What about a texture exchange server?

[Nanouk-GoW]

Shorah,

Even if the only goal for the Guild of Messengers is to facilitate communications between different groups of our Uru community, I agree that we cannot easily control what would/could be leaked to the outside world.

It would be advicable that somekind of limiting access process should be found first.
(membership ???)

Good luck with your project.

Nanouk.

[GPNMilano]

I like to call my ISP a fairly typical American ISP. You could probably even call it a good ISP (compared to the rest in the US).

The IP changes every time I connect (My IP can be in about 3 different A Blocks, actually), and there's a forced disconnect after so much inactivity... Auto Disconnect is against the "new contract," but they never call me out for auto-reconnecting. Most ISPs are something like this though some don't have the disconnect. I do know someone who kept his IP constant for a year despite having dynamic IP server.

YMMV

I think I'm in the same boat as your friend. My IP is supposed to change, but I installed a wireless network in my apartment so that my roommate and i could use our laptops. Since the router is connected to the cable modem that came with my ISP, its configured as a subnet, and the IP doesn't change for the three computers installed on it.

[teedyo]

I like to call my ISP a fairly typical American ISP. You could probably even call it a good ISP (compared to the rest in the US).

The IP changes every time I connect (My IP can be in about 3 different A Blocks, actually), and there's a forced disconnect after so much inactivity... Auto Disconnect is against the "new contract," but they never call me out for auto-reconnecting. Most ISPs are something like this though some don't have the disconnect. I do know someone who kept his IP constant for a year despite having dynamic IP server.

YMMV

I think I'm in the same boat as your friend. My IP is supposed to change, but I installed a wireless network in my apartment so that my roommate and i could use our laptops. Since the router is connected to the cable modem that came with my ISP, its configured as a subnet, and the IP doesn't change for the three computers installed on it.

The IPs on your local(private) lan aren't the issue as they're not broadcast; it's the one that the cable modem uses that matters. Of course this presumes that you haven't leased a "real" ip block for your laptops and your router and/or modem does NAT: all traffic appears to come from the modem's ip regardless of which machine you're actually using.

I find it strange that a number of you actually get variable IP addresses. The client always requests the previous IP and only gets a new one if it's denied. A constantly changing IP address indicates a very busy DHCP server or the ISP has set it to work in a round-robin fashion(they may also explicitly deny the previous address to prevent 'abuse'). ex. My mom has had the same dynamic address for 6 years. Both locations I deal with that use my ISP have static IP addresses so I can't say how they handle dynamic allocations.

[diafero]

No, it's not a busy DHCP server. It's the way it's meant to be - each time you connect, you get a random IP assigned from the pool of free IPs the provider has. I really like it that way since I can be sure that's it's impossible to trace me after I re-connected to the internet and deleted all the cookies, history and whatsoever in my browser. It seems I'm not the only one, I read somewhere that IPv6 will have such a randomize-mechanism as well though more than enough IPs are available. And I'll sure use NAT with IPv6 even if it's not necessary, it gives me a "firewall" for free

[Carterhawk]

I don't think it has been mentioned, but what about supporting HDR formats such as DNG and TIFF? Those of us with DSLR's can convert RAW photos to a more common format for everyone to use, however that will certainly involve larger file sizes. Given that this community could easily generate terabytes of data, I would even suggest finding a way to work Amazon S3 into the solution. Fully scalable and cost effective web storage for all these files, vs trying to cram everything onto one small 40gb hd. In the space of a week, i've already generated 2gb of jpg data at 12.2MP. While not all that would get uploaded, consider that someone with a full-frame dslr could be uploading images in excess of 20MP each. Using an S3 container none of the actual image data would have to be hosted on the primary server, which would exist only as a front-end to the content.

For licensing, Creative Commons seems like the easiest way to go, and I already license all my photos on flickr under the BY-NC-SA license.

As far as features go, I would love to see in-image tagging ala flickr, as well as whole-image tags and a tag cloud, something many sites with hosted content have implemented. I looked at the texturu that was posted earlier, and I can't see anyone using such a deeply nested interface without going mad. Tags would negate the need for fixed categories entirely, instead letting each image exist under multiple tags that could be quickly filtered to find just what you're looking for.

Anyways, i'll keep watching this with a lot of interest, as I have been looking for a productive use for my new camera.

[Aloys]

I don't think we'd really need 12 mega pixels images, Uru only handles textures up to 2k. And eventhough it's sometimes usefull to have large textures to work on, 12MP seems a bit high to me. They'd eat disk space like there was no tomorrow.
Such HQ textures would definitely be useful for pre-rendered visuals, not so much for real time.

[Carterhawk]

I wouldn't try and stick a 12MP texture in plasma, but as source material to build textures from, it seems like it would be best to have the highest quality possible? More modern engines like CryEngine2 and Unreal3 support 16MP textures afaik, making good use of those 2GB video cards, lol.

[tachzusamm]

I don't think it has been mentioned, but what about supporting HDR formats such as DNG and TIFF? Those of us with DSLR's can convert RAW photos to a more common format for everyone to use, however that will certainly involve larger file sizes. Given that this community could easily generate terabytes of data, I would even suggest finding a way to work Amazon S3 into the solution. Fully scalable and cost effective web storage for all these files, vs trying to cram everything onto one small 40gb hd. In the space of a week, i've already generated 2gb of jpg data at 12.2MP. While not all that would get uploaded, consider that someone with a full-frame dslr could be uploading images in excess of 20MP each. Using an S3 container none of the actual image data would have to be hosted on the primary server, which would exist only as a front-end to the content.

I repeat: Ultra-high resolution will be useless if not each pixel in the photo is sharp and crisp when viewed at 100%. Maybe you could upload some of your (unedited) photos to somewhere to let us have a look?

As far as features go, I would love to see in-image tagging ala flickr, as well as whole-image tags and a tag cloud, something many sites with hosted content have implemented.

You will be surprised which kind of tagging will be included. A special kind of tagging for the needs of the community, regarding textures, blender and URU. And it WILL have a search function.

I looked at the texturu that was posted earlier, and I can't see anyone using such a deeply nested interface without going mad.

This is NOT how the server will look like. It was rapidly written to get a first idea about the potential of PHP in conjunction with a database. Maybe we will use parts of the code, but not the design or behavior.

Anyways, i'll keep watching this with a lot of interest, as I have been looking for a productive use for my new camera.

Anyways, we are not going to host textures for Unreal3.
The main purpose is still supporting the age building process.

[Chacal]

Ultra-high resolution will be useless if not each pixel in the photo is sharp and crisp when viewed at 100%.

I don't recall having ever seen a fuzzy pixel.

[Nadnerb]

have you ever looked really closely at a digital photo? Except in photos taken with the newer, layered CCDs, you will see odd red/green/blue noise patterns when viewing an image at a size where individual pixels are visible. (This is due to the different colors not being in exactly the same place on the surface) This is likely the effect he is referring to, and the reason it would be reasonable to scale these pictures down before storage.