An Intro To OpenSim, the Apache of Virtual Worlds

ajohnj1 writes with an excerpt from Ostatic: "You've probably read a bit about OpenSim, the BSD-licensed virtual world server, and recent news that IBM and Linden Lab are working to make Second Life and Open Sim interoperable. Besides that project, what's Open Sim about, who's working on it, what are they doing with it, and how do you get involved as a developer and participant? Here's a starter's guide."

Comments

C# and BSD license?

[suso]

I predict it will only take a day for someone to start working on a project to rewrite this in some more open source friendly language. Just because it says OpenSimulator doesn't mean it really is.

I've been waiting for this whole ordeal to happen. I consider this technology to be the next medium that everyone will use and it will supplant HTTP. It needed two requirements for it to take off though. First, an open protocol needed to be developed and second it needed to be possible to interconnect different servers together to make once cohesive environment. Well, we have the first part now, is this the second part?

Time to go write a new spreadsheet.

Re:C# and BSD license?

[Mr. Slippery]

Wouldn't it be wiser to spend that effort working on a project that makes C# more open source friendly

Not possible. So long as Microsoft retains the ability to attack Mono through patent suits, C# cannot be "open source friendly".

C# is a poison pill that Microsoft would love to see the F/OSS community swallow.

Re:C# and BSD license?

[theM_xl]

With all the crap English written on websites today, do you really want to set this standard loose on important literary works?

the "Sorry Shakespeare" M

Re:C# and BSD license?

[Anonymous Coward]

C# is an ISO/ECMA standard, Java is not.

Re:C# and BSD license?

[Enderandrew]

I have so much respect for ISO standards these days.

Re:C# and BSD license?

[Chyeld]

I've been waiting for this whole ordeal to happen. I consider this technology to be the next medium that everyone will use and it will supplant HTTP. It needed two requirements for it to take off though. First, an open protocol needed to be developed and second it needed to be possible to interconnect different servers together to make once cohesive environment. Well, we have the first part now, is this the second part?

With respect, there have been numerous attempts to replace text based protocols with visual worlds since before the web. I remember drooling over ads in my dad's old Atari ST magazines where BBSes were advertising virtual worlds where everything was represented as a building in a isometric 3d city and people ran along the streets talking to each other.

These have never taken off as the main stream interface because even if you were able to achieve a completely believeable virtual world, it still wouldn't present the same information bandwidth as simply pulling up pages and reading them. And porn jokes aside, the real drive of the internet is presenting information, not pretty visuals.

These will always be the niche, rather than the mainstream, way of interacting because no one wants to 'run' for 30 mintutes to do something that could be accomplished in 30 seconds outside of the world.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing what could be created once the reigns were passed from corporations looking for money to Joe Six-Pack. Will it be a revolution or another eternal September?

Given Second Life is already exhibiting a second coming of 'GeoCities' crappy design, I'm not certain I'll be welcoming our new OpenSim overlords.

Re:I'm interested

[elrous0]

Linden has been TALKING about open sourcing for years. So far, they've delivered very little.

Who cares?

[AlXtreme]

After all the hype of Second Life, and the realization that only a bunch of furries and other weirdos (NSFW) are into it, why prolong the suffering of SL with initiatives like these?

The problem with all 'virtual worlds' is simply that they are boring. There is nothing more for the average user to do than walk around and be a good little virtual consumer of virtual products. This in contrast with the massively popular MMORPGs that, while they are criticized for the grind-fest, at least give their users a good time in the process (how else could one explain the millions of paying WoW/Eve/whatnot users, compared to the thousands not paying a dime in SL?).

So (and this is not a troll), who cares about SL or any similar 'virtual world'? What am I missing about virtual worlds that seems so attractive to hype, corporations and in this case even open source developers, but clearly not to ordinary users?

Re:Who cares?

[Ash-Fox]

The problem with all 'virtual worlds' is simply that they are boring. There is nothing more for the average user to do than walk around and be a good little virtual consumer of virtual products.

Those are stupid users and I would be happy if they would go away on Second life. Much like the annoying club people.

They don't do anything creative on Second life, they just take up space, they're not interesting conversation and are so computer illiterate, everything is a issue for them. They come up with random explanations for problems they're having which has nothing to do with it.

On Second life, I spend a lot of time scripting, building things. From things from in-world air defense systems to play against other builders as a game to building things that are deemed practically impossible or really difficult due to the technical limitations in world.

(how else could one explain the millions of paying WoW/Eve/whatnot users, compared to the thousands not paying a dime in SL?).

Second life is not a game. It's a virtual world. It's not a roleplaying game.

So (and this is not a troll), who cares about SL or any similar 'virtual world'? What am I missing about virtual worlds that seems so attractive to hype, corporations and in this case even open source developers, but clearly not to ordinary users?

Nothing, it isn't exploitable by corporations, ordinary users are too stupid to make any use of it - although there are some that go there and just waste resources and in the case of open source developers - I don't see how a DRM system that Second life uses interests Opensource developers when they can't prevent people from close sourcing their builds or scripts.

Re:Who cares?

[skeeto]

Second life is not a game. It's a virtual world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard this before. "It's not a doll, it's an action figure!" :-P

What happened to VRML?

[Animats]

The VRML people made a terrible mistake. They 1) went XML, and 2) got taken over by advertising people. The VRML effort was shut down in favor of something called "X3D", which is, exactly, VRML syntax with XML delimiters. "Now you can have spinning 3D logos with 60 characters of X3D!". This positioned X3D as an ad-delivery system, for which it's terrible.

If you bring up an old VRML viewer on a modern machine with a good broadband connection, it works great. It's still not very useful, but it does work. Most computers of 1997 didn't have enough graphics power to run VRML properly, so it was hopeless back then. (I had a machine that did, because I was using a high-end animation system. But it cost $6000 and sat in a 19 inch rack.)

You can be too early. I was interviewed by "There" when they were starting up. They were determined to make a 3D shared virtual world that would work over a dial-up modem. I told them this was going to produce a terrible user experience, drive them nuts trying to cram that data through a tiny pipe, and that by the time they got the thing going, enough users would have broadband to make a broadband-only product feasible. They stayed with dial-up, launched There just as broadband was starting to get serious market share, never really made it, and downsized when the funding ran out. There is now owned by something called "Makena Technologies", still running, and still designed for dial-up modems.