OpenSim Interoperability already for Beta

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/07/31/open-grid-public-beta-begins-today/

"Now we are making the intergrid teleport code available for all developers interested in making virtual worlds interoperate."

Now it gets interesting...

...crossin my fingers, I been waitin a long time for this

To Gridfinity and Beyond!

I am underwhelmed.

So you can use your login name and password to access a completely different avatar on some other grid. I can do that already, just by creating a new account on the other grid, and have just as much "in common" with my existing account as the Ruth that this process causes to appear elsewhere.

Alpha testing. Step 1, make it possible.

The steps where you can take your stuff with you, etc. will come.

Yay 'cause the me in OpenLife is seriously beauty challenged..- btu she has some reallycool clothes- just no hair or shoes

Just what is the point of this? I mean, what's being transported, is it just your login details and then you auto Ruth the other end as a new avatar?

The point right now is proof of concept, and testing. The ultimate point is to be able to port your virtual self from world to world to world, seamlessly. There are obvious security concerns and technical hurtles that need to be addressed and overcome before it will be practical or desirable to do, but the only way to get to those is to make the concept itself work at all, which is what's happening now. This is exciting news. Stay tuned; there will be more.

For now, yes. But again.. this is VERY early Alpha testing.

This is a step in many grids being able to be explored. OSGrid, OpenLife with Second Life for example.

Like Amara, I have Mac in OpenLife. It would be cool to take my stuff with me there (which I can via Second Inventory now but being able to just cross with it will be better).

Things are in the air right now as far as permissions, etc but the idea is for LL to give trusted status to some grids that respect the perms here. Also there is talk of a check box for if you want your creations to be able to port to other grids.

LOTS to work out right now. Nothing is set in stone with any of it, but this steps opens the way for possibility.

You can read here more about the OpenSim project and there are tons of blogs, forums, etc out there if you google.

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

Now, that is the extent of my knowledge as there is not much definite and I am going on what I have read. Others can debate the problems, etc.

Nah! It will never work properly.
You'll TP, but all you'll ever arrive in will be an abandoned Magellan campsite

And, this is failure?

The trouble is that this is a very trivial step compared to those that need to be taken. I hope your optimism is justified, but remember the first small step on the moon, and where that 'giant leap' has taken us in only 40 years! Let's hope this time there is enough motivation and resource.

The entire OpenSim project is totally independent of LL. Other then LL supplying some code here and there (mainly the viewer open sourcing) they are not working on it. IBM I believe developed the stuff to port around. LL is just enabling the ability to make it happen and offering the source code to test it for virtual world developers like OSGrid and OpenLife.

Think of LL as watching the process and offering support. The leg work is all being done by others.

Check out RealxTend.org for another interesting side to development. They concentrated so far solely on the shiny stuff.

LL is supportive of it as well. Perhaps one vision for SL's future is that SL is the core of an interlinked metaverse of grids, with SL's cache (at least initially) coming from its much further advanced state of build out and its vibrant economy (compared to the new grids ... OpenLife has no currency at the moment, for example). SL can be the core, or one of a few important cores, for an interlinked metaverse of grids.

The future is coming. It will be fun.

Consideriing the amount of empty I see on the existing grid I don't quite see the future being so bright that i've gotta wear shades.

There's more to this than meets the eye.

Though this is all somewhat in a state of infancy, I think that the potential of what they are trying to do is very good, and exciting. I would love to grow up to be a "gridnaut" one day, so we'll just wait and see what happens.

One thing that I do recall after reading that blog entry, is that this frontier is being pioneered in hopes that a virtual world can keep people in touch over great distances. I think it was an article that popped up somewhere in here, talking about RL astronauts being able to "have dinner" with their families while on extended missions. Perhaps this OpenLife is a step in that direction.

So, once they open this up to transporting onto the main SL grid, you can make an M Linden avatar on your own grid, then take over SL?

Wake me up when we have grids that aren't run by My First Server Admin and support to go with it, and I might get interested.

'til then, meh. It's a nice sandbox.

Awesome! Now it is gonna get real interesting. Will be nice to potentially have a private, server for testing new scripts before implementing in world.

LSL is about 90% functioning. You can make a private server right now.

http://opensimuser.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/opensim-install-and-configuration-tutorial/

Remember.. VERY Alpha. It is not functioning up to SL standards yet but it is progressing fast.

I run my own sims on my PC and despite the bugs that pop up here and there it is quite fun.

Heh, heh, heh...... to be blunt, you're better off testing in-world to test the behavior there at the moment.

At least that's my opinion. But then, I more than 90% of the LSL API up there ^

I have a quarrel with this line of reasoning.


Specifically, in how robust and "true to the source material" the current implementation is and future implementations will be.

I mention this, because a few of the higher-level folks in OpenSim have this habit of saying they'll fork if they don't agree with an LL implementation.


Which is fine in theory, but blows any claim of interoperability with LSL out of the water, especially in one of those "undocumented" cases.



So maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing this akin to using Wine to develop for Windows. Great in theory, but not 1:1, which is of high importance in noting and coding around inconsistent behavior.

I linked the thread at SLU for anyone that can answer this to come over when they can. We'll see if anyone has time.

Well, I don't understand your quarrel, since what we are a long way from is actually porting your region to an opensim. Currently you pretty much join the open region and start from zero, unless terrain profiles are supported and you use Second Inventory for full perm stuff. So if LSL is a dead end, whether or not you use it or RealXtend or OpenSim as your PC based region is a moot point. You are going to rebuild anyway when you join a grid, unless they come up with a protocol to do mass joins of inventory to an asset server.

As for the intergrid stuff, I don't think we will end up with asset server transfers with permissions as a final solution. It seems far more straight forward to buffer current use inventory items with some sort of prim limit, and have a naming convention that permits movement and uniqueness. You'll move through the other grid as a group of objects that disapear when clearing buffers. If they go that route, with buffered inventory not having the permissions issues or full asset server issues, then they won't have to full trunk, but only be close (speculation of course). Your viewer would have to be compatible to the exact dynamics, but much of the rest would simply pass handling from one server set to another temporarily. A crash would mean the buffers clear and you don't wake up in DeepGrid with your inventory in SL.

I think the critical issue to work together is less obvious, and that is having a simple transaction system that recognizes the extended naming architecture and can pass safely and completely complex objects from one grid to another, sort of a complex Second Inventory. So my avatar with buffered inventory can purchase an item in SL and have the item delivered to Cael Merryman.Open Sim Whatever with correct permissions. Those two items - an avatar with a current buffered inventory and intergrid transaction based on a complex naming architecture - would really open the grids enough.

It would mean that you better check names closely - there will be duplicate front end names. And what may be difficult is implementing cross grid searches, but it is a pain right now when you are on an Open Sim and the only way to get anywhere is to open the map grid and TP.