Posted by on January 6, 2009 under News, howto | 
Linux users can run realXtend viewer by using Wine.
Introduction of Wine from the website: “Wine is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems. Windows programs running in Wine act as native programs would, running without the performance or memory usage penalties of an emulator, with a similar look and feel to other applications on your desktop.”
Screenshot from OpenSim wiki that shows off rex on linux
Instructions how to use Wine and make the realXtend viewer 0.4 run on Linux can be found from OpenSim wiki. The instructions were for Linux, but Wine works also on Mac OS X. If you try that and make it work (or not) on OS X, please leave a comment on this article!
When I first read about realXtend on Wine, I was suspicious about the performance. Wine works surprisingly well, the OpenSim wiki page says that the frame rate was “about 40/50 fps on a 8600 GT“.
realXtend viewer has been Windows-only right from the start. The first goal of the realXtend team was to make a prototype, so it did not matter that it was working only on Windows. The prototype was working well enough at the time of the first release (February 2008) that the prototype development continued - and continued as Windows-only.
The realXtend team is now planning a new from-scratch, BSD licensed and cross-platform viewer (read the CTN article about the new viewer). However, as making a new viewer is a huge task, we can not expect to use the new viewer before summer 2009 - so Linux/Mac users can use Wine as an intermediate solution until that.
Posted by on December 27, 2008 under News |
The current SL Viewer based rexViewer is going to advance into 0.5 release early 2009. It will most likely run on top of Modrex+OpenSim. Most of the work for the 0.5 will be bug fixing and stability improvements work to make it suitable for business use throughout 2009.
Fish talk from realXtend 0.4 demo content
The realXtend team is planning to make the new from-scratch viewer during 2009. During the planning phase this new viewer is called rex-NG to distinguish it from rex-legacy.
“0.5 is intended to be the last release of the current system, and should include a set of important stabilizations, and work with modrex”, says Ryan McDougall, realXtend software architect, “reX-NG will likely take a while to make useful, and 0.5 will be recommended for use until then.”
However as growing number of teams outside of immediate realXtend core team are starting to work on current realXtend viewer, it will also gain new features and improvements. One of the teams working with realXtend viewer during 2009 will be 3DX.
Steve Sima from 3DX comments that “”3DX will continue to build on the current RealXtend viewer work integrating into our future R17 & R18 viewers. This effort will be in parrallel to the new viewer project from RealXtend which we welcome and support, until a suitable time to cross completely to the new viewer platform is viable.”
We will hear more from 3DX plans during early 2009 from http://openlife.cybertechnews.com, stay tuned!
Posted by on December 13, 2008 under News |
Ryan McDougall, realXtend technical architect wrote an open letter to OpenSim-dev mailing list. The letter said that realXtend is planning “…a from-scratch BSD-derived viewer.”
realXtend
Current realXtend viewer is a fork from Linden Lab Second Life Viewer, and it is GPL licensed. The SL Viewer causes problems as OpenSim contribution policy explicitly states that OpenSim can not accept code from developers who have seen or developed SL Viewer. This policy is widely discussed in SL-Dev and Opensim-dev mailing lists and it seems unsolvable.
“We will begin this new process in January and continuing until February of 2009, with a feasibility study.” wrote Ryan McDougall in his letter. “That process will conclude with a proposed road-map as a result, what will be able to take us through 2009 and beyond. The process will begin internally with RealXtend, in order to solidify a unifying core set of principles, but very soon move outward to include a call for proposals and comments from all of you. With a clear road-map and a successful consultation process, we are confident that we will birth an cross platform Open Source community that will be at the forefront of the 3D Virtual World revolution.
“We invite you to give your feedback by visiting the RealXtend website, trying out our software out, signing up for our mailing lists, or joining us on IRC.”
This is an exciting move and from what we have seen from realXtend, we can have high expectations.
