On the 10th October 2007 the Reuters news agency in Second Life published a news story : IBM, Linden Lab seek open borders for virtual worlds.
IBM and Linden Lab said on Tuesday they will work on ways to let people use a single online persona in different online services.
Interoperability is emerging as a key goal of the nascent virtual world industry, which attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in investment on the hopes that video-game graphics and rich 3-D environments will supplant flat Web pages.
The idea was that you’d be able to create an avatar in one virtual world and take that avatar to other virtual worlds. This was an extremely interesting development. There’s a quote in that article from then Vice President of business at Linden Lab, Ginsu Yoon:
“When you talk about avatars going in and out of virtual worlds, we truly believe that expands the market …..It’s not a situation where there is a fixed pie and everyone is fighting for slices. It’s really key to making the market bigger.”
So Linden Lab were interested and within a year, further exciting developments would be unveiled. On the 8th July 2008 … I think .. American dates are arse about face, yes I’m sure they mean 8th July 2008, anyway on this date, Hamilton Linden revealed that a major breakthrough had been achieved in Virtual Worlds :
This is a historic day for Second Life, and for virtual worlds in general. IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another. It’s an important first step toward enabling avatars to pass freely between virtual worlds, something we’ve been working toward publicly since the formation of the Architecture Working Group in September 2007. These are still early days, however, so amid all the excitement, we thought it would be helpful to clarify exactly what we’ve done — and what still lies ahead.
There was even a video, directed by Torley. The existence of the video of course led to accusations that the whole thing was faked, that the OpenSim grid landing never really happened and people pointed out that a flag was waving when it should not have been as there is no air in the OpenSim atmosphere. Others suggested that there should have been a crater or at least some imprints from the landing from one distant virtual world to another. However I disagree with the conspiracy theorists, this really happened and here’s the video to prove it:
This was an exciting breakthough of course and one that some people felt would make virtual worlds have greater reach. The blog post had a Q&A and I’ll select a few of them :
Q: Why is that significant?
It marks the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another, an event with implications for the entire virtual world industry. As the name suggests, the Open Grid Protocol used in the project enables interoperability between virtual worlds. With this experiment, we’ve taken a first step toward not just interconnecting Second Life with other virtual worlds, but other virtual worlds with one another. An open standard for interoperability based on the Open Grid Protocol would allow users to cross freely from one world to another, just as they can go from one Web site to another on the Internet today.
Q: When will Second Life Residents be able to teleport to OpenSim servers, or other virtual worlds?
We don’t know exactly. We’re working toward that goal but we’re still very much in the experimental phase.
Q: What is Linden Lab’s ultimate goal with these experiments?
Linden Lab sees interoperability as essential for virtual worlds to reach their full potential. In addition, interoperability will enhance Resident experience and the new architecture will improve scalability and stability.
So we can see that Linden Lab felt that this was important in 2008, so what happened? No genuinely, what happened? I have no idea why this didn’t progress with Second Life’s involvement. I can recall being at a Robin Linden office hour where Robin was talking about what sort of costs should be charged for people wanting to connect a sim to Second Life, but I don’t know why Linden Lab moved away from this sort of virtual world interoperability.
There were of course always going to be concerns. Nobody Fugazi raised some at the time:
- Security
- Names
- Alternate Names
- Copyright
All issues that needed to be considered, but were they insurmountable? Virtual world interoperability does exist, OpenSim utilises Hypergrid for this interoperability. How does Hypergrid deal with these issues?
However interoperability involving Linden Lab appears to be as dead as dodo. Considering how excited Linden Lab were about this and how they once viewed interoperability as essential, it seems somewhat odd that they pulled the plug on it but maybe they felt that there would be too many problems with trying to play nicely with too many unknown variables, maybe there are people out there who can shed more light on the issue, but interoperability does have potential.
Thank you Ciaran for an interesting article looking back at Linden Lab’s halfhearted interest in Hypergrid travel and interoperability between virtual worlds. I remember the test teleports to an Opensim region well so I know first hand they did happen. Many of us had high hopes at the time. In deed, I was first introduced to the open source simulator project because of those tests and many of us had high hopes at the time it would lead to a much bigger Metaverse and market for virtual products. But, alas, I think Linden Lab got seriously cold feet and feared their business model for high priced virtual land would be put in jeopardy. Add to that the concerns of content makers and merchants who worried about Opensim’s lack of proper security DRM and it isn’t surprising that the Lab shut the project down just as soon as they realized the implications. In any event, at that time Opensim was seriously under developed and Second Life was far in advance so there was no contest really and I’m sure the Lab believed Opensim would fade away for lack of interest without their support via the working group on interoperability which got shut down too.
However, as you know, for from shutting down Opensim has, itself, gone on to develop brilliantly and is now easily comparable with many aspects of Second Life and, of course, the continued development of Hypergrid and export permissions is actually likely to be a serious game changer in the coming year if the work at Kitley Virtual, Avination and Singularity is anything to go by. A lot of residents in Second Life do now spend time in Opensim grids working on content destined mainly for the SL market and some for Opensim. They’re crossing back and forth engaging both the Linden world and the Opensim world to socialize, trade, role play and build at low cost. It would be a wonderful thing if the bridges between SL and OS could be re-built but perhaps that remains very unlikely given the road Linden Lab is on and the liberties they are taking with their TOS. Perhaps we will see big changes in the Lab anyway now they have an ex Yahoo director on board as CEO ( remember Cloud Party has just be bought up by Yahoo?). Interesting times ahead I think but I am confident there will be a truly open Metaverse one day with or without Second Life. But there are just so many reason why SL should be part of it too.
OpenSim has certainly picked up the baton. Really, when you look back at some of the comments of Linden Lab, they were so enthusiastic about this idea, it was the future they believed but I think somewhere traction was lost and they decided to stick rather than twist.
If Opensim doesn’t make a fist of it, one day, someone will. Virtual worlds will keep on expanding in one form or another.
“So we can see that Linden Lab felt that this was important in 2008, so what happened? No genuinely, what happened? ”
Creators and Merchants threw a fit, so Linden Lab shit-canned the whole deal.
Opensim is attempting to deal with the Hypergrid copyright issue with server-side export permissions. You can read about that here: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/10/new-opensim-release-supports-groups-export-perms/
Content is certainly an issue and of course these days with more and more financial regulations, some barriers are far more of a problem than they were in 2007.
I was very interested in these gridjumping tests at the time. Then, all of a sudden, there was no further news about it.
I heard it said then, that the halt to the program was prompted by IBM in some way. However, I don’t recall now – and maybe didn’t know then – whether this was simply rumor or theory or actually based on some real knowledge.
I think that somewhere along the line people felt that this wasn’t the way forward, even though they still embraced the idea. It’s a shame nobody from IBM will talk about it.
I used to be a strong proponent of interoperability. These days, I think the challenge of the Virtual World medium is finding compelling reasons to consistently be in any virtual world, rather than how to move between them.
As for Linden Lab, It would be suicide for them to create the means for people to move their virtual goods to other platforms. The main thing holding Second Lifers from bailing to OpenSim is the value of their inventories.
OpenSim branching away from Linden Lab’s code is probably where the door got bolted shut. I think Linden Lab’s idea was for them to be in charge of the code and for other people to pay to use it, but that ship has long sailed.
I don’t agree, Botgirl!
Being on Open sim Osgrid for 4 full months, still host 5 region there since more then 2 years already!
Being 100 pct on Second Life since May 2012! No interest in going back to Open sim, even if i keep running the regions 24/7 (they are to lovely to be shut down and they offer adult content not avaiable in most purish Open sim girds!)
Reason to be in Second Life since that time, Mainland continents and private regions connected to them!
Until a open sim grid allows me to grab a boat or a bike or a plane and let me cross hundreds of sims, sometimes on trips that take more the 2 hours to accomplish, Open sim has no more use for me, that being a refuge where i can go if some happens to Sl!
A
I see your point about the connected grid. And I agree that it’s important for some segments users. But my guess is that the vast majority don’t do that type of traveling very often, if at all, and tend to spend their time in specific venues and communities. Also, Sim crossings, even in Second Life, can be problematic in vehicles. Finally, for people who have either tried Second Life or have never been interested, connectivity with other virtual worlds is unlikely to be much of a draw.
How strange that people still look at Second Life as a bunch of little boxes with troublesome borders to cross when OpenSim has for years had Mega regions that do away with borders altogether and relieve the problems that vehicles can face during crossings. But even Mega regions will be old school soon as OpenSim rolls out the variable regions code that originated with AuroraSim – a forked version of Opensim. Variable regions don’t just do away with borders but allow expansion of a single region to cover an area of potentially hundreds of old school Second Life sims (256X256). When it comes to eliminating border crossing problems OpenSim simply gets rid of the borders and that works far better than trying to hand off live processing from one simulator to the next. And, finally, far from being lonely the OpenSim grids enjoy a growing cross-grid community if you know where to look and take the trouble to embrace it. A good starting place is G+ Opensim Virtual @ https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/116284417302234467612 for all the help you need from tech to basic help, news and events notices.