Linden Lab's Tom Hale announces Second Life support for media plug-ins
by Tateru Nino 
Aug 16th 2009 at 1:00PM
Filed under: News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
As a part of his keynote presentation today at this year's Second Life Community Convention, Linden Lab's Tom Hale has unveiled a new plug-in framework for the Second Life viewer. The Second Life viewer has hitherto been restricted to rendering media content that was supported either by its browser component or by the use of Apple's Quicktime. Quicktime is certainly quite workable, but only provides a subset of the extensive range of potentially viewable media that's out there.
The introduction of the LLMedia API looks to change all that, by allowing a straightforward plug-in system to extend the viewer's ability to render various arbitrary kinds of parcel media.
Linden Lab will shortly be distributing source code and binary installs for a special developer-release of the Second Life viewer that includes the LLMedia API, as well as providing documentation and sample media-rendering plug-ins.
Developers should be able to create media-rendering plug-ins that support alternative types of audio (such as Ogg Vorbis or MIDI), or visual materials (PDFs, Spreadsheets, office documents, Xvid and so on) that can be rendered by the Second Life viewer in much the same fashion that Quicktime and MP3 formats are rendered on parcels today.
Instead of writing code as part of the entire Second Life Viewer, plug-in developers can now write their rendering engines for media as separate libraries that get loaded at runtime into the Second Life viewer using this interface.
Indeed, the current media-rendering subsystems are to be migrated to media-rendering plug-ins themselves, giving them essentially the same basic status within the viewer as those provided by third-party developers.
Linden Lab has already developed media-rendering plug-ins based on WebKit (HTML & JavaScript), Apple QuickTime (Audio/Video) and GStreamer (Audio/Video for Linux). The WebKit & GStreamer libraries will be provided as media-rendering plug-in references implementations.
Of course, viewers without the appropriate media-rendering plug-in would not be able to view or listen to otherwise unsupported media content without downloading and installing a compatible plug-in.
Linden Lab doesn't have any current plans for a centralized 'app store' by which plug-ins can be identified and located, but hasn't ruled out the notion.
All in all, this seems to greatly add to the versatility of the viewer, perhaps even more-so than the introduction of HTML-on-a-prim. We're looking forward to seeing what new types of content appear on the Second Life grid. We'd guess MIDI would be a popular format. It has certainly been one of the more frequently requested media types.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SignpostMarv Martin said on 1:09PM 8-16-2009
Last I checked, the SL viewer already supported Ogg Vorbis streaming for parcel audio & midi streams via QuickTime.
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Nightbird Glineux said on 2:56PM 8-16-2009
Since when did QuickTime natively support Ogg Vorbis?
I tried to get QuickTime to play a stream using Ogg Vorbis that an SL club used, and I had to install XiphQT. I was never able to get the streaming to work, but with the plugin QT was able to play individual Vorbis files.
A quick Google search with 'site:apple.com ogg vorbis quicktime' didn't show anything that QT now supports Vorbis.
SignpostMarv Martin said on 3:17PM 8-16-2009
Note that I said "the SL viewer already supported Ogg Vorbis streaming for parcel audio"
Pavig Lok said on 7:54PM 8-16-2009
This is fantastic news. Let's hope the api allows enough hooks to allow greater frameworks to be built around it. There's also a danger in such things which we'll see down the track - slot machine plugin anyone? - but a fine start. Like anything the Lindens might imagine allowing on the grid, giving it enough power to enable great use cases gives it the power to enable ill. I'm excited by this and also very interested to see how it plays out.
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Osprey Therian said on 3:04PM 8-16-2009
Any mention of Ogg Theora?
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speedmaster.bing said on 3:15PM 8-16-2009
@SignpostMarv
And (Apple) Quicktime also tricked people to install Itunes and Safari webbrowser.
Do a search for uninstall mDNSResponder.exe and see the latest Apple treat ;-)
I am one of those people that prefer less software bloat, and know what software gets installed on my windows box.
Quick time apparently tries to become to new Real audio bloatware, and any step away from proprietary formats is welcomed by a growing group of Linux users.
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Eris said on 3:14PM 8-16-2009
You can play Ogg Vobis using QuickTime if you have a Mac because QT allows extra plugins to be added to the its architecture, but that doesn't happen on Windows. Of course 'doze can play Ogg Vobis just not routed thru' QuickTime.
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Osprey said on 4:11PM 8-16-2009
I look forward to seeing what people come up with. It opens up a whole new world.
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Prokofy said on 7:13PM 8-16-2009
>This is fantastic news. Let's hope the api allows enough hooks to allow greater frameworks to be built around it. There's also a danger in such things which we'll see down the track - slot machine plugin anyone?
If Pavig sees this as fantastic news, there's a red flag for me. Further collectivization of SL via the web, anyone?
Yes, and rip off of content, not just casinos.
More holes in the wall, not bricks in the wall. Walled gardens are ok.
Platforms that allow hooks for widgeteers on their demand for "openness" serve a New Class of coders whose own profit and power motives trump the rest of the people's businesses on this platform. It's not an open economy when that happens. Not the capitalism that this socialist always claims he's for, but merely another example of how technocommunist "state capitalism" works.
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Pavig Lok said on 8:36PM 8-16-2009
I think there's plenty of things wrong with the walled garden approach, though it suits some. Those it doesn't suit leave and set up their gardens elsewhere, as you notice Rezzable has done. Many bigger companies however: Intel, Microsoft, IBM are running opensim so that they can extend the platform. I mention these three as they all started in SL and are now running projects producing collaboration tools and scientific visualization systems using the opensim platform.
Having a plugin architecture allows SL to encompass a far wider group of use cases. We may see these alternative uses of virtual worlds bringing more of these folk into SL now that they know they can extend it. ScienceSim for example, a developing set of tools for "collaborative visualization, education, training and scientific discovery" shows great potential for integrating research and education into SL like environments. At the moment it lives outside of SL as the system is too closed to allow such collaboration. Plugins may change that.
I understand the dangers of messing with the status quo on the grid, but having a system too closed stifles innovation. In SL at the moment land ownership and throwing parties works great - education, science, research and real world commerce not so much. Croquet, OpenSim, project Wonderland etc are stealing folk away cause they can go to those other platforms and pull up a whiteboard to discuss stuff (like you'd do in the real world). Such plugins could reduce this exodus.
On the other side, running plugins is optional. If people start extending your SL experience with plugins you don't like just don't install them. We always have the option to ignore things we don't like :)
Prokofy Neva said on 12:11AM 8-17-2009
Large IT companies like Microsoft and IBM exploit the idealistic volunteer labour of the opensource crowds so that they can save on labour costs and take the risk out of research and development. It's really a ghastly system and people inside it fear criticizing it so they don't cut off their possibility to get jobs in this field. Awful stuff.
Adding in plug-ins which only some can code and sell through special relationships is merely a different formed of walled garden -- it's the chaibol system of Korea in which companies loyal to the state are given special opportunities. There isn't going to be a central API store. There isn't a page anyone can go to and click on and submit, by signing a set of ethical principles, like Facebook.
I don't care what fabulous things are made with these APIs if the system for submission has no oversight (like the hacked up viewers used for theft and griefing), no registration with ethical obligations (like Facebook) not centralized store so that one can see what is what as a member of the public.
It's just another opportunity for the friends of the Lab to get a give-away.
You have GOT to be kidding that Croquet or Wonderland are stealing people away. Nothing of the sort. Everyone knows those platforms have nowhere near the capacity or the community or the content. As for Opensim, they are stealing content away from SL, yes, as for people? Again, not ready for prime time.
The idea that we can take some narrow parochial view and say "NIMBY" about APIs and just not buy them is just plain small-minded and lets us know how much the socialist parties of the Confederation of Simulated Democracy really does care about authentic community. We all have to be acutely aware of how the ecology of such things work as a totality, how they effect the whole economy. To say "just don't buy one" is completely unacceptable, if they will change the whole nature of the world.
As for this vaunted "pulling up a whiteboard to discuss stuff," this is overrated, even in real life, and even by researchers. So often, these toys sit unused even in RL. Why stare at a whiteboard in a virtual world when you have people to work with directly? It's great to have whiteboarding but it's a tiny use case and one that people get around using share-with-group and uploaded textures and just plain prims.
I think very few people can be shown to have "fled" SL because they couldn't...whiteboard.
Once again, Pavig, you're taking your own class interests here as the same as the good of the entire world. They are not.
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TigroSpottystripes Katsu said on 5:34PM 8-17-2009
I can't wait to have VLC in SL
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neil said on 11:57AM 8-19-2009
Looking at the API and the details of the messages on the wiki, it seems to be more than 'viewer' plugins that are supported. Scrolling and intercepting mouse and keyboard seem to be there too. I've written a bit more here http://blog.knowsense.co.uk/blog/_archives/2009/8/18/4292047.html
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Tateru Nino said on 1:54PM 8-19-2009
Mouse and keyboard hooks are required for some of the plugins (eg: WebKit)
neil said on 3:17PM 8-19-2009
OK. But presumably those hooks will be used to send actual events, so the plugin will be capable of responding to mouse, keyboard and hence the concept of focus will be required... WebKit is being used already to support HTML-on-prim right? But no such events are sent to it, or maybe they are and they are ignored. Just got excited at the thought of properly interactive media surfaces - the hacks I required to create a clickable, scrollable browser in SL were enormous.
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