Playstation Linux Client

Ok, call me crazy. I know a linux version has been requested for years. What I'm suggesting is different in that a) it only involves one hardware platform, which helps get around the general linux hardware support issues, and b) it involves one of the most popular hardware platforms on the planet, potentially opening up a huge market for SL.

For those who haven't looked at this, see the original Playstation 2 Linux website and the BlackRhino website .

Cons:

- I don't know much about these Linux versions, e.g. how stable they are

- The Playstation linux kit is about $300 US, which may be a deterrent for too many potential customers

- The kit seems to be no longer available in NA, and I don't know what it would take to get Sony interested in making it available again (though maybe they will be interested in doing it for PS3)

- The playstation users may not be the group of players we want more of in SL

But I thought it was an idea worth mentioning, anyway. Especially since (ducking rotten fruit) the Lindens seem to want to build a teen grid....

neko

Another major problem is that the PS2 only offers 32mB of RAM. I think there may be a development version with 64mB, but even then... Also, coding newview to take advantage of the PS2's unique architecture would be an incredibly challenging task for developers accustomed to devloping for OpenGL on the x86 PC architecture. I agree having SL on a home console would increase the potential audience, but there's little chance SL could survive the translation.

It /might/ survive a port to the 'box. Maybe. But the limitations would render the game pretty lame... no custom content, for example (Well, you can build. But no uploading stuff...)

http://www.xbox-linux.org/

Probability of this happening: Slim to None. But it would be pretty nifty.

Totally, Jeffrey. XBox's Xentoo is not only possible to install for as cheaply as FREE on an existing XBox, you don't have to do any soldiering or modchip installs or even open the box in order to get it up and running. At $149 new and less for used, the xbox has ethernet built-in and hard-drive. I would think it's ideal for such a project, and I've been thinking for some time that the xbox sequel should endeavor towards some kind of explorative killer-app like Second Life.

I agree - but then, with the evil empire's want to not even give the sequel a hard drive, that becomes even less likely to happen.

Also, while I appreciate the skirting of the issue, this thread is not on mod-chips or anything that would breach Sony's or Microsoft's TOS on their product. Let's leave it at that.

Frankly, though - any Linden cross-platform availability outside of Microsoft and Macintosh would be awesome.

I think it would be a huge boon, both to (for example) Microsoft for their next-gen system AND to LL.

Microsoft would benefit by having the something-like-Second-Life client pre-installed on their system; the possibility of an offline SL experience has been debated before, and I confess I've no ideas whether it's technically capable, but I'm of the opinion that IF possible, it could be used as a build-your-own-browser type of 3-d system interface. Perhaps it'd come with a default, but if you were so inclined you could create a castle where the diifferent rooms represent the different system functions, and have possibly a guest over on your system, your "home". So not only would you be able to express yourself creatively, you'd also be able to have visitors in your environment in 3-d form. THe residents of SL have already seen what a compelling medium it is; I believe that if installed natively on a console system, it would encourage subscriptions to online services in order to get the most out of it; i.e., if you don't subscribe, you get to putter around in your own small environment, with perhaps a single guest. If you subscribe to XboxLive, however, you are eligible to connect to the main SL grid and participate in the larger world. Subscription issues (to MS and LL) would have to be negotiated, but could probably be managed.

LL would benefit because they'd open up their client to a huge number of new potential members, all of whom would be using identical hardware. How great is it to be able to troubleshoot and repair release bugs when a million plus of your potential subscriber base is all using exactly the same processer, vid card, ethernet hookup etc.

I think that even if LL and MS talked however it wouldn't happen for 3 reasons: First, MS is loathe to sell games that involve subscription fees aside and apart from their XBoxLive service; this was what kept EAGames off of the system for so long, because EA did not want to be forced into MS's Live subscription model. Second, and related, MS does not want unfinished XBox product to be offered for sale or subscription through them. The idea of the frequent updates to SecondLife and the hazy, slow transition from vers 1.0 to vers 2.0 would not sit well with them. SL works, but not in the way that MS wants videogames on their system to. Lastly, it'd be a hard sell on MS because "It's not a game!"

Btw, you might be suprised at the form the next XBox system will take. Current speculation (partly confirmed by MS) is that the next system will have no fewer than 3 incarnations: A HD-less version, a HD version for $50-$100 more, and a third which will be a general-purpose PC with XBox guts integrated and streamlined to play XBox games. Rumor has it that the HD-version will include the next Halo or Perfect Dark game on the drive, which will of course be the largest motivating factor to getting that one.

For the time being though, and getting back to the thread starter, I think that if you're going to hack a console system to get Linux on it and SL running on that, XBox and Xentoo are your best bet.

omg, stop it. Just stop it. And Pie!

Besides the ones already mentioned, there may be another drawback to this idea. Let me explain.

A while back, as a student project, I built a motion capture suit for the PS2. I didn't handle the programming; I just built the hardware, but I distinctly remember an incredible annoyance with playstation linux. Every time the playstation was turned off and on again, the Linux OS had to be reloaded onto it from CD, which took a very long time.

I don't know if it had to be that way or if the school's PS2 was just retarded, but I thought it was worth mentioning. If the machine is indeed capable of retaining the OS after powering down, then I guess this message is pointless, but if it's not, then I seriously doubt very many people would be willing to spend all the time necessary to load Linux every time they want to log into SL. Again, I don't know that every PS2 behaves like the one I used (I don't own one), but as I said, if they're all that way than this would end up being very annoying.

Also, American TV is so low res, I doubt SL would look very good on it.

It's a great idea in theory, since so many people have consoles, but unless I'm mistaken I don't think it would work very well in practice.

The Xbox supports RCA, S-video and Composite Video outputs, in addition to SPDIF optical audio. It also supports resolutions up to 1080interlaced, although you will neeed to purchase an additional dongle (<$20) to take advantage of these higher resolutions. Not that I own an Xbox. Pah! Or even like the stinkin machine.


Who am I kidding? Heh.

The X-box may well support those resolutions, but most US televisions do not. Standard NTSC TV's have 525 horizontal lines of resolution, only about 480 of which are used for picture (the rest are black in order to give the electron gun time to make it back to the top of the screen between frames) , and somewhere between 442 and 533 vertical lines. Most computer monitors operate at several times that resolution (1024x768 or 1280x1024).

To put it another way, a 19" monitor has a height of about 12", which means at 1280x1024 (standard for flat panels of that size) it gets about 85 horizontal lines per inch. A 27" TV, on the other hand has a height of about 16.5", which means at 480 usable lines, it only gets about 30 horizontal lines per inch, or just over 1/3 the vertical picture quality of a standard computer monitor. For larger TV's it's even worse.

Even for HDTV's which technically have pixel displays of 1920x1080, you can't get the picture quality of a computer monitor. They have the amount of pixels on the screen alright, but the smallest dots their guns can produce are significantly bigger than the size of the pixels, causing each dot to actually cover several pixels. TV's just don't cut it, even if the console might.

I hate to be such a nay-sayer here because I'd love to see SL on my TV. Unfortunately TV's are just not suited for the task. There would likely be very low detail in textures, and you can forget about text.

Come to think of it, I use a VGA to RCA adaptor for presentations at work. The images generally look terrible, but the device is only used for Power Point so it really doesn't matter too much there. I'll have to bring it home and try it out with SL just to see how bad it actually turns out.

Well, it's been an interesting discussion, anyway. Thanks for not throwing rotten fruit.

The PC game vs. console game war is interesting to watch from the sidelines. I don't play games, really (unless you want to count SL), but I can see what's happening on the shelves of software stores. I've also noticed how games have always driven much of the market. Seems to me if MS is planning for an incarnation of Xbox3 to be essentially a PC that plays console games, they're making a major grab at the HW market.

I don't know if SL will be able to survive the next 5 years if they don't create a console version. The advantage to going with a linuxey one is that other linux users might be able to get a build, too, but that would probably depend on how much LL wants to expose their source. And since it's such a graphics-intensive program, I'm not sure how amenable it will be to running on the kind of variety of hw and OS that linux tends to introduce. The guts of the code should be pretty similar to the OSX stuff, but the graphics, I guess, would be completely different....

Guess I'll go back to wishing for odd-shaped prims.

neko