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.

[alain]

LOL , yes , please dont make a meeting to know where to go to meet :)

say , "here at that time " , I will go :)

( ie ABnet , " 8am PST, 2pm France, 11pm AEST (Australia eastern states)"

[Russ Kinter]

I think that the info from this link:
http://www.odisseia.univ-ab.pt/ABNet2/index.aspx
shows that abnet isn't any different from a blaxxun developers server in terms of displaying worlds.

You make changes to your world and then upload it to your server,
then assuming your cache settings are correct the new version will load.

In relation to extensions, Unfortunately if your work is dependent on persistent storage
or the PS_LOCK tag, then Abnet has no corollaries to them at the moment. Those items are a big
deal to me as well which is why I have put them in Deep Matrix.
In any event, if persistent storage is the reason for not using Abnet, I don't think there isn't any reason
why BOTH systems cannot be visited. Hopefully Steve's blaxxun chat tech issues can be solved.




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). :)

[Rick Kimball]

Actually, I was going to suggest that we just meet using the WBandD chat.
If someone wants to show a world in multiuser, they can just paste in a link
in the chat and people can join. ABNet supports launching arbitrary worlds
in multi-user as long as they are on a publicly accessible web server.

Using the WBand chat means we don't have to install anything or get userids
on Yahoo, MSN, Skype .. etc. It seems to "just work"

For pasting code snippets, we could use http://pastebin.com/ It allows you to post long chunks of vrml/x3d code and have everyone else view it.

The chat doesn't seem to support a log history, but I can cut and paste the conversation
and post it here with a date of the meeting.

What do people think about Tuesdays?

[Russ Kinter]

As long as it is afternoons EST

Rick Kimball said:

Actually, I was going to suggest that we just meet using the WBandD chat.
If someone wants to show a world in multiuser, they can just paste in a link
in the chat and people can join. ABNet supports launching arbitrary worlds
in multi-user as long as they are on a publicly accessible web server.

Using the WBand chat means we don't have to install anything or get userids
on Yahoo, MSN, Skype .. etc. It seems to "just work"

For pasting code snippets, we could use http://pastebin.com/ It allows you to post long chunks of vrml/x3d code and have everyone else view it.

The chat doesn't seem to support a log history, but I can cut and paste the conversation
and post it here with a date of the meeting.

What do people think about Tuesdays?

[Doctor]

Steve said:

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.

I have not visited ABnet in a long while, so of course I am prepared to try it again. I am still concerned that work I have already done that uses the Contact extensions will not work with ABnet, and might not be adaptable to ABnet. However, as you have said, meeting in ABnet once a week does not mean that I must develop all my worlds there.

Thank you for the additional information about ABnet and frequent world updates during development. What that means to me is that there is an ABnet Outers for VRML authors to work in. Great news. :)

I am also agreeable to Rick's suggestion to meet in the WBandD chat, though I have not actually used it yet.

My apologies, Steve and others, if my suggestion to stick with Contact has struck a nerve. I only wish to avoid unnecessary recoding of PROTOs and worlds that rely on Contact extensions. I have nothing against other VRML/X3D systems -- in fact, I am quite interested in creating one of my own someday (One with a very different network topology than current systems). :)

[Brillo]

yes Great idea !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!