, else I don't last more than an hour.
[15:37]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Here's our viewers spreadsheet, by the way --- http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlcKaO7Zo-3UdEx3N1NkWFVNd3lDUG4xdUFQQU9XNFE&hl=en
[15:37]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Feel free to update it if you have new news on a viewer.
[15:38]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Oh, I should change 1.2.0 to 1.2.1 for Impru
[15:38]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Hmm, the Second Life wiki could use a list like this.
[15:39]	Charlette Proto: 	the Snowglobe 1.2.0 (2967) Test Build used OpenJPEG: 1.3.0 and never loaded sculpties for me
[15:40]	Charlette Proto: 	Meerkat on LL grid has the same texture problems as Emerald too - gray and clouds
[15:41]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hey Dzon, there's no MonoVida Studio on that spreadsheet
[15:42]	Charlette Proto: 	I'm sure using KDU, slvoice and Fmod in the viewer would improve the OSG stability too
[15:42]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Maybe, Charlette.
[15:42]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi Thickbrick
[15:42]	Morgaine Dinova: 	No need for FMOD in OSgrid for stability. I'm using OpenAL+gstreamer with Impru, and audio + video work perfectly.
[15:43]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	hello
[15:43]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hi Thick
[15:43]	Armin Weatherwax: 	Hi Thickbrick
[15:43]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Just want to check: anyone have any UX topics you want to talk about? Otherwise, I'm fine with continuing this discussion
[15:44]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Ummm
[15:44]	Armin Weatherwax: 	its a great topic
[15:44]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	I wanted to folow up on last week's discussion, in case someone was wondering what "ping interpolate positions" does
[15:44]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Don't have any UX topic in mind currently.
[15:44]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	(the answer being nothing: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SNOW-390 )
[15:45]	Charlette Proto: 	this is productive Jacek, especially in view of Imp corossgrid support
[15:45]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Thick: look on the bright side, if it doesn't do anything then it probably doesn't have any bugs :P
[15:46]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Good to know, Thickbrick, thanks for investigating that
[15:47]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Is the plan for Impru to move towards easy two-way hopping between grids?
[15:47]	Charlette Proto: 	what would "Ping Interpolate" be expected to do?
[15:47]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Morgaine: If/when we get logout to work, yes.
[15:47]	Azwaldo Villota: 	UX == User eXperience?
[15:47]	Morgaine Dinova: 	yeah
[15:47]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Azwaldo: Yes
[15:47]	Azwaldo Villota: 	ty
[15:48]	Morgaine Dinova: 	As in UXIG -- Interest Group
[15:48]	Azwaldo Villota: 	right, ty
[15:49]	Jacek Antonelli: 	For those that weren't hear when I mentioned it -- in a week or two, we will have an UXIG meeting held on OSGrid (osgrid.org) instead of here
[15:49]	Azwaldo Villota: 	i don't have any UX issues, here to learn
[15:49]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: is logout a prerequisite because LL code isn't reentrant?
[15:49]	Jacek Antonelli: 	To try it out and talk about UX issues related to OpenSim / cross-grid compatibility
[15:50]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Morgaine: Yes. Meerkat's grid-hopping is just logout+login to new grid. There's a lot of stuff to clean up when leaving a grid. :\
[15:50]	Charlette Proto: 	did you hear about Benjamin Linden taking over "Issue Tracker Aware" (JIRA awareness group) he hasn't posted a word yet but previous owner anounced him as new owner now
[15:50]	Morgaine Dinova: 	We'll have to plant a notice here about it, with directions.
[15:50]	Charlette Proto: 	talking of UXIG history
[15:50]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	Charlette: frmo the (broken) code, it tries to show physical objects where they are now, as ooposed to where they were <ping> seconds ago. But you normally don't care about "now," since they may have collided with something and changed direction on the server by now.
[15:51]	Charlette Proto: 	OK Thick
[15:51]	Azwaldo Villota: 	Charlette: "...most of [15 alt viewers] aren't worth the time to download" - that was my hunch, why I hoped to make this mtg...have rec'd several questions about Alt Viewers, recently.
[15:52]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Hmm, could this be (used for) the "fake avatar movement at client side" we were talking about?
[15:52]	Azwaldo Villota: 	These are the viewers I have listed to check out, myself: Emerald, Meerkat, Imprudence, Snowglobe. Have only used Hippo, other than SL client.
[15:53]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: I was just thinking that if logout is too hairy to sort out properly, a stopgap measure is to ignore the old grid, and it'll eventually log you out itself. Of course, that's not going to work if the code isn't reentrant so you can't use separate data for the new grid.
[15:53]	Charlette Proto: 	it makes sense Azwaldo eg Ajax - a good idea but dead for over a year and LL wiki has very old descriptions too
[15:53]	Charlette Proto: 	what about the new LL white/black lists???
[15:53]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	Geneko, yes, but only if you add to it client-side input handling and probalby some basic collisions. Otherwise it only makes ruber-banding worse.
[15:54]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Azwaldo, not sure if you were here when I gave our spreadsheet URL, but more viewers to try there --- http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlcKaO7Zo-3UdEx3N1NkWFVNd3lDUG4xdUFQQU9XNFE&hl=en
[15:54]	Azwaldo Villota: 	ty, Morgaine
[15:54]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Everything in the SL viewer assumes that there is one grid, only one login per session, and everything receive at login (inventory, etc.) will be valid for the whole session. :(
[15:54]	Charlette Proto: 	the spec for viewers was the main focus at LL going by the OH brownbag recordings posted on the blog
[15:55]	Azwaldo Villota: 	Viewer comparison spreadsheet: nice...was hoping something like this was available
[15:55]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: ew, not even singletons? Just plain globals all over?
[15:55]	Charlette Proto: 	maybe LL verification process could reveal some definitive infor for our needs to
[15:56]	Jacek Antonelli: 	There are some singletons, but also lots of globals, and very few of the core things were designed to be deconstructed except at exit.
[15:56]	Morgaine Dinova nods 	Morgaine Dinova nods
[15:56]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Sympathies :-(
[15:58]	Charlette Proto: 	did modular (hehe) ever attempt to make any of the viewer code modular at all?
[15:58]	Morgaine Dinova: 	lol
[15:58]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Nice one :-)
[15:58]	Charlette Proto: 	or is it just a buzzword remaining from the proxie apps
[15:58]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hehe, no. I don't think they have attempted to improve the viewer core at all, just to bolt new things on.
[15:59]	Charlette Proto: 	yup same impression here Jacek, no eveidence of anything modular to me
[15:59]	Charlette Proto: 	I thought they may be quietly working on something 'grand'
[16:00]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Can't say I blame them. Must be sheer horror to refactor that.
[16:00]	Charlette Proto: 	McCabe may know more havind done some work on their code
[16:00]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	"they" being LL?
[16:00]	Charlette Proto: 	modular Thick (Emerald)
[16:00]	Morgaine Dinova: 	No, ModularSystems, and Emerald team
[16:00]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	oh
[16:01]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Indeed. I wish I could rewrite the viewer from scratch, but I don't have the time, skills, or motivation to do it. Working with the current code is like walking through hip-deep swamp muck, but creating a new replacement viewer is like climbing a huge mountain. :-|
[16:01]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I bet :-(
[16:02]	Charlette Proto: 	it really is time to build a multithreaded Second Life™ viewer, but the new code at LL SL09 (SL2) may make the effort pointless for now
[16:02]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	snowglobe and 2.0 are multithreaded, but that was just sort of organically gronw on top of what's there
[16:02]	Charlette Proto: 	the NDA initiative at LL didn't help at all in the last few months
[16:02]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Well Dzon here has taken a less "mountain climbing" route, but grabbing only part of the viewer and treating it as a library.
[16:02]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I wish LL would at least tell us how much it's going to change. Is it just a new UI layout and such? Or did is it a major refactoring/rewrite?
[16:03]	Azwaldo Villota: 	Mystical Demina is working on a new viewer, too
[16:03]	Armin Weatherwax: 	how many people would be needed to start from scratch - assuming everybody involved has a RL job to do? 15? 20?
[16:03]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I heard earlier that SL09 will have the plugin API too.
[16:03]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Windows only though, uses XNA or whatever that MS gaming system is called
[16:03]	Charlette Proto: 	precisely Jacek, otherwise dev time and design effort are so likely wasted
[16:04]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Windows only? DX
[16:04]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	there's seem to have been some recent developments in XNA on mono
[16:04]	Azwaldo Villota: 	Xenki - a viewer for OpenSim users (might be Windows only)
[16:04]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yeah, Xenki
[16:04]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Mystical is a Window dev. Although I think he said he would see how it could be migrated.
[16:05]	Charlette Proto: 	is that Mystical Cookie of the Mystitool?
[16:05]	Morgaine Dinova: 	No
[16:05]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	( http://www.monoxna.org/ (
[16:05]	Azwaldo Villota: 	i am organizing an event on Sat, Dec 19th, to discuss the potential in integrating XMPP with SL applications.
[16:05]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Mystical Demina
[16:06]	Charlette Proto: 	AH sorry
[16:06]	Azwaldo Villota: 	Mystical Cookie is MystiTool, i think
[16:06]	Morgaine Dinova: 	In Groupies
[16:06]	Charlette Proto: 	and verry missed for now hehe
[16:07]	Azwaldo Villota: 	hope to encourage content developers to participate, not a Google Wave promotion
[16:08]	Charlette Proto: 	"http://www.monoxna.org/" seems a bit like MeToo has an ambitious blog for now
[16:08]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Azwaldo: have you tried Dahlia's Jabber plugin for gridproxy?
[16:08]	Azwaldo Villota makes note of plugin...(No)	Azwaldo Villota makes note of plugin...(No)
[16:09]	Morgaine Dinova: 	http://forge.opensimulator.org/gf/project/jabberimproxy/
[16:09]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	Charlette: I have no idea how fully implemented it is, but it seesm actively developed: http://code.google.com/p/monoxna/source/list
[16:09]	Azwaldo Villota: 	ty, Morgaine
[16:10]	Azwaldo Villota: 	must away. cheers All
[16:11]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Azwaldo: Groupies use that plugin extensively when SL group IM is dead. We have a permanent Jabber conference at awg@conference.jabber.org --- most days it's 100% silent though, since SL still mostly works. Most days :P
[16:11]	Charlette Proto: 	I ment the Blog link not the code Morg
[16:11]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Take care Azwaldo
[16:11]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cyu Azwaldo, tale care :-)
[16:12]	Charlette Proto: 	BTW I want to make something of [ https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252BXfIgCTq6A ] to discuss Wave based comms for VW, so IM me if you interested at all
[16:13]	Charlette Proto: 	even if you just want to sharpen you Wave skills hehe
[16:13]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Charlette: that wouod be an interesting discussion
[16:13]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Okay, I have to go. Any last comments?
[16:13]	Charlette Proto: 	Wave offers all the 'toolbox' etc to make it possible I think
[16:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Nah. Thanks Jacek :-)
[16:14]	Armin Weatherwax: 	next week meeting on osgrid?
[16:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I've not looked at the Wave SDK Charlette. Is it "OK" according to comments?
[16:15]	Charlette Proto: 	if we all throw a few cents worth of discussion into it maybe some Google people would get involved too - they failed on Lively sooo bad
[16:15]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Either next week or the week after. I will announce early in the week
[16:16]	Charlette Proto: 	Wave apparently has the Toolbox to intergrate into 'anything'
[16:16]	Thickbrick Sleaford: 	see you