Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Interactive Flash on one prim for v1 and v3 viewers.

Programming in OpenSim can be a struggle, but every once in a while I find some simple solution that really helps. 

We are 'between' times with still lots of educational institutes using a v1 viewer like Imprudence but others allready made the step to a v3 viewer. We have to find ways to show them both the content without having two separate objects showing the same.
In a previous post ( Flash and streaming video on a prim) I allready wrote about the use of Flash interactively on a prim in Imprudence 1.4.0 beta 2. Most schools use this viewer and it works great. having the URL of the parcel set to the flash file that I want them to interact with in-world.

Spanish pronunciation keyboard
But what about the new v3 viewers?
I recently created a keyboard with pronunciations of the Spanish alphabet which I wanted to use for the Imprudence viewer but also for the v3 viewer (Firestorm) that we use in a pilot at the university of Alcalá de Henares in Spain.
So by setting the parcel media to the URL of the flash file gave me the possibility to press the buttons of the Flash keyboard in-world and hear the pronunciation of the letters. The only problem was that in my Firestorm viewer the Flash file shows but I could not press any button.

How can I have both working?
Prim media settings
The solution was quite simple, the settings for Imprudence were fine, so I did not change anything there. So I used the Firestorm viewer to set the extra prim media settings of the prim face where the keyboard was set on, to the same URL.

It works!
So what happens? When I log in with my Imprudence viewer the extra settings of the prim media will not be seen, it will see the settings of the parcel media and show the page on the prim, and I can interact with it.
When I log in with my Firestorm the same happens, the webpage appears but is not interactive, but because of the settings I made for the prim media, after one easy click it will change from parcel url to the prim url, which is interactive again. The problem is solved.