Avatars Leap from SL to IBM Opensims

So how will this effect your future?

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/08/ibm-linden-lab-interoperability-announcement/

"This is a historic day for Second Life, and for virtual worlds in general. IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server…"

By throwing me into a weird time loop where my future is one month in the past.
http://www.massively.com/2008/06/06/historic-teleportation-one-small-step-for-ruth/
Did LL simply mistype the release date for when this blog post should go public?

That said, I was willing to take bets that the "very important announcement" had something to do with this, before the very important announcement was announced to not be so important.

FWIW, it won't affect me at all. Unless there gets to be an OpenSim service provider at least as large as LL, I have no intention of licensing any of the content I create for use on any other grids. And until they build something on one of those other grids at least as interesting as what already is more than I have time to explore on LL's grid, I won't be visiting, either.

The idea of setting up my own OpenSim on a single machine--interconnected or not--is just too sad and pathetic to contemplate.

(The only reason I watch AWG at all is to try to keep an eye out so they don't screw the pooch too badly. But there's plenty of representation there from folks who argue that any attempt to retain IP rights is just a sign of obsolete thinking--presumably would-be OpenSim grid operators who dream of gobbling up all the Main Grid content for free.)

I'm not interested in Open Sim, so" Meh".

I guess the first test tube baby really wasn't Louise Brown, she was merely the first 'publicly announced test tube baby!

ooo! triplets kool =)

And the latest news!

"Avatar jumps from second life grid into real world!"

Now that would be somehting

I think it is more relevant for Mich Kapor's vision of "telepresence", where (photorealistic) recreations of people can teleport around to each other's servers and hold meetings and get access to firewall-protected resources.
Apart from creating major headaches over the permission system, I don't think it will influence *SL* as a micro-cosmos much, except perhaps to allow groups to, say, host their own roleplaying servers which people can visit, stepping into a "parallel world".

Been there, done that! I visit OpenLife and my Standalone sim as Conifer Dada and I look almost like I do in SL. However it was all done manually, so it can't really be compared to the LL/IBM electronic teleportation event.

All my vital slider statistics were copied and re-entered in appearance mode in OL and on the Standalone. The standard skin you get is not too different from my SL one either.

/me stands on her front porch, shotgun ready, waiting for the noob with the prim penis to "drop in".

When Mitch came down from Nirvana to give us the exciting announcement of an annual prize, my head hit the keyboard. Now it's suppose to be a historic day when we can teleport to other grids while getting ruthed and losing inventory. One can already get ruthed, borked, buried, or lose inventory just from crossing into the next region. What will be the next epic announcement?

"Avatar teleports within SL without crashing".

Clearly your bum is not as big as mine.

The powers that be are seriously underestimating the effect that rubbing shoulders with the dispossessed and marginalized early adopters is going to have on their corp clones.

I think that it may be that instead of the Pragmatists bringing their cold dead hand to SL it could very well be that the early adopters exhilarate and set free the previously spinned and PR'd "consumer" into thinking for themselves.

Phil's fiendish plot? To release the anarchistic early adopters into the mainstream to spread virally their ugly and beautiful ways?

That's just crazy talk.

I actually think that's not far off the mark, in the big picture. But there is a *major* stumbling block in the closed-world economy SL has build, vs. the way "pragmatists" would likely want to share and/or restrict resources on a more "access-oriented" level. That's why I think *SL*, the current virtual world, will not expand and grow into this all-encompassing grid, but that the grid technology will be deployed in parallel.

Which fits into my sense that SL would be the "artistic" part of town. Where people go to have fun, expand. Where the frontier always exists. Thing about Pragmatists is that they even find themselves boring.

It's fun - OK, it's lonely but I have an active social life in SL so I like a bit of solitude.
It gives one the experience of owning a private island. We've built some quite nice stuff on the island and hope to do more. It's not a replacement of SL, it's an additional experience.

So far, I see this as a non-event. So, they hacked an SL client and used existing SL avatar login credentials to arrive in a specially-prepared OpenSim, as a naked, Ruthed character with that avatar's name... How is that actually any different than creating a brand new avatar in that OpenSim, using the former SL avatar's name and password? The only thing it accomplished is allowing a login to an OpenSim from an external, central login server. Most OpenSim projects are accessed with a hacked/open source version of the SL Client, aren't they?

Being able to log in as a naked ruthed avatar is worthless. This won't mean anything until your whole avatar, with skin, clothes and assets, can move freely, while at the same time not opening the assets that you bring along to instant plunder by those lacking any moral compass.

I haven't read much about this but surely this is a pass through authentication system. Did the actual avatar teleport or did they create a new avatar and then use get requests tied to authentication to generate the name?

See the link on my post above. You can re-create your avatar the hard way - I did - by noting down all my slider settings and re-entering them on the standalone. The basic skin in the 'create new new skin' option that comes with the OL standalone is not too different from my SL one.
I have to use system hair as Open Sim didn't support attachments - I think the latest update does though. The clothing in the pics was from my own textures so they could be downloaded to SL and OL in exactly the same way. I don't think I look like a naked Ruth!

One possible benefit to LL and its residents of a growth in non LL open source grids is that people who want to do banned things like online gambling and ageplay will probably find someone develops a grid devoted to their dubious activity. I'm not supporting either of those activities, but if they are outside of SL, they are no longer LL's responsibility and will draw some of the undesirables out of SL.

It comes down to standardising and agreeing the transfer protocols. Starting with the basics of transfering the avatar name and basic shape and adding the rest in further developments.

When this becomes standardised then the road is open for a 3D web - it will still be some time yet, but it will come.

I can see it now: "Avatars Leap from SL to IBM Opensims, are instantly greeted by Horny Newbs with Face Lights and Dolcett Art"

Brave new world, ya'll.

More seriously, I've been wondering how this might affect the main grid. If we can TP to Opensims... I'm curious as to whether the load would improve or ...get slightly worse during mass transfers?

That is fine, I suppose, if all you aspire to be is a rather generic Human. I'm a furry, and without attachments and my fur/skin, I'm nothing like I am in SL. Even my rarely-used Human form has a high-end photo-real skin that the system defaults in OpenSim couldn't hope to come close to.

Why am I reminded of Robin Hood's offer to a new recruit, on an old movie? "Will you join us? You can eat the best foods, wear the best clothes, sleep in a warm bed... Provided you hunt your own game, make your own clothes, and build yourself a nice bed...".

In short, OpenSim is still at the stage of "if you want it over there, you have to build it from scratch.". I'll wait until the stagecoaches and cavalry forts and general stores are in place, before heading for that frontier, thanks. I'm not interested in striking out into a vast prairie that has no "civilized comforts" at all. I can build and make custom textures, but I can't yet make a furry avatar from scratch, or create animations from scratch...

LOL - it will be similar to how it is on the 2D web - some websites load very slowly and others are faster. Depends on the server hosting and your internet connection speed and the complexity of the web page that is loading etc., etc. TPing round 3D virtual worlds will be like surfing the web today. Just as some websites are popular and get lots of hits, some open sims will be popular and get lots of avatar visits. I'd expect some limit of concurrent avatars to be in place though for performance reasons, just as a limit of 40 per sim is the norm in SL - so mass transfers, in the order of hundreds of avatars, will not really be possible. Just my thinking