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An Intro To OpenSim, the Apache of Virtual Worlds
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Aug 19, 2008 08:14 AM
from the simulation-not-yet-a-topic dept.
from the simulation-not-yet-a-topic dept.
ajohnj1 writes with an excerpt from Ostatic: "You've probably read a bit about OpenSim, the BSD-licensed virtual world server, and recent news that IBM and Linden Lab are working to make Second Life and Open Sim interoperable. Besides that project, what's Open Sim about, who's working on it, what are they doing with it, and how do you get involved as a developer and participant? Here's a starter's guide."
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C# and BSD license? (Score:3, Insightful)
I predict it will only take a day for someone to start working on a project to rewrite this in some more open source friendly language. Just because it says OpenSimulator doesn't mean it really is.
I've been waiting for this whole ordeal to happen. I consider this technology to be the next medium that everyone will use and it will supplant HTTP. It needed two requirements for it to take off though. First, an open protocol needed to be developed and second it needed to be possible to interconnect different servers together to make once cohesive environment. Well, we have the first part now, is this the second part?
Time to go write a new spreadsheet. [suso.org]
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Wouldn't it be wiser to spend that effort working on a project that makes C# more open source friendly [mono-project.com], rather than simply rewriting any/all projects that use it?
Re:C# and BSD license? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not possible. So long as Microsoft retains the ability to attack Mono through patent suits, C# cannot be "open source friendly".
C# is a poison pill that Microsoft would love to see the F/OSS community swallow.
Parent
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I thought Microsoft released a patent promise not to sue on any protocols they've released and/or opened up. Suing over the items they're opening up would basically violate the EU agreement. Microsoft wouldn't get anything out of the suit, and they'd end up paying massive (half a billion dollars last time) fines.
Microsoft isn't going to sue on these specific patents.
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http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx [microsoft.com] .NET is covered, so no, Microsoft has pledged publicly not to sue on those patents.
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They don't need to attack Wine and Samba, and they probably don't need to attack Mono. So long as they're implementations of protocols they control, they can always Gates them to death if they need to.
There's a reason companies like NetApp are licensing Microsoft's SMB implementation rather than using Samba... they get to see the extensions before they're embraced-and-extended.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's not a whole lot of open source projects in C# (or for the .NET platform more generally) that don't have comparable open source projects that aren't targetted to .NET, but to more open source platforms (either because they are more platform agnostic or because they target a specific platform whose principal implementation
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C# is an ISO/ECMA standard, Java is not.
Re:C# and BSD license? (Score:5, Funny)
I have so much respect for ISO standards these days.
Parent
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Re:C# and BSD license? (Score:5, Funny)
With all the crap English written on websites today, do you really want to set this standard loose on important literary works?
the "Sorry Shakespeare" M
Parent
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You make it sound like HTML is a wonderfully-formed language that everyone uses well, or that Actionscript and Javascript aren't messy as hell. Lets face it, you're fucked no matter what language is dominant.
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I consider this technology to be the next medium that everyone will use and it will supplant HTTP.
They said that about VRML replacing HTML, but readers didn't prefer a 3D room over a 2D page.
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I consider this technology to be the next medium that everyone will use and it will supplant HTTP.
They said that about VRML replacing HTML, but readers didn't prefer a 3D room over a 2D page.
I think that this was because they were trying to run before they even learned to crawl. I mean they tried to get VRML going back in the mid 90s when most people still didn't know what the Internet was. They needed something simpler to introduce people too. Maybe now VRML would do better if it had some momentum behind it, but it doesn't, and now this is here so tough luck.
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They said that about VRML replacing HTML, but readers didn't prefer a 3D room over a 2D page.
I think that this was because they were trying to run before they even learned to crawl. I mean they tried to get VRML going back in the mid 90s when most people still didn't know what the Internet was. They needed something simpler to introduce people too. Maybe now VRML would do better if it had some momentum behind it, but it doesn't, and now this is here so tough luck.
Speaking as someone who was there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Vrmlguy [wikipedia.org]), VRML was indirectly crashed by Microsoft. MS was pushing something, maybe Direct3D, as *the* 3-D technology for the next millennium. In response, SGI started opening up every piece of IP they had, apparently on the theory that a small part of a open-sourced world was better than no part of an MS-controlled one. VRML was written and implemented in no time at all, and yeah, there's a few bugs that got included. As it turned out
What happened to VRML? (Score:4, Interesting)
The VRML people made a terrible mistake. They 1) went XML, and 2) got taken over by advertising people. The VRML effort was shut down in favor of something called "X3D", which is, exactly, VRML syntax with XML delimiters. "Now you can have spinning 3D logos with 60 characters of X3D!". This positioned X3D as an ad-delivery system, for which it's terrible.
If you bring up an old VRML viewer on a modern machine with a good broadband connection, it works great. It's still not very useful, but it does work. Most computers of 1997 didn't have enough graphics power to run VRML properly, so it was hopeless back then. (I had a machine that did, because I was using a high-end animation system. But it cost $6000 and sat in a 19 inch rack.)
You can be too early. I was interviewed by "There" [there.com] when they were starting up. They were determined to make a 3D shared virtual world that would work over a dial-up modem. [there.com] I told them this was going to produce a terrible user experience, drive them nuts trying to cram that data through a tiny pipe, and that by the time they got the thing going, enough users would have broadband to make a broadband-only product feasible. They stayed with dial-up, launched There just as broadband was starting to get serious market share, never really made it, and downsized when the funding ran out. There is now owned by something called "Makena Technologies", still running, and still designed for dial-up modems.
Parent
Re:C# and BSD license? (Score:4, Interesting)
With respect, there have been numerous attempts to replace text based protocols with visual worlds since before the web. I remember drooling over ads in my dad's old Atari ST magazines where BBSes were advertising virtual worlds where everything was represented as a building in a isometric 3d city and people ran along the streets talking to each other.
These have never taken off as the main stream interface because even if you were able to achieve a completely believeable virtual world, it still wouldn't present the same information bandwidth as simply pulling up pages and reading them. And porn jokes aside, the real drive of the internet is presenting information, not pretty visuals.
These will always be the niche, rather than the mainstream, way of interacting because no one wants to 'run' for 30 mintutes to do something that could be accomplished in 30 seconds outside of the world.
That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing what could be created once the reigns were passed from corporations looking for money to Joe Six-Pack. Will it be a revolution or another eternal September?
Given Second Life is already exhibiting a second coming of 'GeoCities' crappy design, I'm not certain I'll be welcoming our new OpenSim overlords.
Parent
I'm interested (Score:2)
My opinion is Open Source and complete interoperability between the SL Grid and OpenSim Grids will never happen. Just look at the number of viewers that were coded to grab peoples credentials, then multiply that by a malicious server admin.
Taking into account the amount of real world revenue the game generates, I don't foresee this
Re:I'm interested (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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The only catch is that people in the virtual world may want their virtual stuff to go along with them, and that part will be more difficult. Set that aside, and I don't think it's inconceivable to have pretty good interoperability.
Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
After all the hype of Second Life, and the realization that only a bunch of furries and other weirdos [theregister.co.uk] (NSFW) are into it, why prolong the suffering of SL with initiatives like these?
The problem with all 'virtual worlds' is simply that they are boring. There is nothing more for the average user to do than walk around and be a good little virtual consumer of virtual products. This in contrast with the massively popular MMORPGs that, while they are criticized for the grind-fest, at least give their users a good time in the process (how else could one explain the millions of paying WoW/Eve/whatnot users, compared to the thousands not paying a dime in SL?).
So (and this is not a troll), who cares about SL or any similar 'virtual world'? What am I missing about virtual worlds that seems so attractive to hype, corporations and in this case even open source developers, but clearly not to ordinary users?
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are stupid users and I would be happy if they would go away on Second life. Much like the annoying club people.
They don't do anything creative on Second life, they just take up space, they're not interesting conversation and are so computer illiterate, everything is a issue for them. They come up with random explanations for problems they're having which has nothing to do with it.
On Second life, I spend a lot of time scripting, building things. From things from in-world air defense systems to play against other builders as a game to building things that are deemed practically impossible or really difficult due to the technical limitations in world.
Second life is not a game. It's a virtual world. It's not a roleplaying game.
Nothing, it isn't exploitable by corporations, ordinary users are too stupid to make any use of it - although there are some that go there and just waste resources and in the case of open source developers - I don't see how a DRM system that Second life uses interests Opensource developers when they can't prevent people from close sourcing their builds or scripts.
Parent
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So, what you are saying is that people actually turn SL into a game?
I guess that the boundaries between role playing games and virtual worlds aren't that clear as you make them out to be, although the former tend to be more limiting when i
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Some do. It really doesn't let you do much more. Some people creating virtual accessories and clothing that they sell for a 'business' though.
Not that many unfortunately.
Some interesting tid bits about Second life:
Linden lab tried to reward creativity a while back using something called 'Dwell'. If people stayed on your plot of land for a while, yo
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Actually one of the anti-air defense missiles is a giant dong I made out of bordom. It's pretty hilarious watching those bombard a fighter craft.
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Actually one of the anti-air defense missiles is a giant dong I made out of bordom. It's pretty hilarious watching those bombard a fighter craft.
*Sigh* ... And this is where you just lost your argument, and confirmed the parents view (bias as it may be) on all the people in SL. I think if you had omitted this little anecdote, the merit of your argument might have still carried weight.
I have nothing against SL even if it's not for me. It's an avenue of entertainment like any other vice; we all have them.
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I never denied that. I have been agreeing with each of that person's points, except for the 'boring' argument. But it is exactly true that "There is nothing more for the average user to do than walk around and be a good little virtual consumer of virtual products." and
That's yet to be determined... (Score:2)
Nothing, it isn't exploitable by corporations [...]
That's yet to be determined. There have been a number of corporations that have done some really dumb things in SL... like expecting people to pay for a box textured to look like an MP3 player or PC... and turned around and thrown their hands up. That just means that they haven't figured it out yet.
The same kinds of comments were made about the web in the early days. It's useless. People don't get it. Corporations can't succeed. It's only for porn. You know
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Seriously, what are they going to do on Second life?
I know Second life's capabilities and it doesn't allow for much.
Most people don't want to spend money on Second life either.
Then there is the brilliant issue of
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Seriously, what are they going to do on Second life?
Second Life now? Second life in five or ten years? Some descendent of OpenSim in five or ten years? You're looking at the equivalent of the Internet in the late '80s and early '90s, when the only browser available required a NeXT workstation, and asking why there isn't a Google yet.
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Gopher was quite fine back then for retrieving information, even had a decent search capability and perfectly logical category system. E-mail was popular with those who had a address.
On top of that, BBS systems were getting netwo
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Yes, you had gopher, and FTP, and Finger. You had BBS systems. You had Compuserve and other online services that were totally dominating in the search for a business model: I was paying $60 a month for a news clipping service called NewsNet in 1984, and Compuserve came up with something similar and I dropped it.
The only non-centralized system that had any business interest was email.
Email was a huge mess: there were at least 30 competing email systems... it was the only network protocol that business really
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I don't see what you're arguing. There is a difference between a mess and being completely useless.
A funny followup... (Score:2)
Here's a message I posted in 1991 bemoaning the lack of business interest in the Internet, in particular Compuserve's lack of telnet access:
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Second life is not a game. It's a virtual world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard this before. "It's not a doll, it's an action figure!" :-P
Parent
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Well, game definitions are usually something among the lines of:
A pursuit or activity with rules performed either alone or with others, for the purpose of entertainment.
I do (Score:2, Interesting)
Second Life is a poor implementation of an awesome idea. The problem is that there's no purpose to it yet... it's ahead of its time. They've built a platform with no content, and they're relying on their users to fill the gap.
I don't care much for the game itself, but I do care about the concept of virtual worlds. I believe it's necessary for human culture to always have new frontiers - wild west zones where men with ambition can make their own fate.
Humanity has two possible frontiers left - space, and v
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At first, they were just boring static pages that were either a horrible marketing attempt. How far has the internet come now that there are things like collaborative Encyclopedia building (Wiki), Google docs, YouTube, Ebay etc.
It is impossible to tell what this medium will make possible in 5 years.
Also, I wouldn't exactly call IBM [ibm.com] a furry or weirdo. Nor would I say that Cisco [cisco.com] is either. There are also a growing number of universities colleges u
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What I'm curious about is this: what does SL offer beyond a traditional IRC-style chat? Wouldn't a chatroom on the show's website offer an easier way to communicate? (As it lowers the barrier to entry and is more efficient with regards to multitasking).
What do you mean by this? (Score:2)
Wouldn't a chatroom on the show's website offer an easier way to communicate? (As it lowers the barrier to entry and is more efficient with regards to multitasking).
In what way is a "chatroom" more efficient with regards to multitasking? I'm not sure I get this one. What kinds of things are you thinking of?
Opensim not good enough. (Score:2)
Opensim is severely lacking in abilities compared to normal Second life to the point that it is absolutely useless.
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Where does Google's Lively fit into this?
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Proper physics, working attachments, proper scripting, centralized inventory servers so you can take your attachments and so on with you.
In other words: The things that make Second life worth using.
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It supports LSL, OSL, and c# for scripting with a few limitations (see here) [opensimulator.org]
For centralized inventory servers, that depends on the grid owner's implementation since Opensim supports several database types.
I'm not saying that opensim is anywhere close to Second Life's level as a finished product, but I would hardly call it useless, especially since it is impossible to run a Second Life serve
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Which, I have used and is entirely rubbish, it doesn't even reach the crap physics of regular Second life.
It isn't just a few limitations. All my previously written scripts do not work what-so-ever on Opensim because so many functions are not implemented correctly or not implemented at all. Anything I was interested in, in regular Second life i
It won't get big until Apple does it (Score:3, Interesting)
When Apple reinvents iLife to be a VR world where you can edit photos in a dark room, put up a virtual gallery of them, walk them down to get books made, etc. etc. Garage Band will actually be a garage studio where you can lay down tracks with your friends... pull off concerts for millions, etc etc. iMovie will be a virtual film studio with greenscreen and effects lab in real time....
Until then nobody will care ;-p
I'd care less if that came true (Score:3, Insightful)
Virtual reality is useful for allowing you to do things that would be too difficult/expensive/dangerous to do in the real world or more traditional interfaces, such as training on operating very valuable equipment or visualizing complex data. Slapping an "Oooh look, 3D!" interface onto an existing (and arguably well designed) workflow will only make a task harder and less fun to do, not easier and more fun. I realize you're just trolling, but the "3D Interace is teh aw3s0m3!" is infuriatingly common...