Weekly meeting?

[Rick Kimball]

One of the great thing about the having a group is to meet at a specified place and time.
We don't really need an agenda, just people with questions and answers.

Anyone have any preferred days and times? I'm on US/EDT so sometime out of work
hours would work for me.

[Damon Hernandez]

I agree with the Q&A sessions. PST here but anytime/day works.

[Steve]

Meetings would be a great!

I am currently on layoff so just about anytime will work for me as long as I can plan to be around during that time. I would really enjoy this type of thing. I guess we would have to also decide upon which is the best venue to hold these meetings. I think it would be nice to have some sort of way to share code during these meetings also to help illistrate the subject matter and to better answer questions people might have. Of course that isn't mandatory either but would be cool.

Peace

[Bruce Lehmann]

I am absolutely for it. A great idea :-) PST here also but most times will work.

[fabricator]

I did this once with people in three continents, Europe, US, Australia

roughly the times were
8am PST, 2pm France, 11pm AEST (Australia eastern states)

To point out, midday PST works out to be 2-3am over here, and I just can't function at that time. Also its winter over here and heating is a problem.

[Doctor]

A great idea.
Where would we meet? In a 3D chat such as the Revemonde Outers, perhaps?

I would attempt to attend whenever my work schedule permits.
No day is better than any other for me.
I am on MST/MDT (UTC-7 in Winter and UTC-6 in Summer).

[Russ Kinter]

Doctor said:

A great idea.
Where would we meet? In a 3D chat such as the Revemonde Outers, perhaps?

I would attempt to attend whenever my work schedule permits.
No day is better than any other for me.
I am on MST/MDT (UTC-7 in Winter and UTC-6 in Summer).

What about Abnet? You can post worlds there I think. I would prefer to move away from blaxxun because the company is dead. As far as time goes Saturday or Sunday afternoons EST are best for me. I work weekday evenings.

[Steve]

I am not sure if the outers even work or wether you just need a much older evrsion of contact. i tried to go to
http://outside.revemonde.net/w3d/no_cache/community/contact.html and it wouldnt even load. I think ABNET would probably be the best choice since it is a fully functioning world server. It is optimized for version 6.1 or later but I think older versions would still work as well. Ask Rick or VC to be sure. Weekends are fine for me as well and that probably makes the best sense. The weekend of july 18 and 19 won't work though as we are participating in a charity event all weekend. Otherwise pick a day and time and I will do my best to be there. :)

[Russ Kinter]

I think Abnet only works with 7 and above.
However bitmanagment Contact -whatever version- works with blaxxun communities as long as you have
blaxxun Contact installed too and it's easy to switch back and forth for folks that can't the logo.
Personally I can tune the logo out, although it does have a habit of getting in the way of my mouse just when I click a TouchSensor. The logo clipping scheme of Abnet doesn't work very on my system.

Steve said:

I am not sure if the outers even work or wether you just need a much older evrsion of contact. i tried to go to
http://outside.revemonde.net/w3d/no_cache/community/contact.html and it wouldnt even load. I think ABNET would probably be the best choice since it is a fully functioning world server. It is optimized for version 6.1 or later but I think older versions would still work as well. Ask Rick or VC to be sure. Weekends are fine for me as well and that probably makes the best sense. The weekend of july 18 and 19 won't work though as we are participating in a charity event all weekend. Otherwise pick a day and time and I will do my best to be there. :)

[Steve]

Yes, other versions of contact work in abnet. The logo clipping only works for version 6.1. --- 7.1 or 7.2 you can't hide the logo. I still am using 7.1 though because 7.2 has some serious issues still with my system. perhaps one of these days they will get it all working correctly. the slide feature is pretty nice in 7.2. :)

[Doctor]

My issue with ABnet is that it does not allow (as far as I know) a world builder to frequently upload changes to a world that is in development. Thus I cannot go through several changes an hour to a world I am developing and testing that involves shared events and the multiuser environment.
Also, any work that I have done that relies on full blaxxun/bitmanagement functionality (e.g. the extensions) may not work on ABnet. I assume that I am not the only VRML/X3D author that will worry about compatibility of their creations with ABnet.

As for the Outers being gone or dead, Revemonde still has the Outers up and running -- they will just not be upgrading the version of their server software anytime soon (because of the disappearance of blaxxun).
Bitmanagement Software is still alive and supporting BS Contact, the last I heard.

My preference would be to stick with the Bitmanagement Contact technology and the flexibility of the Outers paradigm (i.e. worlds do not have to be submitted for approval by a third party before they can be viewed in multiuser mode). :)

[Steve]

Doctor said:

My issue with ABnet is that it does not allow (as far as I know) a world builder to frequently upload changes to a world that is in development. Thus I cannot go through several changes an hour to a world I am developing and testing that involves shared events and the multiuser environment.
Also, any work that I have done that relies on full blaxxun/bitmanagement functionality (e.g. the extensions) may not work on ABnet. I assume that I am not the only VRML/X3D author that will worry about compatibility of their creations with ABnet.

As for the Outers being gone or dead, Revemonde still has the Outers up and running -- they will just not be upgrading the version of their server software anytime soon (because of the disappearance of blaxxun).
Bitmanagement Software is still alive and supporting BS Contact, the last I heard.

My preference would be to stick with the Bitmanagement Contact technology and the flexibility of the Outers paradigm (i.e. worlds do not have to be submitted for approval by a third party before they can be viewed in multiuser mode). :)

Doctor,

When was the last time you visited abnet? It is fully compliant with Bitmanagement contact and also supports H-anim on avatars. Not only does it support all the features of contact but you can also make your worlds multi-user any time you wish by simply visiting this page http://www.odisseia.univ-ab.pt/ABNet2/index.aspx http://www.odisseia.univ-ab.pt/ABNet2/index.aspx ~~ By being able to add a chat on your world at anytime means that you can most certainly test shared events. I have several shared events in my world and that is how i tested them before making an officially sponsored world on abnet. Alain has done much testing with shared events in this manner as well. Now the shared event proto on ABNET IS different than the old bBlaxxun shared event proto of course but there are tutorials in the forum that give very easy to follow instructions on adding and using shared events on ABNET. Personally I think Rick did a great job on making the ABNETZone proto and sharedEvent prot.

I realize that sometimes people really don't like letting go of the old things they are comfortable with but ABNET is not only easy to use but a heck of alot more stable that the blaxxun platform ever was. Also, as soon as bitmanagement gets all the bugs worked out, contact 7.2 is going to be a very nice version to cruise 3D with. there are alot of nice features that you will never be able to experience in the blaxxun worlds.

http://outside.revemonde.net/w3d/no_cache/community/contact.html As for Revemonde, does it only open it as certain times or doies it only work with the older blaxxun contact versions? I have tried this link you posted several times to check it out and not once have I been able to load this.

I have to agree with Russ on this also. Blaxxun is no longer around so it just doesn't make any sense to stay stuck in the past and use a product that was never very stable to begin with. Many nice changes have been made to the Contact platform by Bitmanagement and Rick and VC have worked very hard to make ABNET a very stable and accessible medium. I hope you will check it out and give it an honest attempt. If you need help understanding the shared event protos let me know. I would be more than happy to help you with them or any other feature for that matter.

[Steve]

...oh and BTW this post was made to discuss having a place to have an occasional meeting not neccesarily to discuss which platform you may choose to host your worlds on. ;)