Second Life clones....Already functioning

Tying into the asset server is a really sticky can of worms.

Hey there Xio well as you can see it wasnt much but exist........

I got in with my Mac, flew around for about an hour said hello to two people went in to appearance to try and change from a Ruth into a man and couldn't get out of appearance or do much in it. Then I left.

Well, I tried to visit both these worlds but despite following the instructions, when my specially created alias tried to log in, the client still tried to get into normal SL grid.

Hey Usagi

I stayed up almost all night playin around with the Stand-Alone version and got into thier Main Grid to talk to a few people...

It doesn't have access to the SL Asset Server, like somebody has expressed concern about (OF COURSE, DUH)

...but there is a lot of potential, if you have been through other similar stuff like Adobe Atmosphere or Worlds.com

They don't have a place to store a 24-hour database of default items, and there are a few other things to get around, but I'll take a few screenshots later I guess just to show folks it ain't just a blank plane...

I notice that some people say "There's nothing there! There's nothing!" and flee asap away from OpenLife, but I took a few screenshots from inside the main Open Life Grid...not the best quality since my Graphics Card & PC aren't "up to standard", but I thought I would take a few screenshots just to show that people are building.

These aren't the absolute "BEST" I've seen since I first discovered OL (last night, lol)...but obviously even our familiar main continent had to start somewhere...and there was also a professional company workin on it 24/7...this is user run, like the linked worlds of Adobe Atmosphere etc -

my av (below) was made by me last night which is why I didn't get any sleep I had to "de-Ruth" him from scratch...and OL doesn't support attatchments yet so nobody has yet made hair and watches etc for you ta just "slap on" your av.



Here are a few pics I took in a hurry...there is some great sculpted prim work in-world but I didn't get any shots of those, woops


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/calvinchaos/secondlife/Snapshot_003_004.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/calvinchaos/secondlife/Snapshot_002.jpg

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v233/calvinchaos/secondlife/?action=view&current=Snapshot_003_006.jpg

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v233/calvinchaos/secondlife/?action=view&current=Snapshot_003_007.jpg

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v233/calvinchaos/secondlife/?action=view&current=Snapshot_003_008.jpg

Checkout http://us.deepgrid.com and http://www.osgrid.org which are the two oldest public grids using OpenSim, unlike some of the others which are newer.

I'll read the rest of this thread in a few minutes. For the moment all I have to say is if their web site doesn't work, why should their grid?

The first grid using OpenSim was Deepgrid. The second one was OSGrid. The third one was OpenLifeGrid. Check out http://us.deepgrid.com and http://www.osgrid.org to see the others.

There is definitely going to be a place for this technology. I can't even begin to tell you guys how much respect I have for people like Adam Zaius and others who made this possible. It's an incredible undertaking.

That said, it's going to be different. So different, that it will be 90% pioneering spirit and 10% anything else, for a long, long, long time.

For anyone that has ever, even once, been frustrated with grid performance here - in a single phrase, the only applicable introduction would be: "Welcome to Hades."

What I see:


- A huge victory for the bottom end of the market.

The unthinkable has been made real; those who would never even remotely have had anything can now have Something. But wait, Des, you are a filthy land baron! Of COURSE you are going to stick up for the main grid! Sure, but I'm not entirely stupid, this is all Bigger Than Me anyway.

It will definitely impact the land market. The bottom basement, low performance, last-year's-features end of it. Forgive me the flaw of being smug for a moment if you will... but I'm not even remotely in that end of the land market. Discount sims - yeah, they may face some heat. If your big draw is price, there's only one direction to go: down.



- Offline Building.

To be frank, I don't see how global introduction of offline building could be prevented at this point. And yes, I'd expect the importers to work *here* too, for this grid - there have actually been import/export mechanisms for a long time, but this should finally popularise it. Most content creators are computer savvy enough to use standalone regions; most pure consumers are not - expect content creators to take advantage of it in droves.



- Ahoy, ye mateys!

What gains the content creators might enjoy by having test and standalone regions will be obliterated by the fact that rogue uploaders are going to steal their content. Even if the open source grid overlords themselves decide to disallow such practise, it's going to be harder to stamp out than cockroaches in a big city. Welcome to RIAA's side of the Digital Rights argument. Yeah, it's that bad.

It wouldn't surprise me if content creators do what they do now to websites in violation: send takedown notices to ISP's when they see any violation of their work. Imagine entire grids going down for a day or two, just like websites hosting inappropriate content, until such content is lasered out of the asset databases by hand.



- What Goes On in Opensim, Stays in Opensim...

All the proscribed activities such as sexual ageplay, gambling, 'banking' and ponzi schemes will flee to the border. Sure, there will be governance on such grids, but here's the scary part. I can see our grid used as 'the street' where the marks are picked up, soon to be hauled off to a passworded, unseen grid for the real nonsense.

Like Hong Kong's Temple street, or Avenida de Revolucion in Tijuana. No reliable $L there? No problem. $L will change hands here - just watch. Vice always leads the way.



- Teh Gri3fing...

I can't think of a finer griefing environment than the inevitable grid-in-a-box solution run by someone who is sorta, but not really, tech savvy. Yes, just like we saw with pirated Lineage2 servers, I would fully expect this nonsense. Not that I, ah, would Know Anything about unofficial Lineage2 servers. Or griefing them. Or knowing all the expl0itz in L2 Chronicle1 server that your typical script kiddie setting one up often doesn't know. This is Purely Speculation On My Part.



- Backwash.

As odd as it may sound, it's always a two way street. A 'low end solution' tends to feed the high end, more stable solutions.

For every person that thinks: "Yay! cheap grid!" there will be a person that thinks: "I'm loving this, but I want it to actually Work..." ...sound familiar? Watch more people get addicted than ever to land usage. And want reliable. land. usage.

This is the key trend I see. Many start out small, want more and more prims, pay hundreds a month to get them. That's the clear trend, across years - a desire for quality, and a desire for more. People will become dual citizens. Just like the mainland/private-estate market today. Most residents in Caledon have mainland estates, other private lands, even entire regions or mini-continents of their own. They still get a place in Caledon - it's simply a different place to be.

For everyone with X dollars to spend on their online experience, the low-end solution just got way cheaper. From what I've seen, that tends to spur *more* spending, not less. X getting bigger, not smaller. The big picture: computers and digital entertainment are waaay cheaper than they have ever been for what you get, but people spend more than ever on the whole.

It's the discount providers, the sandboxers, the anything-goes-here folks that take this head-on. Where will be see the biggest impact on the grid? Probably sandbox Cordova and its neighbours. Watch people have a toe in all things, in proportion to how we like each of them. It's what we do as human beings.

Just one man's opinion.

Well indeed it has no access to the asset server how could it? there are so many functions that don`t work at the moment ( but they will soon ). Frankly speaking there is alot of promise and I looking forward to see it grow. As you said it doesnt have a 24hours data base system so its very limited at the moment. Once they fix the conflect between the cahe from sl and osl then there a better situtaion. Once again There is not much but what you expect? Roma wasnt built in a day, either was Sl.......

TC

Usagi

Here's a name I betcha didn't expect to see thrown into this discussion: IBM

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2007/10/ibm-and-linde-1.html

The ability to share resources between one LL grid (Second Life being the only existing example) and ANY outside grid, whether that grid be built using LL tools or open tools, is what LL should be concentrating on if they are serious about becoming THE 3D web platform. Which means interoperability standards for the asset servers and other shared resources have to be developed, and both LL and IBM make it clear that such standards will be open.

I think the interoperability issues can be solved well enough for the next generation of 3D grids. Personally, the Intellectual Property issues seem harder to solve, but I doubt the technology will be put on hold pending that resolution.

So, these open grid developers are hugely important ... the more nuts-and-bolts problems they solve, like uploading content from a standalone server region to a grid, the more LL can concentrate on the big issue. And the Opengrid minions are developing a set of grids with which LL can test interoperability, yay!

IBM comes to this effort with a long pedigree of open source support. If a day ever comes when Linux tosses Microsoft out of a Fortune 500 account, there will be partying at IBM.

We should all hold on to our hats, this is going to be a wild ride. Three major groups of stakeholders ... LL, IBM, and the Opengrid folks ... and a lot on the line.

Open source actually works pretty well. I'm not sure how it would convert specifically into a grid formation- but it's no different of a general concept than open source forums, SVNs, or "shoutbox" style chat software.

Is there a world waiting to happen where hundreds of thousands of user generated sims are connected so that you can walk from one to another? Maybe not. The connectivity of SL is like hundreds of different forums from the same portal page with seamless topic jumping. Individual forums (and thier more specific content) are certainly useful though. Especially if they can set up a protocol where you can log into someone else's openSim and participate.... turning them from websites into forums. From there it's just another leap from forums back to a MMO.

For the segment scoffing at open source in general- Firefox, Linux, and many many other open source projects are well maintained by volunteers. there's no reason to believe that something like an open source 3d platform wouldn't be equally well kept by those who find it useful.

Its more then a mare simpliacation of this statement then lead us to think.
No, OSL its not even close in any form other then the sharing of the UI ( at the moment ).
Its a totally different structure, yes the ui is being shared at the moment but its hightly a clone. As for dragging IBM back in this issue well, those guys are that did come over form MIT are now at IBM......Still believe what you want When are people going to stop this IBM.............nevermind

The history of the computing is littered with copycats ousting traditional brands.

The copycat PC ousted the IBM PC (mainly due to being cheaper).

Many would claim Windows was a copycat of the Mac OS.

Internet Explorer was a copycat of the then well established Netscape brand.

etc.

there are plenty of others.

Yes, when a copycat takes over from an established brand there is normally some reason for that success - either strong marketing (e.g Microsoft), dissatisfaction with the existing brand, improvements in the new brand or just lower cost.

At the moment, I think the SL brand is at risk from competitors over three issues:

i) cost - for the cost of a SL island, you can get a dedicated server supporting 4-8 islands from centralgrid. The fact is that although the costs of a SL island may be priced at an appropriate level for keeping LL in business they are overprices compared to typical internet hosting costs.

ii) customer support and communications - always a difficult one to get right, but LL needs work. Yes, they are open often about technological issues, but are extremely poor when it comes to policy issues (often changing major policies with little or no notice) and at accomodating feedback

iii) reliability - this is less about lag, up time and so forth (although these are important), but more about the robustness of the inventory and asset system. Your investment of time and money in SL is basically the digital objects you create and/or buy. At present, problems in the inventory/asset system can result in these being irretreivably lost - this is perhaps inevitable with any large scale system of its nature - but there is nothing you can do to protect yourself against this, since there is no backup system. There *are* ways in which a backup system would be implemented without compromising the permission system (at least any more than it is possible to compromising the permission system - given that it can't be enforced for prims, textures etc. anyway), but these would require a somewhat different architecture to the one SL currently uses (but a clone might re-engineer this).

If a clone did come along which was cheaper, had better customer focussed support and an inventory backup - well, I don't think it a forgone conclusion that the clone wouldn't takeover from SL.

However, the OpenGrid server software, isn't mature enough yet for the clones to really be anything but curiousities - although it can be useful as a standalone sandbox, and for doing standalone projects requiring more sophisticated server side scripting than LSL can manage.

But the OpenGrid software had come quite a long way when you consider that most if not all the effort is voluntary and it has only been going for just over a year. Give it another 12 months, and it will probably have caught up in functionality with the LL code and at a point where it could start offering new functionality over SL - then things will begin to get interesting.

Matthew

There are huge differences in those examples:-

1. There were a *lot* of PC clones which, as you said, were cheaper than IBMs. But the main thing is that IBM stuck to their guns and allowed it to happen. They made the intial mistakes of making the hardware open source, and not preventing Bill Gates from selling the dos. They stuck to their guns by maintaining their prices and trying to veer people onto their newer OS/2 system, which was a near total failure. In other words, they screwed up, and only have themselves to blame. It wasn't the competition that caused it - it was their own mishandling of it.

2. Windows may have emulated the Mac GUI, or rather GEM was Microsoft's first offering of it, but GEM/Windows wasn't a new company - it was Microsoft. They didn't oust anyone. They were alreay on top of the pile, and Apple was way down below.

3. IE did cause the eventual decline of Netscape but, again, it was Microsoft - the top of pile already. No ousting there.

Anyone remeber the "PEANUT" buy IBM....... in the early to mid 80`s Do you remeber why IBM pulled out of the mess market?......Well for those that didnt or don`t know is because IBMdidnt want thier names tag with companies like K-Mart and otehr discount stores....... so there you go :/

I've never heard of the Peanut. I do know that they only expected to sell about 1.5 million units of the PC, and that's why they left the doors open for competition on it. When they realised how successful PCs were, they totally screwed up their response - probably imagining that people would go with them because of their name. People would pay more for the IBM name on their PCs for a while, but that didn't last long, and their response (OS/2) came much too late. The horse had already bolted.

"The peanut" was a cheap mass production PC that IBM wanted to sell to the general public. They sold many but not to the numbers of apple computers in those days.But what turneout was k-mart wanted to sell in their stores. Buty IBM said no, I know this because i was involved with IBM in those days. IBM diesnt want their names tagged with discount retailers ( remeber that was back early 80`s mid 80`s ) they wanted to go up with apple that was ahead of the market. But what many wonder is how IBM would have done it differnt in todays market....As remeber IBM at those days were no service type company their system designers and 4 times bigger in those days.

alittle background....



IBM PCjr
(October)IBM dominated the professional computer market but they weren't satisfied. There was much money in the home computer market so it was only a question of time until IBM developed a home computer. The PCjr, also called "Peanut" by IBM engineers, was available for about 2000 US-$ and was based upon the popular IBM-PC. An infrared keyboard which often refused to work and one disk drive were delivered with the PCjr. Soon after the release IBM offered a replacement keyboard for free. However, the PCjr became one of the biggest desasters for IBM. They only made losses with this computer but worse was the damage that the company name IBM took from the PCjr.

GEM wasn't Microsoft - GEM was Digital Research. MS-DOS was a clone of Digital Research's CP/M and MS-DOS taking over was when Microsoft was unknown and an DR was a market leader in the OS market. In that case Microsoft just managed to pip DR to a deal with IBM (although at that point MS didn't actually have an OS, and had to buy it in from elsewhere). Indeed MS wasn't that well established in the Windowing market compared to Apple, Digital Research, etc. when MS Windows hit the market. MS then went on to oust Wordperfect from the word processing market, Lotus from the spreadsheet market, etc.



Microsoft was top of the pile in the desktop market but was playing catchup in the network/internet market (having originally believed that it could run its own proprietary dialup network, and almost ignoring the whole internet for a while). So Microsoft did oust Netscape from the internet/browser market - an area where initially Microsoft had no presence.

So in MS's history we have both examples - an established market leader in one field branching into another and ousting the existing market leader in that field *and* going back to the origins of Microsoft, an unknown startup with no product ousting the market leader!

Another example of the brand leader losing the lead outside of IT is Hoover - a name still synonymous with vacuum cleaner although there are many successful competitors.

Agreed there are reasons why the brand leader loses to the competition - in most cases the root cause is believing that there is no danger (until too late) from the competition because they *are* the established brand leader.

Matthew

And I can see how easily LL could make similar mistakes, if a functionally equivalent but cheaper SL clone came along (particularly if it were hosted outside the US in a country where gambling was legal, credit card authorisation was sufficient for verifying as an adult etc.).

Matthew

Well it seems people don`t understand the history behind IBM and their R&D ......oh well

@ Mr. Shang: LOL, I was just being cranky. I've been unable to register and their web site won't even load today. It's not a confidence builder. (And I'm not a cynical guy!)

Oh yes. I wouldn't suggest anything different. But all things being 'normal', it doesn't tend to happen.

I didn't know that GEM wasn't Microsoft's. I saw it on PCs, and assumed it.

You are mistaken about Microsoft being an "unknown startup with no product", and about MS-DOS being a CP/M clone.

Microsoft BASIC was the most common programming language in home computers, long before Bill Gates was asked to come up with the operating system for the PC. It's thought that he was asked about it because of his mother, who was friendly with an IBM high-up - board member, I think. You are right that he didn't write DOS - he bought an existing one and modified it. Seattle DOS, wasn't it? And the writer of it was taken on board for a while to help with the mods. But I don't think it could be called a CP/M clone. Of course they have a great many similarities, because they both did the same things. I used both, and they were certainly different at that level.

As for the oustings, I consider that the dominance of Microsoft in the desktop field put them at the top of the pile, and whenever they chose to introduce something, the lesser lights would fall by the wayside - Netscape, etc. I really don't see that as the sort of ousting that we're talking about in this thread. And MS-DOS didn't oust CP/M at all. Not many computers used CP/M. IBM chose to have a new disk operating system, that's all.

Is this still on-topic? lol

Some facts as people know, Gates pieced togther a OS that found from otehr sources...Thank you for history repeat ( kind of )but i think people are misssing the big picture here........If it wasnt for IBM from the start of around 1963 we wouldnt have what we have today.....You debate and debate but still don`t change history