PBR - What's Next?

[Cristiano Midnight]

55 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I was just explaining why, if you want to changing the LSL scripting engine and maintain both backwards compatibility and  current behaviour, apparently there isn't a great deal of choice.

As to the arguments for making the switch, as I understand it, apart from giving scripters access to arrays, it'll also make it easier to adapt LSL to use stuff like linkset hierarchies, which should certainly make it to script things with sets of linked components that are supposed to move together.   

However, I don't think we're going to be able to, let alone need to, use Lua or Luau to do stuff for quite some time yet.  And I'm told that we'll be  carry on using LSL as if Lua didn't exist, unless it's to do something that LSL can't, so I'm not unduly worried about the development.

Isn't the Lua(u) support geared more towards client side scripting, aka a plugin architecture for SL?

[diamond Marchant]

10 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

Mobile is such a wasted effort IMO

There is an obvious disconnect between the needs of current residents (particularly vocal residents who post here) and the needs of the owners/investors who want to to see revenue growth in addition to profitability.

[Sorciaa]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Perhaps a mobile viewer thing, huh?

I think we have a little while before Windows on Snapdragon is gaming-ready, but yeah, it seems inevitable now.

Looks like the Surface pro 11s are running Snapdragons so sooner then you think.

[Qie Niangao]

Just now, Sorciaa said:

Looks like the Surface pro 11s are running Snapdragons so sooner then you think.

Oh for sure, but the Verge (I think) says they're perfectly dreadful at gaming because apparently most game code is running in x86 emulation mode, so just based on that I figured we have some time for gaming specifically. Maybe I'm too pessimistic about that schedule—but not about the bigger picture of Windows on Snapdragon if I gave that impression.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

11 hours ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

WebRTC is in release candidate status, but yeah, it is going to be a rough transition. I rarely use SL voice, I much prefer Discord, but for those that do, it will be disruptive for a bit.

Now that I think about it, I think the most elegant way to do this WebRTC transition might be to just have a weekend of silence.  Just turn off voice completely and update everything on a Friday, then drop a new official viewer Saturday, then do TPVs on Sunday, all at a nice, leisurely pace.  Then turn on WebRTC voice on Monday, when everything is in order.  This avoids the biggest problem:  "My voice doesn't work, and there's no viewer to download to fix it yet!"

Maybe they can say the weekend of silence is to commemorate something.  Maybe commemorate Ada Lovelace, or Grace Hopper, or Ebbe Altburg or something, IDK.  Ebbe is kinda heavy.  Maybe commemorate Ruth, instead?  LOL

[AmeliaJ08]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh for sure, but the Verge (I think) says they're perfectly dreadful at gaming because apparently most game code is running in x86 emulation mode, so just based on that I figured we have some time for gaming specifically. Maybe I'm too pessimistic about that schedule—but not about the bigger picture of Windows on Snapdragon if I gave that impression.

Yeah and the GPU really isn't anything special. Qualcomm have hinted we might see a Snapdragon Elite laptop with a dedicated GPU though, it's possible.

Either way though it does look like ARM PC's are quite likely to be a thing at long last but also maybe not.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

6 hours ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

Isn't the Lua(u) support geared more towards client side scripting, aka a plugin architecture for SL?

It's all something of a mystery to me.   As I understand it, the project's initial scope is to make LSL run on Lua, by creating a library of Lua (Luau?) functions that replicate LSL functions and events.   But from the admittedly very little I've read about Lua, I find it difficult to understand how I could use it to, for example, make a prim move two metres on its local positive x axis, turn through 90 degrees using its own frame of rotational reference, and then turn blue.    It's beyond me, and I'd be ever so grateful if someone could explain, at least in broad terms, how it might be done. 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

4 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

As I understand it, the project's initial scope is to make LSL run on Lua, by creating a library of Lua (Luau?) functions that replicate LSL functions and events.

Cheesus H Toast on a Chocolate Crutch.

They came up with the idea of using LUA to write an LSL EMULATOR?

That should be an automatic "Summary Termination of Employment without notice, severance pay or references, on disciplinary grounds for Gross Incompetence" right there.

 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

They came up with the idea of using LUA to write an LSL EMULATOR?

It's not what any of us expected, but it's not that. Apparently, the first order of business is to replace the Mono backend with something implemented in LUA. Unlikely as it seems, this is said to offer substantial performance and memory advantages in their testing so far.

Then at some point, there will also be a LUA alternate language binding to that backend, so both LSL and LUA will compile to bytecode executed by that backend. Or something like that. The idea being to make scripting more palatable by offering a more industry standard language as an option (but tied to the same very application-specific functionality, so… "fine").

[Zalificent Corvinus]

6 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The idea being to make scripting more palatable by offering a more industry standard language as an option

Again with the "must conform to industry standards that are a detriment to the platform" nonsense. what is wrong with them.

People who have messed with LUA scripts hate LUA.