Emma might be the answer to my dreams

[miriam_e]

I just read about a new 3d project called Emma which uses the OGRE 3d engine and the Lua scripting language to create an open source, free 3d modeling environment. Yay!!!

I have been wanting to create stories in 3d since I started building 3d worlds more than a decade ago. I'd become excited by POV-Ray (still am) and VRML (which seems on its death bed) and I have been creating my own 3d language as an on-again, off-again project for the last few years and learning a lot in the process, but today I learned of this new project. Emma sounds it might be the one!

Wahoo!!! I hope. I hope. I hope.

http://emma3d.org/
http://www.lua.org/
http://ogre3d.org/
http://www.wxwidgets.org/

Open source rocks!!

Comments

[apocraphilia.livejournal.com]

You only missed wxWidgets :)

Emma looks like a great idea - it certainly includes all the right OS tech. I'm monkeying with Ogre at the moment, trying to recreate someone's closed source toy as an OS project - it certainly seems to have everything in the right place.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) Fixed.

Hey, that chess game looks very cool.
Adding the text to let people communicate showed that they didn't go in there to deliberately hassle people -- it was an accidental result of "Ohh, pretty... gosh, I can move these pieces and they bump other pieces!". Seems to me you chose the right route -- allow people to see each other, enhancing their awareness, rather than closing their options down. After all, in a real game of chess anybody can reach in and move parts, but nobody does, other than the two players.

Have you seen this? http://www.newimage.com/~rhk/rtchess
It is a real-time ray traced chess game. There is no physics or networking. I found out about it from the rtrt (realtime raytracing) list on Yahoo Groups. Unfortunately nothing has been posted to the list for ages as you can see by the archives at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realtime_raytracing/ however there are a number of interesting posts and files (mostly demos) there for downloading (look in the Files area).

Did you know that Geometrek (http://www.geometrek.com) have produced a free VRML program that allows multiple users to connect in a chess world and move pieces? It doesn't have physics or shadows. It is probably possible to add the text of conversations though.
http://www.geometrek.com/products/download/index.html

I should have a fiddle with Ogre. It certainly seems to be catching on.

[lunadude.livejournal.com]

Yummy. Thanks for the info.

I've played with (still am) VRML, Viewpoint (license fees killing this), Adobe Atmosphere (dead). I've become interested in Machinima and am currently playing with Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/)
.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Just been looking at SecondLife. Interesting.

Though it bothers me is that it is closed source and appears to rely on central servers.

Closed source projects are dangerous because the company owning them survives or fails at the whim of the marketplace. In today's volatile environment they too often go down the plughole taking the source with them. On rare occasions their customers and staff band together and buy the code and revitalise it by making it an open source project (as happened with Blender) or in even rarer cases they donate the source when the company goes down, but usually the customers are left with nothing. Even if they donate the source the lack of preexisting programming community usually means it continues to die.

Central servers limit scalability. There is a point beyond which any centralised system can't possibly grow, no matter how big their servers, or how fast their connections. The only way to have truly gigantic and flexible worlds is to allow peer-to-peer serving of worlds. I don't expect any company or closed source project to ever do that though, because it entails giving up centralised control... and for them control is almost always an obsessionally important aspect... even if it kills their own project.

[apocraphilia.livejournal.com]

Too true - a company will stand or fall on the service they provide, there's no need for them to take their code with them as well.

The two reasons I've read about why people hide their code away is security and competition. But they're so easily refuted: if your only security is through obscurity, then you're already in trouble. Look as SSH: The best way to secure something is to get everyone to use and make it the best, most secure system it can be. Anything else is a losing battle against the very people who could be helping you.

And competition? Again, if the only reason your business model works is because no-one else has your software, then you're in trouble again. The true test of a business is this: give your code to someone else, and then make more money than them with it. Run a better service, treat your customers better, be a better business person.