Stand-Alone Version of Second Life

Do you think that the stand-alone version of Second Life is going to undermine the development of OpenSim in general and particularly in light of the recent conduct of the OpenSim development team?

I suspect there's a fair chance that the jokers at OpenSim will get suppressed, and people will get over the April Fool's mistake. The OpenSim users that leave over the deformed avatar affair might not get over it, but people that try it later won't have the aggravation to get over.

I really don't get that impression from the statements made by members of the OpenSim development team. While I understand why they are being defensive (and completely unapologetic and even vindictive in some of their responses) it seems indicative of an attitude that what was done will continue to be done in the future. Trunk is fair game it seems and especially on April Fool's Day. I can see why other coders and developers would continue to be interested in using OpenSim but I have to wonder why other users, business users in particular, would show any continued interest in supporting OpenSim with that kind of recalcitrant attitude if there are other options available where the development team for the product conducts itself in a professional manner.

From my point of view, it remains to be seen whether I'll ever be able to afford to have a copy of it in my posession

I guess I missed something . Where was it announced that there will be an opensource version of a SL server/simulator? Philip's blog said only this:
"Our hope is that we can create a widely-used openly developed version of the Second Life CLIENT ..."

I think the OP is referring to the new blog announcement Second lives behind the firewall

If I understand this correctly it would be a version of second life that would exist only
on a companies internal network. And the only people in it would be that companies empoyees.

There are not a lot of details about it released yet.

Hmmmm....ok. But then I don't understand the link to Opensim.

Ok, I read the blog from Mo Hax. Bit confusing posting here in the first place but I figured it out . Thanks.

I used to have a nice 2-sim standalone island downloaded from Open Life.

That was ready-to-run and it worked quite well. I built quite a lot there, I even got my look almost identical to how I look in SL. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped working!

All the later versions the OL ready-to-run standalone or the more complicated OpenSim dowload versions don't work for me. So I've given up on standalones for the time being.

I think there would be a market for proper LL standalones.

i would love to have a working standalone opensim running. in the past i was able to. anymore i cant manage to get an av logged in. i have given up on it.

There are a couple of more standalone sim packages. One is 3DX from the OLG folks and another RealXtend. Not sure how closely both are related. But they may not work with a normal viewer anymore as OLG decided to lock out everyone else not using KLee's viewer. Haven't checked lately.

In the end they are also Opensims, but perhaps easier to run out of the box without doing much configuring...

I suspect the new Corporate "Run SL behind your Corporate Firewall" product will be A: Much too expensive for individuals to consider purchasing, and B: Much too hardware-intensive to be competition for things like OpenSim.

I manage enterprise-level server solutions for a multi-national Corporation in RL. I'm also on the SL Developer's mailing lists. The typical solutions a Corporation will set up for servers behind their corporate firewall are NOT something you could run on a single desktop-class computer, or even a room full of them. OpenSim and its clones offer a way to try to get something "sort-of-kinda-like-SL" on a single reasonably powerful desktop PC. But OpenSim doesn't expect you to be running seperate aset servers, login servers, acount management servers, and a farm of sim servers. In a Corporate environment, all those functions wil be seperate servers, with redundant failover to backup servers.

It has yet to be seen by the general populace what precisely is in the box for the Corporate "Run SL behind your Corporate Firewall" product. But I would suspect at the very least you can't install it without serious server-class computers - the kind that require rack mounting and climate-controlled computer rooms.

I suspect that by comparison, OpenSim will be like a gasoline-powered go-kart kit that uses a recycled lawn mower engine, while this Corporate product will be like a custom-built professional race car, complete with track and pit crew.

Ceera, since it would be hard to convince most biz (especially now with the economy the way it is) to go the SL route rather than some of the other virtual meeting options available, do you think that if LL really wants to sell this to biz/corps, they will make the entry costs that high?

They may see a market in smaller businesses as well.

Would your company want to invest that much time, money and structure on something as outre as SL when they are unlikely to see any advantage to it?

I think it is very likely they will make the product somewhat affordable and easy to set up (maybe need a separate server - I see some good ones now less than 1k USD).

Nice Explanation Ceera,


LL could offer a ton of different sized packages if they wished.

Small business could use a product like this if they have enough branches to need it.
Possibly if their business is spread across a long distance then that may make sense.
Weekly or periodic management meetings would make sense.

Corporations on the other hand with many layers of management with facilities all over the
World could definately use a product like this.
Actually for larger companies depending on the cost of the SL packages this would be a way
to cut down on travel expense during this tough economy.

What would be funny is if they had their company picnic in an SL package.

Well...if they had a real picnic and a mixed reality one for people who couldnt make it then
of course that would be cool.

I am not up to day on all the virtual workspace options, are there that many others that
can be stored completely on a companies own systems that compare to SL?

Big Business users are strange eggs. Reliability and disaster recovery are critically important to them. If a mom and pop grocery store chain with 4 stores has one store burn down, they focus on rebuilding and recovering from the damage. The fact that their customers in that neighborhood have to go to a competitor or drive further to another of their stores isn't an issue with them. If a Corporation has one of its four data center burn down, they expect that almost instantly a backup data center in another region should be able to continue the functions lost due to the disaster. Rebuilding the lost assets is secondary to continuing operations without a noticable interruption in services.

In the Corporate world, even in hard financial times, they insist on disaster recovery plans, failover to backup servers, and data backups. The cost doesn't matter much. I've seen them require 12 people who each pull down six-figure salaries to attend hour long weekly meetings, just to keep tabs on product rollout status. Or holding a meeting like that just to get approval to install a required operating system update. It's insane by the standards of most individuals. But it is how large businesses work. Clients like IBM won't touch a product that doesn't meet their Information Technology standards for reliability and redundancy. That is the class of clients SL is courting with this.

Mom and pop businesses don't have fancy firewalls, beyond maybe what came with their home Router or antivirus software. Small businesses may not be able to afford such fancy stuff, but they don't generally have much need for 3D meeting rooms, either. A webcam and Microsoft NetMeeting and an internet connection does just fine for them.

Offering a downloadable standalone should be a lot cheaper for LL than providing a private on-line island on the grid. Then LL could charge extra for putting it online or for transferring inventory.


It would not really be an alternative to owning sims on the grid, though, as it would only be on-line when you start it up and presumably it would be locked out of the L$ economy. It would be more for private use or by groups of people who know each other in RL as well as SL.

I assume what LL would target to sell is a hosted solution. Where they could provide a service rather than a box or software package including service and support. Most likely through one of their "strategic partners and investors" like IBM or SUN. Everything else would not make any sense.

I seriously doubt that any of the big players out there would consider adding an "online game" to their corporate network while they already struggle with hundreds if not thousands +++ of working hours wasted every day with social networking products like facebook, twitter, linkedin....ad more as you wish.

No, I don't see a future in this. Not now and not soon given the economy and cost cuts everywhere.

It is way past time for LL to offer a standalone solution for enterprises; when LL was created they sold their vision of creating a virtual world PLATFORM, not just a service. This is the first concrete example of LL selling more than SL memberships/land, and it is an essential building block for an eventual IPO.

Ceera is right about the eventual requirements for enterprise deployments; but, since this is still such an experimental thing, all that LL needs right now is good-faith architectural recommendations for corporate deployment. Most enterprise IT departments have people like Ceera to work with LL to evolve canned solutions suitable for a variety of data center designs; and they will simply be told to "Do It" initially

I see two technical challenges:

> Grid-grid interoperability for B2B collaboration (now the domain of the IETF, so all LL has to do is play along with whatever Cisco et.al. come up with)

> This is the biggie: thin client. I think that as time goes on, LL's big competition for enterprise customers will be collaborative 3D workspaces like Qwaq Forums, with browser-based clients that play well on even older laptops. Graphic quality will be compromised, and there will be only very controlled 'build' capabilities by users, but that's a good tradeoff for an enterprise. No corporation is going to go with a collab solution that requires client hardware upgrade. This is prolly why Webex has stayed clear of 3D (I think; if anyone knows of Webex activity in virtual worlds I'd love to hear about it).
.

I remember a discussion about downloadable SL sims on here a long time ago, before OpenSim started. I suggested a package that could be described as 'First Life Plus', suitable for social groups, or even RL pubs and clubs who wanted a virtual place to supplement the real one. I was assuming that these standalones would mostly be used by groups of people who know each other and using their RL identities - hence the name 'First Life Plus'.

For your reading enjoyment

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6017891.ece