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Second Life Faces Open Source Challenges
ruphus13 writes "Linden Labs has talked about Open Sourcing aspects of their platform for a while, but have not always followed through. Now, the OpenSimulator project has been gathering some solid momentum, and this was followed by an announcement by IBM that showed interoperability between OpenSimulator and Linden Servers. What this means is that you can use a Second Life client to log on to an OpenSim server. Beyond that, anyone can run their own server. 'Working with the protocols derived from the official Second Life client, and a knowledge of how Second Life works, these people have implemented their own compatible server code.' It is only a matter of time before users will be able to move profiles, virtual goods, and other elements of their 'second life' on to any server in a truly open world, thereby threatening Linden Labs' virtual world experience. With Google and Sun at the fringes of this space, things are going to get very interesting, virtually speaking."
If so, why?
I'm still working on my first one here. But I hear you can install a feline module to get 8 more.
Does anyone care? I tried it for about 10 minutes but it was so very laggy, once I got past the lag (which I was told was 'normal) I was solidly bored.
and I don't know if open sourcing it will fix it- is when the graphics are slow to load, there are no placeholders for walls, doors, etc. so I am constantly walking into them. That alone would make the SL experience far, far better. Is that something this new open sourcing would make possible?
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
One glitch in the summary: it don't work that way. Being able to have your own SL server doesn't get you access to Linden's grid. And that's what people want: to be on the grid with everybody else they know. If most of their friends are on the Linden grid, they'll want to be on it too and not off in some alternate grid where their friends aren't. And any alternate servers will have to get past the hurdle of establishing a big enough community to attract people or they won't last long.
It's MUCKs all over again. SL has better graphics and a different programming language, but at it's heart it's a MUCK and MUCK social dynamics applies.
First Life
Text MUDs were doing this about 17 years ago. (See: UberMUD).
How is simply teleporting a default avatar any different than what was already done, so very long ago? How can they call this a "first"?
The reality is far from what the submitter is claiming. Open sim has always used the SL client for access, and there are no plans for anytime in the future to allow people to transfer content on/off the SL grid to an Open Sim system.
The IBM test involved a single OpenSim setup where bridge software IBM is working (with Sun) allowed a person to exit SL, and simultaneously login to a OpenSim system. NOTHING was transfered, the avatar shows up in OpenSim in Ruth form.
Linden Labs has clarified that this was a proof of concept test, and that they would like to expand it in the future, but those goals are a good bit off.
What IBM and Sun are working on is a handshake/system protocol for a transient user ID which online systems will recognize and auto negotiate log-in, and if you don't have an account, make you a default account on the new system. eg, you cross over from SL to WOW and if you don't have a WOW account, you start out in a default configuration based on some personality preferences you have preset.
Calm down people, nothing to see here, move along.
If people can run their own servers, perhaps Linden will be more inclined to shout down the "undesirables", such as the BDSM and Dolcett clubs, telling them "you can run your own damn server, get off of ours". While that may not be so bad in the short term as the existing users migrate, it would be bad for their sustainability as other people who might be so inclined can no longer find them over the SL servers.
And who is to say when YOU will be one of the "undesirables"?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Linden Labs has kept to many of their promises to users -- for example, allowing users to build and then retain the objects they create in Second Life. After all, without the users doing all this building, there wouldn't be a Second Life (or at least one worth visiting). Linden Labs has also promised -- or at least, expressed on many occasions -- a commitment to open-operability, and this is being demonstrated with their experiments with IBM and OpenSim. Yet wouldn't they be potentially cannibalizing their profits by actually *releasing* this feature to users? I mean, if users can transport their avatars and all of their assets from Second Life to other metaverses, they'll lose users. At the same time, it can be argued that this very commitment to open-operability will attract more users in much the same way that other proprietary software/service developers attract more users once they "open up" a portion of their services. (Read: Sun.) What do you think?
Harold
Running MMOs can take a lot of resources depending on what kind of functionality you want to provide. While in theory "anyone" could run their own server, logistically it won't happen.
And that's of course on top of the whole community issue. There needs to be enough flexibility so that my server has something different to offer than their server.
Work Safe Porn
Coming soon to a tacky interweb near you!
Roughly half my comments are never submitted. You may be reading the better half...
After seeing Wall-E, I'm thinking we need to make sure virtual worlds remain only a tool to cross distances and not the destination in itself. It can save on gas and enable us to live and learn in distant locations, but the idea of Virtual living is the beginning of a downward spiral.
I tried second life but the physics are anything but real (flying through the air, walking through walls, etc) The graphics are poorly done (if this were the early 90's I wouldn't complain.) Why not just setup a Quake server (or whatever the most popular FPS is these days) and invite friends? I bet that virtual experience blows away second life
I was into quakeworld a long long time before I got into SL and although I use openarena now I can say I do both. In fact I've run padman and openarena servers and invited my SL friends in. I don't even consider the two comparable.
Before you dismiss SL entirely try a live music show. I'd suggest a Komuso Tokugawa concert as a starting point.
Another thing to look at (if you can stand alpha quality software) is the RealXtend mods to SL and opensim.
Check out http://www.sauerbraten.org
They have a "Kick ass" world generator already, with full internet protocol. It's all open source, has a pretty good development community. But is this the same as OpenSimulator?
It uses OpenGL (which I presume a lot of others do as well).
j
Don't Secondlife users need a first life before they start on a second?
I lost all interest in SL when they started catering to all of the "think of the children" demands. First they were banning child avatars. Then they were banning avatars that were adults but could possibly be perceived as underage (i.e. anyone under 6' tall). Then linden labs started required age verification (credit card, etc) to enter into "adult" areas of the world (but of course you still couldn't have short characters there). Pedo-hysteria was running wild throughout SL, and then they banned gambling. What is the point of a virtual, complete fantasy "second-life" when you have to abide by the rules of your first-life?
If two adults want to have furry child characters bumping virtual uglies on SL, where's the harm?
Could we make it a bit more portable, though?
For instance: If I buy clothing in Second Life, or pets in World of Warcraft, why not allow them to cross over? (Subject, of course, to filters/censorship of the target server -- giant walking penises are generally frowned upon.)
Simple solution: OpenID and friends (XFN, etc). Allow a person to store their avatar, possessions, etc, on their own server (or on a free one, or a paid-for Linden one). If you want to allow commerce (selling clothing), require a signature.
I suspect that for some time, it would function the way nations do today -- there would be import/export restrictions, but it would still be possible to bring more than just a username from one server to another. Eventually, it would flatten into something more like the Internet, with too many sites for all of them to arrange explicit deals with each other -- maybe moderation would play a larger role...
Ah, well. Pure speculation and wishful thinking. I wonder if they'll even use OpenID for logins...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Nobody uses any of this stuff.
Maybe open source game developers can't come up with competition for World of Warcraft, but a clunky, laggy game with horrible graphics? Those are open source game developers' specialties! Second Life, you are in trouble.
Why is this story tagged with RPG? SL is NOT an rpg, and it barely qualifies as a game.
Second Life is a VR social networking site, and it is not any more of a 'game' than facebook or myspace.
And don't try and tell me "it's a game because they have games inside SL"; there are games on most social sites.
Forgot the 3rd big opensource platform emerging .... mentioned Opensim, & Wonderland (SUN), did not mention the Cobalt Metaverse at Duke University
====
There are a number of grids using OpenSim. DeepGrid and OSGrid have been in existing for over a year. Others less then that. The common OpenSim grids in order of their appearance are DeepGrid (http://deepgrid.com), OSGrid (http://osgrid.org), OpenLifeGrid (http://openlifegrid.com) and CentralGrid (http://centralgrid.com). There are several thousand users. Not large by SecondLife standards, but growing rapidly. And some of these grids encourage individuals, companies and universities to attach their sims at no charge as part of building a community and helping to develop the OpenSim software. Refer to http://opensimulator.org/ for a complete list and the FreeNode IRC channel #opensim for a discussion on configuration and use including interop work between various grids, including, the SecondLife maingrid.
I've used Second Life several times over the years and every time I look, it's like being transported back into 1998. Perhaps some of the dire graphics can be blamed on user generated content, but even the areas created by Linden Labs look terrible. There are plenty of good game engines about and I am sure they could be adapted.
.obj file which is pretty much a standard in the 3D Graphics community?
.obj. The build tools should help you build things, not hinder you like the tools (and 10 meter object Restrictions) in Second Life.
Then there is the issue of the build tools. So much of the Second Life experience is supposed to be about building things, so why are the build tools so awful? Why after all these years is there still no ability to just upload a simple
The Second Life client is also a complete memory monster. On a 2 Gig system it will happily chew up over 600 megs, and completely unnecessarily since minimizing the app seems to kick in some garbage collection which slashes memory usage dramatically. The memory usage then rapidly starts to build up again.
Second Life also has some serious DRM issues. It seems to be quite common for creators of content to make their goods non-Transferable. So if you ever want to leave Second Life, you will have to just kiss goodbye to much of the money you have spent, because you won't be able to resell many of your purchases.
Before too long, some people who actually know what they are doing are going to come along and blow Second Life (and it's 1998 graphics) right out of the water. It will hopefully have a client that has simple off-line build tools which behave just like other 3D apps but also support import of standard formats such as
Get a First Life!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
SL is an artificial economy. If you can copy items and easily add new 'land', then those things have no value.
Replacements for SL will have trouble attracting creators as SL has or those items having any "status" or "$$" value.
Put another way-- I can play EQ on a simulated server and give myself anything. But what would the point be?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So, no one will pay for a copy of an existing item because they can copy it for free. New, unique objects can't simply be copied from old objects, so the first copy does have a value. This means designers and artists can profit, but there's no need for factory owners or publishers to copy originals anymore. Doesn't this increase the profit for, and lower the barriers to entry to, creation?
The objects that are created in SL are essentially software. If objects can be freely copied, then it's very close to BSD or MIT licensed software. Software with those licenses gets produced outside the context of virtual worlds.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
When I first heard about Second Life I was pretty excited about the prospect of using it as a teaching tool. My first real exposure to OO was LambdaMOO (MOO = MUD Object Oriented, and MUD = Multi-User Dungeon).
LambdaMOO has a very nice object oriented structure, where everything in the universe is an object which inherits from some other object. There's object 1 which is called Object, from which you derive the base objects Room, Exit, User (User further split out into Wizard and Player), and so on. Every object in the world had a collection of "verbs" defined on it, which were essentially methods. Objects could call each others methods. It was a very nice environment for learning OO, because when an "object" is a "Tree" or a "Vehicle" it is a bit more concrete and obvious than when an object is a "TransactionProcessor" or a "DocumentFactory".
LambdaMOO had no concept of a "class". Your user was an object which inherited from "Player" or "Wizard". But, adding new verbs to Player or Wizard would add them to all players and wizards, and verbs could be overridden on child objects, and the implementation was hidden, so you satisfy all the pilars of a traditional OO system.
Now, we have Second Life, which COULD be a totally awesome tool for learning OO... except the scripting language is like a crippled version of Basic. Scripts can't call into each other so there's no code reuse. Scripts can't export any sort of interface (beyond the dreaded "touch" event) so there's no natural way to interact with scripts. Scripts are also hobbled by concepts like "energy" and various specific commands have other rate limits or other limits on them (which I understand the need for, I just wish they were documented). Let's not even talk about what happens if someone else picks the same "channel" as you to send inter-script messages on.
Finally scripts are not OO in any way; no encapsulation, no inheritance, no polymorphism, no abstraction. Despite the fact that the world is literally made of objects, the development environment is not object oriented. It's crazy talk.
It's outright painful to try and build anything of any complexity.
...In unrelated news, Linden Labs have declared Nuclear War against Google's virtual world. No survivors are expected, excluding the backups of course. More at eleven.
Karma is for whores
Oddly enough this is actually the purpose for the Internet. And you thought it was exploiting the synergism of user generated content with paid advertising in a referent free rapidly evolving framework? Same thing. The Internet is for porn.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just a bunch of adolescent pervs all trying to stick their virtual hoo hoo dillys into my virtual cha-cha. If I found that kind of thing even remotely interesting, I would just walk around downtown Detroit at 3 AM wearing nothing but 8-inch black stiletto heels and Chanel No. 5.
Yeah, because a service where anyone can copy information instantly and anyone can easily create content without worrying about limited resources is completely worthless and nobody makes any money there doing anything except selling "real world" goods, which also wouldn't count for some reason.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I don't like the sound of that.
The company is horribly corrupt and screws everything up at every oppurtunity. Between staff members pandering for certain "influential" individuals, and incompetent developers who dont even know how to properly implement their own technologies, SL isnt worth any real investments.
Better off finding how to make money from the game instead of dropping money into it. cash out via one of the external trading companies, and run away laughing.
Then there's the related issue of money laundering through SL.
Linden Labs also has a strange fetish for the british. They're moving many of their operations to the british equivalent to san francisco, and their support used to answer the phone in a fake british accent.
The company is basically running things off PR and hype. The fact they're pushing land sales again instead of trying to gain the attention of companies shows that they're hurting after fucking over half of their users throughout 2007.
SL will be just like activeworlds within the next 5 years. a bunch of people used it for a while, but in the end, it failed to evolve and everyone stopped giving a damn.
Perhaps you want to do a sociological experiment to see what a post scarcity society might look like?
Or perhaps the experiment is to expose a bunch of people who live in an artificial scarcity world to a post scarcity world and see how they react back in real life.
Close, but not quite. In economics, value is purely subjective; the most one can do is determine a lower bound based on what someone is willing to pay. That which can be attained without cost tends to have no demand, which is just another way of saying that no one will pay for it. If people choose to attain it at all, however, then its value must be positive (although still unmeasurable). Air, for example, definitely has a positive value for any given person, being necessary for life. However, almost everyone has an effectively unlimited supply already, so the demand for air -- the aggregate amount people are willing to pay to acquire more of it -- is nearly zero.
One can take economics seriously without confusing zero demand with zero value.
Exactly right. The same applies to digital objects outside the virtual world -- software, music, movies, etc. The idea that "productive creativity" (the creation of new, unique works for a commercial audience) would cease in the absence of copyrights and patents was never more than a self-serving myth.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
People will create because that is what people do.
They do not have to be compensated to create.
However-- It's the difference between Star Wreck and a Hollywood picture.
The difference between an enthusiastic amateur and a professional.
If you are happy with free 90%-95% complete creations then cool.
You are not going to get people to slave over that last 5-10% to get things "perfect" without giving them compensation because people have to eat and that last 5-10% takes a lot of time to do.
SL works because the artistic creators can work many more hours on their creations because they are compensated in real money for them.
Copyright is supposed to give a VERY SHORT and TEMPORARY period where creators make new stuff but then their stuff goes to public domain for society. That's fair- it's good for them and good for us.
"Forever less one day" is not fair.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Do they plan to change their horrible scripting language to something more palatable?
Sounds like one of those BBC shows where they make people live on a garbage dump or something? hehe
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!
WTF is a furry?
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!
I agree. I am hardly opposed to compensating people for their creative efforts. These efforts are known as "labor", and useful labor is always scarce, commanding a positive price. Copyrights and patents are not required to provide compensation.
That "us" is overly inclusive. Clearly the people who choose not to follow copyright laws don't consider it to be good for them. By supporting copyright you're throwing away their liberty as well as your own. That's hardly "fair", must less just.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
I disagree Jesse.
If their values dominated, there would be a lot less creations. Even the people who disagree with copyright and ignore it benefit from it because of the extra high quality creations that they enjoy.
And since I think many of them are to poor to afford a fair price, I don't think it costs the copyright holder very much either.
However, you don't get to pick your laws in a society. You can lobby to have them changed but you are bound by the social contract. If a majority say something is illegal, then you may be punished for ignoring them. Democracy, dictatorships, even Anarchy always result in the tyranny of SOME majority over some minority. The question is only about how peaceful, how just, how unjust or how violent the decision making process is.
Currently our democratic system in america is losing to corporations and becoming a lot less democratic.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Opensimulator is by and large a terrific bit of work. It is as of yet, no substitute for SL's grid and servers but it certainly is making progress. And in some cases leaps past some of the technologies SL uses now.
Anyone who thinks the graphics are 1998 game graphics probably never saw some of the places I've seen or the builds I've witnessed. Yes they use prims, yes these objects are parametric clumsy things. But the skills some people have developed to turn these bits into objects you'd have a hard time discerning from a real place are amazing.
Anyone can take a PC and get on the internet now adays. But how many can make a PC from resistors, silicon, rare elements and capacitors? Or just logic IC's. It's the same kind of thing. You can complain about what you have and build nothing, or learn work around the limitations with scale and craft.
As for this discussion, lots of reasons to want Opensimulator to work with the SL grid, but it's for different kinds of people. Yes the Sims are pricey, yes there are limitations and everything is changing almost on a daily basis as far as limitations go.
I don't think Opensimulator will ever replace SL for however long SL lasts. But Opensimulator can certainly give people who build and design a great platform that when they decide their work works right they can transfer to SL if that is their choice.
Sure it's buggy and built with many flaws and has network troubles. But anyone who says they left because it was slow and looked old probably has never built their own house, and written the scripts that open the doors or tell you who's been at your home while you were offline.
Always people spend more times bitching about the bad things they percieve than touting and applauding the good things. Humanity as a whole is quick to judge and bitch. I for one was dubious, but I took the time to learn, see and be amazed.
Just 2 bits but you're free to do as you like virtually :)
DS
This has already happened to World of Warcraft. There are hundreds of sites which let you play on a private WoW server, Mango being one of the more populare ones.
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