OpenSim on Windows 2003

I'm all for anyone doing it better, if SL won't, but as I've said previously I am sceptical either way, as to whether SL will or won't take action against these startups and I am afraid that the same issue will be there, unless massive security and strict community standards, is happening.

To do it right I think there has to be major R and D, lots of capital and a whole different way of going about it. To me SL seems way under capitalized and it shows in their customer servce.

I am sure of one thing though, putting together and offering a inexpensive download package that puts sims on people;s local systems that can put the sims together on grids and some common areas, for $15.95US or so a month, would be very attractive and probably attract millions of people--but then the ensuing rush would also bring in all kinds of quick buck artists and everything else that SL has been criticized for. But there will be many interim developments.

On another level I think the real potentital of a 3D world will not be fully realized till there is more available bandwidth. The outlook for bandwidth isn't great without major changes from the ISPs. I also thinl that the 3D tools need to be based in the the equivalent of high end 3D programs like Softimage and Maya, for it to better looking.

I think that people can make money but I question it's permanance in it's current state. Like I said on another thread, I see it's potential would really begin to show when it is not only a virtual world but a PC operating system.

Are any of the open sims supporting collisions yet?

Mmmmmmm.... kool-aid.

Rebecca, I understand your concern for content thief but considering a very out-spoken proponet of IP rights here within the SL platform was just found with her hands full of textures she stole from someone else's product, what makes you think LL is doing such a great job of protecting anyone's content?

More grids, more choices. Yeah!!

I love the idea that the standalone sim I am building allows me the personal freedom I was promised and then have had taken away from me bit by bit from the company that sucked me in with the whole "Your World. Your Imagination" line.

I am ecstatic that I can connect my standalone grid to a server and invite in those I want to while retaining complete control over my environment. No griefers for me, Yeah!

I am renewed in my love of creating knowing my creations are no longer subject the whims of the LL servers or policies. Everything I make is now really mine, to have on my own computer, to take with me where I wander in the metaverse. Yeah again.

It seems to me that the only people nay-saying the new grids are those who have poured a ton of money into THIS grid. But you pays your money you takes your chances. I have invested 4+ years and way too much of my time and entertainment dollars on this platform. I've seen THIS grid rise from a really cool idea with little functionality to ... well.. a really cool idea with unstable, unreliable functionality.

It's possible to do worse for sure. It's also strongly possible to do better. I, for one, wish you good luck, Stephen.

Windows 2003?

ADDITION: oh it's a server OS

Sorry if i gave that impression. I think LL has done a very weak job of protecting content.





Only problem I have with this is the redundancy of efforts instead of a unified process that all flows together...and that although it won;t effect me, i am afraid many people will end up being out a bunch of money. I've been way to sceptical to put any real money into SL, because of inherent problems I see with it. I have never gone over around 150US a month of real money spent in SL and that to me was entertainment money.



I completly agree here.

They can't. It's not their software. It's not on their servers. I don't even connect to it with their viewer at this point. My personal standalone grid has absolutely no connection to SL or LL and absolutely never will. I'm free. I'm diggin' it. Best of all... so far none of this has cost me a penny. Open source = free. Woohoo!

See, I don't want my grid to have 13 million inactive accounts, or 40 thousand concurrant traffic bots, I just want a place I can truly enjoy, share with close friends, and have complete freedom to create. I don't need a currency, I don't need community standards, I don't need IP protection, I don't need to worry about strict security.

I'm not in this for business, I'm in it for pleasure. To paraphase John Cusack: I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a grid. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a grid, I don't want to do that.

However, if I were in it for business, this entire thread would excite me greatly. No longer would my business be subjected to the lag of the 40 traffic bots in the next sim, nor would I have to worry about flying prim-penis attacks during my business meeting, nor would I have to rely on a third party to keep my grid up and running.



Welp, ya can't please all the people all the time, and I think LL would have been better off if they had realized that sometime in 2004. The concept of a virtual world for commerce or pleasure is certainly not something Philip Rosedale invented. Why should everyone have to get on board his boat to get into the Metaverse? Specialized grids researching the various ways this sort of technology can be utilized independant of worrying about ad-farms or age-players are far more likely to push the boundries of what is possible.

Freedom can be scary, and I can smell the fear on people who would rather these independant grids dry up and blow away. Now, you finally get to decide what is more important to you; Freedom or Security. I understand both concepts as illusions, much as I understand the concept of virtual land as an illusion. But now you have a choice of staying safely tucked away in Caldone or venturing out into the Metaverse unbound.

You have a choice. A most beautiful and most frightening phrase. One more woohoo for the road.

The standalone sim I have on my computer and the only grid project I have registered for is the "Openlifegrid." I know there are a number of them but I haven't seen them, other then to visit their websites.

This one has it's own viewer, virtually all the same buttons are there in mostly the same place, and all the tools and menus are virtually the same as is the Avatar menus and build tools. The default inventory is virtually the same. The sim Island is identical to a sim in SL.

Now maybe other projects are different but this one is clearly just a counterfeit SL and I think any judge looking at it would think the same thing.

Are the other grid projects unlike SL in appearance?

Otherwise i fully understand your enthusiasm.

I am all for freedom AND security. That SL didn't do it right in 2004 as you say, is too bad for them, but I do think they have a legal right to a great deal if they pursue such rights, especially if the new project look like SL and are virtual copies of SL, in appearance and function.

http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/open_source


http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/07/17/linden-lab-to-recognize-open-source-contributors/

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/24/more-open-source-our-web-services-libraries/

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/08/embracing-the-inevitable/

Don't be afraid, they know they open-sourced the viewer. When you open source something, people are going to use it. They might not thank you or give you money or time or their creative efforts in return for the gift of your open source information, but you also can't bring legal actions against them for using something you've given away.

They will look like SL because people will use the *open source* client to view it.

Try to think of the data on a sim as a web page and the SL client as a web browser. Because one web page uses the same format as another web page doesn't mean they're copies or clones of eachother. The actual data could be totally different and the only thing they have in common is the way that data is formatted.

Linden Lab have no intentions of stopping other grids from using their 3D format.

Only the viewer has been open sourced, the rest was reverse engineered. nevertheless if it is a clone or copy of Sl I think a case could be made. I have no idea who will be new CEO of LL and how they will feel about all of this. I can surmise that they may have an entirely different idea about it, from the previous LL attitudes about it, that didn't take action with libsl reverse engineering.

Pie, believe me, the opensource grids don't worry me much.

They worry me precisely as much as Ford's latest college-kid coupe frightens Bentley. It's a radically different market.

This may come as some shock, but I'd actually talked to a few people in Caledon about opensource grids.

Net result? More than half couldn't even log into a standalone server due to tech issues. Not everyone is a tech geek, nor wants to be. Most have more than enough money to not care, and if anything they want a *more* premium experience and are willing to pay *more* money to get it.

And that premium experience has more to do with currency, society, people and life than how many bots run around on the grid. And the merchants want customers from all over. Isolation = financial death for them.

Bottom line: I couldn't migrate the community right now even if I wanted to.




All that will change, of course. But the fact of the matter is that opensource stuff is now pretty much DIY (do it yourself) access.

By the time it isn't, there will be people like Stephen who will provide a clean, functional experience with tech support. And Stephen's servers, his representatives or even Stephen himself won't be free.

There is basically no way in hell we are going to all P2P to each other between our own servers either - it will take gigabit internet for that.

Lag wouldn't even be the word for it, it would be laaaag or laaaaaaaaaaaaaag to describe what a typical home P2P server rig could do. So there we are, back to Stephen or a colo facility, which won't be free.

In fact, I'd say the smart money's on Stephen going really 'high end' as a provider. Which is perfect for business, but utterly useless for a situation like Caledon.

What we are seeing is not classical head-on competition, but diversification.

For instance, McDonalds doesn't really compete with sushi bars. Yes, it's still food, yes you may want McDonalds today and sashimi tomorrow - but they aren't ever, ever, ever going to put one another out of business.

* * * * *

Technical comments: I don't think servers have been 'reverse engineered' terribly much insofar as the opensource client software speaks the protocol.

Sure there's some asset serving and whatnot and a bit of physics - eventually scripts too - but even our main grid won't likely work the same way next year as it does today under the hood. There's engineering on both fronts (opensource, Company) to be sure, but little of it is in reverse.

I wouldn't be surprised *at all* if the Company open-sources the server side code in 2009. It still won't change much; there's a lot more involved to make things work well.

No doubt, however, there will be plenty who try simply this:

1) plug server into internet
2) ...
3) Profit!!!!

Gonna be something to watch, that's for sure

We can use our own servers. It's possible to host the sim on our own machines and use web space servers to host the actual content/data.

LL's web servers are clearly struggling to deliver content as they've capped the download speed at 1500kbps. If we could host the data on web space servers then people would have far greater download speeds.

For example, it would be very easy to replace the texture keys with http tags. So rather than upload a texture to LL's asset server. You simply create a texture tag in your inventory and specify its web address. These textures could be stored anywhere and don't even have to be hosted on our own servers. They would work just like the forums [IMG]tags.

That accounts for about 40% of the traffic (textures).

But as you dig in more, you are going to be in the same boat - you'll need to push assets and have bandwidth behind it to do so. It converges on a situation where you are going to pay for sufficient space, bandwidth, and access time.

In my view this is about the only way to do it - the upload stream of a typical user just isn't near enough.

Does anyone who is interested in these open sims even care that they are amazingly limited right now?

No collisions! = Everything in your world is phantom.
Only 30% scripting functionality! = A very limited experience.

Despite LL's management shortcomings at least they have been running the grid for 5 years and you can bet 90% of these open grids will be gone in another 5.

We have sculpties now. Their textures could also be stored on our own servers. When LL finally fix the lossless image problem (WWR-2404) then you will start to see more people using sculpties for buildings. We've already seen a shift from prims to sculpties for furniture. The walls are next. Sculpties make it easy to bake lighting and shadows.

It's possible to store 100% of content in textures.





The price of webspace is relatively cheap and the bandwidth is much higher than what LL is currently providing.

LL is holding Second Life back in order to protect theirs (and yours!) business models.

The ball is rolling and Phil can't really stop it. It's out of his hands. It's bigger than him. He's probably secretly hoping for the open source guys to get a move on so that Second Life can finally be freed from the investors. hehe

It's like a low budget car. If it gets you from A to B and that's all you expect, it's worth it.

Historically, private grids survive okay, provided they aren't pirated and taken down by court order. For example:

http://www.gtop100.com/


Here are some blatantly unsanctioned ones:

http://www.gtop100.com/lineage2


For some history, read the "private servers" section here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_2

These persisted for a long time, until finally,



Note however that opensource servers aren't pirate servers. The issue would be the content, not the servers themselves.


Edit: 2k, yeah, if you de-link the customer service and further standardised engineering development you will definitely have lower costs. That's what Stephen was saying too - no argument there.

But it's a lot more than just serving data to make a grid. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have needed Philip and the Company at all - the opensource world has had projects cooking since VRML, but serious grids still failed to materialise out of sweetness and light.

I don't really care about the laggy physics engine at all. It's not like we need it. Vehicles in Second Life are useless because of the sim borders and general lag. Lots of people enjoy making vehicles, but actually using them?.

I don't like scripting in Second Life because they often depend on the physics engine to make them worthwhile. Which takes us back to the above problem. Where possible I use llTargetOmega() ("rotation script" for dealing with moving objects. This is because it's a client side motion and is smooth in comparison to any motion derived from the physics engine.

I think the only thing that made Second Life succeed where worlds like Active Worlds failed was its avatars. Active Worlds was (is!) actually more scalable and has had 3D mesh support all along. But those avatars are just UGH!! NO WAY!!

and this is coming from somebody that doesn't care about avatars!.

But I realize the importance of the avatar for bringing the fun loving consumers to Second Life. The consumers then encourage the reclusive creative types to come here.

Some might say that the virtual dollar helped to make Second Life what it is. But I don't think it was that important. People will always find ways to pay eachother for deeds done.

Cybersex for a nice sculpty sofa anybody?

Nope.

SL circa 2004:

No Custom Animations
No Sculpties
No Windlight
No Voice Client
No Private Regions
No UnVerified Accounts
No Bots
No Lindex
No P2P Teleporting
Vastly abbreviated Scripting

Etc etc etc.

LL has achieved a majority of what has been achieved here within 4 years, without a road map.

Now they are opensourcing the road map hoping that a majority of interested parties will want to at least hook up to their engine for the ride.

But if I want to take the scenic tour or head off into a completely different direction, I can.

I'm not a techie in the least. I have no idea whatsoever about 90% of what is happening to make my little standalone work. I am merely an enduser of something I find facsinating.



/me celebrates diversity.

I understand that at present SL offers you the most attractive package for what you want to do in your virtual space, Desmond. But it doesn't really for me anymore. I'm just happy for an alternative, even if it is crappy right now. Coz SL, when I joined, was really just cool coz you could see the avatars faces way better then in TSO. I'm pretty easy to amuse tho.

I mean, if the cybersex were good, I'd definately trade a sculptie sofa for it. Or even the other way around.

Mine has physical. And there is a much higher than 30% script function.

Avatars, yeah... I hadn't thought of that but it's a significant point.

I've wondered a *lot* why Activeworlds didn't succeed the way Second Life did. So close... sooooo very close, so much lead time, so much precedence.

Perhaps it will seem obvious someday. The one thing about Activeworlds that always strikes me is the same problem Second Life has: low avatar density in most places. Very low.

People make worlds fun. I sometimes wonder if it's just that simple.

Close.

Fun people make worlds fun.

Hello you lot,

I've got to say I'm very grateful and a little touched that you've all taken such an interest in our little idea.

The only downside I can see is you've given me far too much to think about.

Anyway, a little update is that this morning we've got things up and running on Windows and Linux Servers and locally on XP and yep my little avi managed to walk around and do things..

Anyway the real work starts now, so if you don't mind I'll send you all an invite inworld to a group which will keep you up to date with our specification docs, project plans and progress.

We'll also be looking for people to join our little test community. This will kick off in July '08(which I know is decades in SL time) so if you're interested please join up. I promise no spam .. but I'll send more info to those who are interested inworld.

I hope not to waste your time. We have a few RL clients who've decided to come and play with us on this, so even if we felt the need to muck about... trust me they won't let us.

That's it for now.. thanks again for all your help so far.

Stephen