[X3D-Public] multiuser mode (newbie question)

[John Carlson]

"What possible value is gained by using a soup of non web3d consortium based communications protocol over simple gzipped xml or classic encoded x3d mini file, or x3d binary format ? Besides making the traffic a few bytes smaller, the extra programming needed for both client and server is going to add noticeable extra expense."

How does adding a X3D mini file work across multiple vendor browsers?  See below about dynamic scenegraphs or a previous message.  If you have something working, please show me.  How do you incorporate a new x3d file (again and again) into an existing scene after the scene has already been loaded?  This is the desktop equivalent of opening multiple applications or windows.  Does X3D have that?  Yes, I know about anchors.  Can you have an anchor which changes to something the user wants, instead of what the site developer wants?  Or is it always "File -> Open"?

Of course I realize that this was probably present in Vivaty or Google Lively.  Were these proprietary features, or standard features?

Yes, I realize the difference between an authoring application and a player.  I don't understand ordinary authoring tools, but I feel that I can fairly competently create a graph with nodes and edges with a JOGL program interactively.  Should I change my authoring tool to export X3D?  Or should I just add networking to my authoring tool and download my app through Java Web Start?   If I need persistence, I can write out my graph to SQLite.  Wouldn't the Web3D consortium be interested in my use case?  Is multiuser authoring even important?  If not, why did X3D-Edit create a MU editing environment?  I understand that if I know X3D, then X3D-Edit meets the use case.  The desire is to run my applications within a standard web browser, so that I don't have to have the "Do you trust me?" prompts popup.  Do any X3D authoring applications run inside a web browser?

> 
>> From my direct communications with Chris Thorne, standard http traffic (over tcp/udp) was intended to be an option. For those of us who want to experiment with server and scenes without heavy programming, it would have been very useful way to explore the possibilities of multi user.
> 
> ps: An opensource MU X3D server just isn't a viable idea, it would never attract enough interest from programmers or other developers.
> Lots of complex and time consuming code is needed, for avatars/gestures, storage, shared events, editing and admin. I can't see the consortium or other groups paying key developers for what is needed to make anything half decent.


I can see being a person who has developed a MU 3D server as being a valuable asset on one's resume.  There are a lot of smart students out there.  Why won't the Consortium use something like Google Summer of Code?

I was just initially hoping for insertion, deletion, updating, and selection (for population and refreshing) of X3D or VRML nodes.  Maybe we can decide on a JavaScript API or Java API that all vendors can implement?  Is this what SAI is supposed to be?  I don't see a reason why a network protocol loosely based on simple SQL with ids and/or XPath wouldn't work--I am not stuck on SQL, it just happens to be a networking standard that a lot of people understand, and it's fairly easy to debug because it's readable.

I am not really talking about MU.  What I am talking about is required before MU X3D is possible--My simple example of creating a graph inside a X3D browsers...creating nodes and arcs interactively...is that possible with today's X3D technology?  To build Web 3.D applications, we need a dynamic scenegraph--It is very likely that X3DOM will provide it.  Once we have X3DOM, we can revisit MU stuff.  Once 3D is inside the browser, where it can be manipulated with <div> tags, we have enough available to provide a modest MU environment--my avatar walking into a room that you are viewing. I haven't looked yet, but I was assuming that Google wave was speaking XMPP from the browser, but I don't really know.   I believe that Open Cobalt/TeaTime/NAMOS uses datetime stamps...we may need these too for peers-to-peers X3D: There are some temporal issues to deal with (has X3D-Edit solved these?)

Is there a particular patent which is preventing standard C.R.U.D. on nodes?

People have been pointing me in the direction of uni-verse, perhaps adopting that would be feasible.  It looks like a lot of reading!

John
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