What Exactly IS OpenLife?

Yes, the list of things that aren't implemented in these services bears a striking resemblance to the list of things that LL has trouble keeping up and running. One might even get the impression that maybe LL isn't so incompetent, and possibly those things really are hard to to

IBM didn't develop any "bridge". All they did was reach an agreement with LL to host their own sims and make them a private estate, they're still running LL's software.

I'm with you on that.. But when I tried to use it, twice now, I was not able to get in because the servers were down .. lala

We have been running private OpenLife sims for some time, quite successfully. In recent months, it exceeds our SL revenue and it's potential for growth. We have several projects underway and our client list is increasing. We get paid for the project as a whole and provide an excellent service to our clients, without LL or griefer nightmares.

There are a thousand uses for sims other than a Ken and Barbie playhouse or greed outlet for ruthless bots or land extortionists.

We don't pay 295/month/sim to a mismanaged company to provide a mediocre level of service. (LL and SL is an embarassment in the eyes of some of our clients).

Private sims don't need money events, land search, groups and other things which bloat SL. We use our own databases for asset servers and land management. OpenLife sims improve regularly with each new standalone version.

We have full control over who and who cannot login to us and enjoy full "God Mode".

I mean really, who could ask for anything more?

Seeing and hearing alot of confusion over this, maybe I can clear it up..

OpenSim - a great effort by some talented developers to make a simulator that is compatible with the Linden Second life viewer.

-early development stage is very promising
-from my perspective it is not positioned to be a direct competitor to SL, however the technology built on C# and mono is impressive and the list of supported features keeps growing
-There are professional companies (realXtend) who are also developing branches of the OpenSimulator code that adds some incredible features such as Global avatars, direct mesh imports, and realtime shadows using thier viewer client and server simulator.
-has the posibility to move beyond SL on a purely technical standpoint
-IBM uses OpenSim for some sort of DataCenter monitoring as I understand it

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OpenLife- a commercial venture where you can buy virtual land very much like SL with limited functionality (its the largest grid right now)

-A not surprizing application of the OpenSim technology
-I have heard reports from residents and foundation residents that its good, with prompt service being given by the proprietors
-providing very useful testing and load information for the future of OpenSim development
-(added) They also offer a standalone simulator for download.. this a a binary version of what is available directly from OpenSim. To clarify 'standalone' does not mean no one else can connect to it from the internet... it means that the server is self contained and does not connect to any other simulators Within the standalone server you can run many regions and connect with clients from all over the internet. If you can set your router up properly you can run a server for your friends to connect to from your home machine...

OSGrid - a non commercial grid where you can hook your own hosted or home simulator into thier grid.

-Seems like alot of the OpenSim developers are here as well as other notables

DeepGrid - CentralGrid - FrancoGrid plus more similar to OpenLife and OSGrid
-up to date lists of grids are maintained at the OpenSim wiki


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My take: OpenSim rocks! it is stable, performs really well, and keeps getting better. I am not too interested in how it competes directly with SL... I use it for large scale projects, such that would be nearly impossible to fund for me in SL. I run a Grid on my own dedicated server that allows me to build on a grand scale. I can have clients, my friends and family join me in a virtual world where I have complete control over users, policies etc. This has been a major factor in my decision run my own servers.

The public grids that are popping up may follow a Second Life 'buy virtual land model', but my experience in running my own OpenSim host has shown me that its strength is as a MMO game development tool / platform and that it competes more directly with technologies like Torque, Multiverse and others. Allthough I often visit these new grids and encourage the grid owners, wish them luck, I can't see how SL could be replaced. maybe the question that should be asked is why should SL competed with? With all SL's technical and social flaws I think a new vision of virtual worlds could attract a different and larger market segment.

The economy that exists in SL is not there only because the server platform has that capability, its strength has grown steadily because of people. Even if OpenSim develops transactions and currency into thier platform it would take some time to build it to where the economy could compare to SL.

In terms of RL business I would argue that the OpenSim is becoming very attactive. Typically RL business has certain requirements when evaluating virtual worlds. I could understand how a company faced with the choice would sacrifice the social and economic aspects of SL for a 100% secure environment where problems such as privacy and propriety would be avoided.

The only drawback I have found to OpenSim, is that they are making so much progress so quickly that it is hard to settle on a release to begin development for a project. This could be seen as a good thing however, depends on how you look at it.

One more edit... regarding the Open Source Second life client, great yes but.... Linden labs has not opened sourced thier server, this is the real problem and where I feel they have totally dropped the ball. What threatens LL is now this Open Source server is running it is probably better designed than LL's own server code, as well it uses some of the latest and best cross platform technologies. To say that OpenSim has somehow done some wrong to Linden labs is preposterous, they have simply created a new system from the ground up that supports the SL client as well as others.

I am always happy to talk OpenSim or sculpties lol.. drop me a line.

-whyroc

the more noticed SL gets and closer to something that could be of use to everyone in the world it's gonna fall into the bracket of like radio and cell phones and tv and internet and sooner than later there are going to be some very good competitors to choose from..

The biggest barrier to opensim is the default walk. And the lack of my avatar apparel. And the toys. Add those, and people would, I'm sure, make a bee-line for the SL door marked "exit".

I keep hearing about these OpenLife sims that are much less expensive than a normal region, support 3700 prims and are connected to the main grid? Is this bs or what?

Openspace, not OpenLife . It's what some people refer to as "void/water sims".

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=4235

The open water sims I've seen in world support about 1200 prim, 10 avatars and I believe very few scripts.

They upped the prim limit.

They used to have 1/8th (1875 prims) the prims of a full sim but that was recently doubled to 1/4th (3750 prims), or for the new ones anyway at least.

You can stuff 100 avies on it like any regular sim and you can overload it with scripts as any other sim. There are no set limits as far as I know, it just won't perform anywhere near as good as a full sim under the same load since it is in essence only getting 1/4 of the CPU it's dedicated to.

(All of that is explained in the KB link)

The KB link did not work. So where would you buy one of these?

You can't unless you already own a full, regular sim.

If you already own a sim:
It would be a good idea to wait until LL clarifies the pricing for new openspace sims though. They could stay the same or drop to $250, or anywhere in between.

You can also look around to rent one, I saw one for $90/month yesterday, although they'll probably charge you for the purchase of it as well.
Or if there's a sim owner you know and trust you can hand them the money and they can buy it in their name and you simply pay them $75 every month.

OpenLife is awesome!

the only thing it DOES NOT have is sound, animations, gestures, money, inventory, prims, textures....

OpenLife is so far behind SL that the chances of it catching up, or being taken seriously, are negligable, imo. Somebody mentioned its stability. Let's see how it perfoms with a lot of people logged in Apart from being behind, it doesn't even try to be different. It tries to clone SL - do what SL does - keep up with SL. That's not the way a genuine rival system would work. Can you imagine Microsoft trying to copy SL? If they enter the 3-D future, they will do it with their own product.

OpenSim also tries to clone SL, but it doesn't try to *be* SL like OpenLife does. You can have your own sims and grid on your computer and, if you are so inclined, you can connect them to a number of grids - all very small at the moment, and all doomed to disappear when real protocols are developed that allow grids to be connected, like the web is connected.

Neither system is even close to emulating all that SL can do, but what they are useful for is having your own sim on your computer. With that you can build, test, try things, etc. before you do it in SL.

Dave's post is very interesting. Would you like to expand on it a bit, Dave? What do your clients pay for, for instance?

What I am hearing is that there exists one or more grids other than SL, and that they are under continuous development, and that interconnection of grids is part of this. Where will these "real protocols" come from, why do you expect the existing open grids to be excluded, and why will they be incompatible with these grids or why will it be impossible for them to implement these protocols?

I would tend to wonder whether Linden Lab can stay in business when someday there will be many different grids available with simulators to host people, all happily interconnected?

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLGOGP_Draft_1


The Second Life Open Grid Protocol documents define the protocols by which a vast, Internet wide virtual world can operate. This protocol enables different regions of the virtual world to be operated independently, yet interoperate to form a cohesive experience.

I don't think that the other grids are "under developement" as such. They use OpenSim (OpenLife is one of them), and anyone can set up a grid if they are so inclined, simply by following the OpenSim instructions. I have a grid on my computer now, and I doubt it would be too difficult to put it online. The interconnecting is by OpenSim, so there is really only one system that I'm aware of and, at the moment, I believe it's just hobby stuff - including OpenLife. The grids have low numbers of sims and users - as low as ~6 sims. OpenLife is the biggest with ~176 sims when the list was updated.

I was premature when I said that I expect the other grids to fail. When the LL-IBM protocols are developed to the point of being globally useable, we'll see what happens.

The protocol document that Phreak pointed to is what LL intended from the beginning, I believe, and I believe that they are developing the protocols together with IBM.

There is a wide variety of clients and different fee schedules in our portfolio.

We have both corporate, educational and media clients who use the sims for different reasons. Each have different fee schedules because of the amount of work involved varies from project to project.

We operate them much like someone would operate a studio or sound stage.

Alot of the work related revenue comes from building (scripting, texturing etc) as opposed actual "up-times" for the sims, which can be likened to songwriting, producers and publicists. Weedy has produced machinima segements for television and promotional multimedia packages of various product lines.

I use OpenSim as an extension of tools for firefighter and HAZMAT training. We have some of the highest level trainers in the province involved and are currently developing a standardized plan for accreditation with the Fire Academy of The Justice Institute of British Columbia.

Very interesting, Dave - thank you.

That's right. No content means no lag!. Awesome!

Considering that Linden Lab hasn't Open Sourced the server code .. I am surprised this thread hasnt been locked.

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Of course LL has been needing competition for a while now.

Guess I didn't expect it to come from its own (disgruntled perhaps?) users.

Was hoping for something more unique.

Still it is interesting. And people who are dissing its level of sophistication are really missing the boat - this whole deal has come into being pretty quickly.

Do they have a lot of backing? Or are they coming up with all of this "in their garage" ala Apple?

This is the web site for the software http://opensim.org this is the web site for the one of the competitors using the said software http://www.openlifegrid.com

Wouldn't the idea behind a majority of these grids all looking fairly similar, based on the same sorts of what-cha-ma-call-its that make SL run make interoperability between all of these grids a whole lot easier and thereby facilitating a true Metaverse instead of one little walled off grid?

Could that be why LL is opensourcing this stuff? You can't be the whole Metaverse all by yourself, can you?