In-world video

DARPA funded development of a system very like Second Life a number of years ago, under Program Manager Dr. Kirstie Bellman. In this system, one of the allowed textures with which you could paint things was type "video".

Now, video clips are too bulky to store in the world database and stream out along with everything else, but it should be possible for the client to open a video stream under the direction of a sim server and render that video in-world in place of a texture.

Agreed, would be cool to have in-world video, you could limit it to a certain time cut down to avoid things like Tron being imported.

Also, see: http://awnews.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=414&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

ActiveWorlds is apparently working on doing this, how, I have no idea.

I agree, this would be so cool, but people might abuse this and inport feature-length movies and they might sell them and well remember what happened last year when all our music was deleted, ya that might happen with the movies and I love this game and don't want it to go under.

Music being deleted? WTF? I never heard anything about it.

Nay,

I must say, this is the first idea so far that I have actually been against considring. That means something comming from the guy who proposed MIDI. LOL

Video would be kick ass if it actaully worked well, but there are a few things to consider

Client side
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The wav files that everyone uses take a long wait time to pre catch, video would be much worse. This alone would take much of the enjoyment out of it.


Server side
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Added storage + added bandwidth + added liability = MUCH HIGHER FEES.

I for one am not willing to double my monthly fees just to have short, tiny, choppy video that waste 30 minutes of both my First and Second Life to download. Sorry but the costs seriousely out weigh the benefits here. Nay.


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A much more feasable solution for complex 2D animation would be shockwave or flash. This way both Linden Labs and Macromedia could benefit from cross promotion.

Did I mention that I'm currently in the market?

One day, when streaming, decoding, playing (and deforming to fit a face) a 30fps movie won't lower the SL framerate below 30fps, we may very well see this implemented. Unfortunately, it's pretty far off. Even people with 2-3Ghz processors still only run SL adequately.

I could see this happening within 5 years though.

:: waits patiently for everyone to have household OC768 connections and 25GHz processors... ::

SIGH!!!

There is hope out there yet!

Artillo

Here's some fun and interesting background tech links heheh

"The Triumph of the Light" - EXCELLENT Scientific American story from back in 2001
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000E9724-331A-1C71-84A9809EC588EF21

DWDM
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/mels/dwdm/dwdm_fns.htm

http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/dwdm/

OC768
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci294572,00.html

Imagine Video Jukeboxes preloading 100+ videos!

:: drool ::

The future can't get here fast enough! I'll be the first in line for a direct neural jack when that comes around! LOL

SNOW CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This would work if it was handled like the streaming audio that's new in version 1.4... The SL server just sends the URL of the stream to the client, which connects direct to that and adds the data into itself on the fly. The data never even passes through the SL servers, let alone reside there.

The hardest part would be mapping the video onto a prim. I don't think video cards are set up to accept video streams as textures for 3D objects. The client may have to slice each frame off and pass it to the card as a texture, skipping video frames if the game FPS is less than the video's.

But this would be a neat addition, if not a very important one. There's a quick mock-up of a puppet stage at the TigerTor apartments that some of you may have noticed. It's a replica of a stage used in a weekly live puppet show that streams over the internet for 4 hours every sunday night. They demonstrated SL live on the show a while back, and were wondering if they could stream themselves into the game. It would be neat if they could.

I can just see all the people that watch the show and play SL (more since the show demoed SL) sitting around a big screen watching the live show. Perhaps with the show cutting to a view of them from time to time. Virtual studio audience!

As far as bandwidth, I'm usually playing SL while I watch, so at least on a cable modem, both can be running at the same time without much of a hit to lag.