Imprudence and Kokua Deciding…

Today a new post appeared on the Imprudence-Kokua Viewer site. It gives us some insight into what is going on with Imprudence & Kokua viewer development. From a users perspective it seems pretty well stalled to me. But, now we know what’s up and that some decision is going to be made. So, is this the end of Imprudence?

Imprudence

For a long time Imprudence was my viewer of choice for use on OSGrid. With the arrival of mesh that changed.

Imprudence was the viewer of choice for builders in OSGrid and Second Life. For many it still is. But, it is getting old and the team is going to have to decide if they can keep supporting it.

Kokua

This is the newer follow on to Imprudence. It allowed the team to regroup and start from a fresh beginning. It was said this would be a viewer for OpenSim and the Aurora branches of the OpenSim grids.

Aurora is to have lots of nifty new features and not be so constrained by compatibility with Second Life. At least that is my impression of it.

Kokua would provide support for all those nifty features. Plus it would be compatible with OpenSim grids. In a tertiary way it was to be compatible with Second Life.

Recently

Lately we haven’t seen lots happening with either Imprudence or Kokua. It seems the team is realizing that and looking at what they want to do. If you want to contribute your opinions on what should be next, post a comment on their blog article: What’s Next..?

A Direction

As much as I like Imprudence, I would like to see it dropped and all the team’s effort put into Kokua. I think supporting two viewers slows both of them down.

I also think OpenSim needs a really good up to date viewer. Something it does not have now. There are viewers that work with OpenSim grids. But, as best I can tell that is getting complicated. I also think most developers give OpenSim second class status in prioritizing. May be not, I can’t know. But, it seems likely to me.

Whatever decision the team makes I’ll wish them well and support them.

3 thoughts on “Imprudence and Kokua Deciding…

  1. @Nalates

    You wrote:
    “I also think OpenSim needs a really good up to date viewer. Something it does not have now. There are viewers that work with OpenSim grids. But, as best I can tell that is getting complicated. I also think most developers give OpenSim second class status in prioritizing.”

    The Cool VL Viewer is an up to date viewer that always has been 100% OpenSim (not Aurora) compatible. I give no “second class” priority to OpenSim compatibility, however it is true that, for viewer developers, it is difficult to know what should be modified or not when a new OpenSim-specific feature comes up, and it is even rare to know when it comes up ! Lack of documentation about its specific features is the main problem with OpenSim (last time I had a look to its Wiki for the capabilities list, I was faced with largely outdated info).

    The only way for a viewer developer to know what the new (or simply the current) features are and how they are implemented, if to delve into the code of the OpenSim server, which is not something I would have time to do…

    If OpenSim developers want better support in the existing TPVs (something I’m ready to provide for my viewer), they really must improve communication with the TPV developers…

    • I appreciate your comments and firsthand information. Thx.

      I suspect many of us especially appreciative of your efforts. I’ll try using your Cool viewer more often when in OSGrid.

  2. @Henri

    Not as a developer but as one who uses OSgrid and Hypergrid to travel around the open Metaverse I have argued for greater support for Opensim both from the Imprudence and Astra developers. What I would like to see an improved grid manager and have it replaced with a search function and method for grid owners to add their own worlds so new users don’t have to add grid addresses themselves which a lot wont have a clue about but rather they can simply enter some key words to find grids of their choice. I think this could be the single most helpful feature that would benefit Opensim users and grid owners.

    Viewer developers do add some grids but with the open Metaverse exapnding what better way than that the grid owners enter grid address, info and even logo/image themselves to be held in a backend database. The grid list would always be up to date and noobs would never need to enter an address. I believe grid owners would welcome this feature and promote the viewer since they would be able to direct their new clients to it knowing their grid is already featured.

    If Nalates will forgive me I wrote about this subject on my blog last year here…
    http://metaverse-traveller.blogspot.com/2011/04/opensim-finding-open-metaverse-grids.html

    Gaga

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