Howard Stearns wrote:

Cool. What do you have in mind?

Do you have any experience with the QuickTime media plugin? How is it in general? How is it for streaming sources?

The model for coordinating plugin activity across clients was not clear to me. E.g., if I fire up QuickTime for a movie, how do all other clients in the sim (that happen to have the plugin installed) get coordinated to the same place in the movie?

Howard Stearns Qwaq: +1-650-331-1437 mobile: +1-608-658-2419

The way it works right now (and in the future unless they change things), a land-owner can set a "parcel media" URL which is the URL to a streaming media server that will play on any local object that displays a certain texture. The plugin API extends that to allow for custom plugins to run, but only in the context of the parcel media URL texture. I can imagine many cases where a media plugin served from localhost might be useful. It should be possible to specify localhost as a valid url for media-on-a-prim (HUD at least) that is settable separately from, or as an alternative to, the parcel media URL. IOW, if I install a custom HUD with a localhost url as the parcel media url, I should be able to interact with a private plugin running/streaming on my own comp. E.G. a seaside server on localhost doing all sorts of spiffy things that I haven't thought of yet. The plugin API makes it easy to have a plugin be part of the second life world, as far as GUI is concerned. I'm trying to convince people to create another message/event mechanism to allow more direct interaction with the SL viewer. IE, use Squeak as a scripting plugin on the viewer side. One could use the media API to provide a GUI and use the events API to send commands for generic scripting of the SL viewer. Lawson