Please see the Introduction.

Yes.

No. 3Di Viewer “Rei” works with upstream OpenSim and we have several reports of it working correctly. If you have difficulties getting it to work, please contact the community and we will help you get it running.

Please make sure the login URI field contans the login URI without the http:// prefix. For example, “osgrid.org:8002″ would be the entry to login to OSGrid.

Please see the feature list.

Yes. Currently a single, fixed, 3D-mesh avatar is used for all logged-in users. This is less than ideal, and will be fixed in the future with more flexibility.

SL-style avatars are not implemented, and there seems to be a lack of knowledge in the OpenSim community about the precise implementation details of SL-style avatars. Because OpenSim developers, and 3Di Viewer “Rei” developers also, should not look at GPL source code of GPL-based viewers, any SL-style avatar implementation would have to be developed from scratch, which is a difficult and time-consuming task.

3D mesh display requires server-side support. Currently the commercial 3Di OpenSim Enterprise implements an Irrlicht-based mesh storage solution.

3Di OpenSim Enterprise is a commercial, value-added, QA tested virtual world server from 3Di, Inc., based on upstream OpenSim software. It follows upstream OpenSim with a delay to enable QA testing. Also please see the product web page.

We are very interested in a general-purpose, open source OpenSim mesh solution and in working with the community to continue the ongoing discussion about general 3D mesh support.

The 3Di commercial solution is a specific implementation that depends on Irrlicht-format meshes, because the 3Di rendering engine and content tools are all based on Irrlicht.

However, Irrlicht-format files are probably not going to be usable in viewers that aren’t based on Irrlicht. So the next step is to continue discussion about community needs, to find a general, standard mesh solution for OpenSim.

Binary downloads are available here: binary download. However, to get the latest version of the code, you should compile it from source code yourself.

This file should be installed when you install Microsoft Visual C++.

Alternatively, you can install the file directly from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displaylang=en

Simplified usage instructions are available in Japanese here: http://3di-opensim.com/openviewer/. An automatically translated version is also available.

For localization and web-page embedding, you may find this page by Zaki useful:

• http://zaki.asia/?p=86

Otherwise, the source code itself is the most up-to-date documentation. Over time we hope to expand the community wiki with more documentation. You are welcome to assist in this effort.

You can also contact the community via the community mailing lists.

3Di Viewer “Rei” was created by 3Di, Inc., a Tokyo company which develops and offers 3D Internet solutions. 3Di Viewer “Rei” uses open source software components and is itself an open source project.

The viewer core is licensed under BSD license. The binary DLL files are BSD, zlib, or LGPL licensed. The Firefox plugin is LGPL licensed.

The JavaScript API is LGPL-licensed and defines the JavaScript interface to the viewer core.

The Firefox plugin allows the viewer core to integrate with Firefox. It is based on code from mozilla.org, originally developed by Netscape Communications Corporation and was originally multiple-licensed under MPL, LGPL, and GPL; for this project, we have chosen to use the LGPL license for the mozilla.org related code.

The developer mailing list, hosted at Google Groups, is the best way to get in touch with the development community. The source code repositories, issue tracker, and wiki are hosted at github.

You are free to clone the git repository and make modifications in your local branch. If you have some patches you think might be useful to the community at large, please consider submitting them back to the project.

Please see the Contributions Policy.

To ensure the integrity of the source code, we require contributors to submit a contributor agreement before their source code can be accepted into the main source code repository. The purpose of the agreement is to have legal evidence that patches accepted into the open source project are original work that the author intends to submit to the project.

The contributor agreement for 3Di Viewer “Rei” is based on, and at the time of this writing, identical to, the Sun Contributor Agreement used by Sun microsystems for its open source projects. Other high-profile open source projects also use similar contributor agreements.

Please see this document about open source and contributor license agreements for more information.

“3Di” is the term we use to refer to the 3D Internet, also known as the Immersive Internet. 3Di also is the name of the company that initiated and supports this open source project.

“Viewer” is the standard terminology to refer to client software that connects to a virtual world simulator.

“Rei” is a Japanese word that can have multiple meanings, depending on how it is written. The logo displayed in the web page header is one way of writing “Rei”, and in this case means beauty. “Rei” can also mean the numeral zero, which can symbolize a starting point, just as the 3D Internet is in its infancy now. Finally, “Rei” is also a homophone with the English word “ray”, a ubiquitous term when discussing 3D graphics.

Please use the community mailing lists.