Virtual Worlds

I’ve gone dark for quite a bit due to other projects, but wanted to put a post up on several issues which temporarily stalled my OpenSim efforts.  My main goal here is to ensure others don’t run into these AND for someone to post links on better approachs/solutions.

I got OpenSim stood-up and running on Debian Linux.  I then sorted out how to configure the terrain to my purposes and setup physics.  Using the client estate editing tools I also sorted out how to build/apply custom terrain textures (haven’t posted on this yet, there are some good resources out there though). 

Then I invited a few friends from SL to come on over and start building.  This is when I started to run into very practical problems.  The main issues were around avatar and object persistance across OpenSim upgrades and restarts.  The first issue I ran into is somehow I had not setup persistance of objects in the world.  Things were built, but when I restarted the server one day, it was all lost. 

Test #1: Test object persistance with a friend.  Get another avatar in your world.  Build a few things together.  Leave.  Restart the server.  Login and see if things are still there.  Do this early before you create a master piece.

Secondly, when upgrading, I had used the default MSSQL for persistance.  I don’t really know how to manage MSSQL or have any confidence that if I backed up the data I could script my way through a schema change if needed.  So, I tried to move from MSSQL to MySQL which is more familiar territory for me.  This looked like it was going to be a major scripting effort and I could not find any tools that existed to do this.  So, once again I scrubbed my sim as part of the upgrade to get to MySQL.

Test #2 Test database backup/restore.  Once you have confirmed suggestion #1, create a backup of the stores.  Try to spin up a new instance of OpenSim using these stores.  See if you can do it.

I haven’t had time to do this yet, but it will be a real issue if I start inviting several SecondLifer friends into my SIM only to have them loose everything during some upgrade.  I expect there are some solutions to this problem which have been built mainly by other grid providers like OSGrid and the like, but nothing quickly found in a web search.  Send me info if you have it :-).

Finally, I ran into a physics problem which required me to rebuild ODE on Debian Linux in order to get up to date with the latest OpenSim trunk.  This exercise and subsequent debugging was where I had to leave it.  I finally decided to wait a few months and then do a clean install/upgrade.  It was a far cry from the fun of building out your own sim.

No surprise, but OpenSim is still early days.

Continuing to drive an interop standard, Linden Lab starts to build code to bridge into OpenSim.  Biggest open question is how will content movement happen and how will creator rights be protected or put at risk?

My second experiment in writing for the press. 

MIT Technology Review Article

Today is a historic day indeed the opening of a public bridge between the Second Life Preview Grid and the Opensim Grids who choose to participate.  Now for the uninitiated the bridge looks something like the following (image thanks to Crooked Brains):

It is narrow a bit wobbly, but it is really a masterful start and a further signal of Linden Lab’s strategy to open the architecture.

There are limits of course, no inventory is transferred so your fancied up SL avatar will appear in Ruth format with an empty inventory.  But if you only focus on the limitations, you might miss the big picture.  Opensim is have fantastic success, with 26 grids registered hosting approximately 2300 regions.  The SL grid has 28070 regions.  By these numbers Opensim grids combined are about 8% of the size of the entire SL grid, and I for one know there are many singleton Opensim regions waiting to go public.

SL’s Columbus has arrived in the new new virtual world and Opensim residents represent the native population.  So far, it is all turkeys and cranberry sauce.  I can’t wait for the next 12 months.

Here are some key links:

• Linden Lab Announcement
• UgoTrade Blog
• Original Linden Lab / IBM Annoucement
• Relevant Reuters Article

Well I thought I would try publishing my first lively space to the blog. There are at the time of this writing 71 space “templates” available. I picked “Superhero Underwater Headquarters”. No, I never was a big fan of aqua-man, but this seemed the most interesting space after a quick browse.

I splattered in some seating arrangements, a clock, TV, found some cool purple lanterns that give off butterflies which I thought was a nice touch for an underwater lair. Drop in a check it out here:

My main gripes so far are as follows:

• Lack of ability to create my own content, I found this one of the most fun aspects of SL, in Lively I feel more like a decorator
• No basic keyboard movements keys WSAD please!
• No ability to re-size objects at least that I could find, move and rotate only. Object orientation seems to also be automatically attempted. So placement and rotation and relative scale was tricky
• The photo gadgets which would allow you to place any Internet image onto a surface are “off-line” per support. This could be a legal or porn issue, not sure but I have no real way of customizing my space with my own content other than You Tube video streaming which lacks even basic controls.

My first press article… ever

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/21100/

 <<Previous Section     Tutorial Start

In part 5 of this tutorial, we will finally get Opensim running. After a few edits to some config files you will be able to fire up your first sim.  My apologies for the delay of this final installment which may have frustrated a few of you, I got caught up in the Google Lively launch.

Step 1 - Start the Opensim.exe application

Find the Opensim.exe in an explorer window.  Right click on the file and select “Run As Administrator”.  If you don’t do this, it won’t work.  A windows command shell will come up and you will see messages indicating Opensim is starting up.

Step 2 - Enter First Time Startup Data

The first time you do this you will either get errors or be prompted for some default information.  If you get errors it is likely that you did not configure the database settings properly or your firewall is hindering your progress.  Below are the prompts and what they mean.

DEFAULT REGION CONFIG

• Region Name [Opensim Test]:
  • The name of the your new Sim, you can safely change this but keep it short and one or two words, I no evidence to suggest it would not work with a long sentence, but based on SL sim naming conventions I’m suggesting you adhere to this if you are not a developer.
• Grid Location (X Axis) [1000]:
• Grid Location (Y Axis) [1000]:
  • Starting location in the world for your avatar.  Keep defaults.
• Internal IP Address for incoming UDP client connections [0.0.0.0]:
  • Should remain 0.0.0.0
• Internal IP Port for incoming UDP client connections [9000]:
  • Modify only if you are planning to use a different port or expose your sim to the internet
• External Host Name [127.0.0.1]:
  • Modify only if you plan to login to this sim from elsewhere
• First Name of Master Avatar [Test]:
  • First name of your main avatar
• Last Name of Master Avatar [User]:
  • Last name of your main avatar.  Yes, you can pick this in Opensim :-).
• (Sandbox Mode Only)Password for Master Avatar Account [test]:
  • Password for your avatar

At this point the Opensim server should be up and running

Step 3 - Login with your SL Client

You can’t just login with your Second Life client because it has no way of knowing about your Opensim server.  You need to launch the SL client with some command line parameters to tell it to use Opensim vs. the SL grid.  Open a command window and navigate to the directory where you installed Second Life.  You should find SecondLife.exe  You can then type in “SecondLife.exe -loginuri http://localhost:9000/ -loginpage http://localhost:9000/?method=login“  Replace localhost:9000 with the server/port in question if you have modified the defaults above.

Start Building.  Or if you are so inclined learn how to create your own custom terrain here. 

<<Previous Section     Tutorial Start

Well it’s official Google has invited themselves to the virtual world party with Lively. Here are some early press links to explore along with thoughts from some of the technology leaders in the space:

• Lively Main Site
• Eletric Sheep Company CEO Sibley Verbeck’s take
• Cory Ondrejka former CTO of Linden Lab Blogs “Googlerilla released their virtual world-ish”
• Terra Nova’s Take
• CNET News Podcast: Initial impressions from Stephen Shankland
• Christian IT Professional’s Thoughts on Lively “a bad copy of Second Life”
• Wall Street Journal On-Line
• Millions of Us using Lively for National Geographic
• Associated Press
• A Google Employee’s Perspective on why this is good for SL users

If you’ve have ever wanted your own Second Life Island/Estate but didn’t want to pay the $1700 bucks plus $300/month fees for it, then this tutorial series is for you.  I will take you through downloading, installing, and configuring an Opensim standalone server on Windows Vista using the community edition of MySQL. It is all free of charge thanks to many others who are forging a freely available virtual world platform.

If you are not a developer, no worries, we will not be building any source code, downloading any version of Visual Studio, or learning how to use subversion. You will have to edit a few config files though and create a database so roll-up your sleves and prepare to get a little dirty.  

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly and easily it was to get a Sim up and running.  I’d estimate this process will take you a few hours.

If you are unfamiliar with Opensim project, then now is a good time to get acquainted with it.  Opensim is basically an open source virtual world platform that acts and behaves very much like Second Life.  The approach being used it basically to reverse engineer the Second Life backend given knowledge gained by Linden Lab open sourcing the Second Life viewer and the work done by a group called libSecondLife. 

An Opensim server is not connected to the Second LIfe grid, but there are various Opensim grids already coming into existence (some of these I’ll explore later).   You will not be able to export your Second Life objects/avatars and import them into your new sim, but you can re-build your objects and reuse your LSL scripts.  There are many limitations relative to SL like no currency/economy structure, however, for a cost free ability to experiment with a SL island/estate there is no better alternative.

This post will be updated with all the tutorials as I complete them:

• Part 2 - Downloading all the pre-requisites
• Part 3 - Installing and Configuring MySQL
• Part 4 - Installing and Configuring OpenSim
• Part 5 - Spinning Up and Testing the Opensim Server

When you are done you will have a whole sim to yourself along with your crispy new avatar, you’d better get building.

Please let me know if you encounter anything that is confusing, any new gottchas I should point out, or any inaccuracies and I will make updates.

As more and more marketing, kids, gaming worlds come on line, I continue to dwell on the business applications of the future.  I encountered former Linden Lab’s Cory Ondrejika’s presentation on the future of virtual worlds indirectly from the Electric Sheep blog.

This presentation is very interesting even audio-less.  My favorite slide is when Cory discussed 5-10 years out assuming Moore’s law everything will be 8-64 times cheaper, faster, and longer lasting.  He helps visualize what a 25x would look like in this slide:

If we imagine an iPhone/iTouch with nearly a terabyte of memory and 2x the processing power of an XBOX 360, then meaningful mobile presence in virtual worlds is pretty easy to see. The entire presentation can be found on here.
 

I explored this topic in a presentation to the Seattle Social Media Club coordinated by Katie Hoyne of Text 100. The room was a mix of Seattle Virtual Worlds experts such as Jeff Barr of Amazon fame, Rob Lanphier and Greg Tomko-Pavia from Seattle Linden Lab office, Trevor Smith and Ian Smith of Transmutable, as well as many curious people new to virtual worlds.

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This presentation provides some history of communication/collaboration technologies, discusses why VW technologies are different, and surmises that virtual worlds are the next wave in human communication technology allowing us to work and play together while being geographically distant.