Comments on: Moving to Canada Pt 3 - Openlife Round 2 http://radarmasukami.com/2008/11/02/moving-to-canada-pt-3-openlife-round-2/ Radar Masukami of the SL Under the Radar podcast thinks out loud Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:46:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Radar http://radarmasukami.com/2008/11/02/moving-to-canada-pt-3-openlife-round-2/comment-page-1/#comment-454 Radar Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:16:20 +0000 http://radarmasukami.com/?p=390#comment-454 It's true that an open standard and an open source platform for the virtual world needs to exist, where by "need" I mean that everyone would benefit hugely from. What I worry about is the Microsoftization of the metaverse, not in terms of closed protocols and brute forcing everyone into a locked down solution, but rather by starting off at the very beginning having to duplicate and be compatible with the patchwork SL code, that having to be backwards compatible and starting off worrying about it is going to hurt the effort right from the start. In truth, LL has done an impressive amount of performance improving using their platform, but there has to be a limit to which the SL grid technology can keep being improved, and it just seems like one that will fall shy of where it needs to go eventually. Either everyone bitching about LL is wrong, and they're geniuses who've created a platform that can be emulated, duplicated, and or extended for a long time with great success, or everyone working on using them as the standard will disappear in five years. It’s true that an open standard and an open source platform for the virtual world needs to exist, where by “need” I mean that everyone would benefit hugely from. What I worry about is the Microsoftization of the metaverse, not in terms of closed protocols and brute forcing everyone into a locked down solution, but rather by starting off at the very beginning having to duplicate and be compatible with the patchwork SL code, that having to be backwards compatible and starting off worrying about it is going to hurt the effort right from the start.

In truth, LL has done an impressive amount of performance improving using their platform, but there has to be a limit to which the SL grid technology can keep being improved, and it just seems like one that will fall shy of where it needs to go eventually. Either everyone bitching about LL is wrong, and they’re geniuses who’ve created a platform that can be emulated, duplicated, and or extended for a long time with great success, or everyone working on using them as the standard will disappear in five years.

]]> By: Kai Ludwig http://radarmasukami.com/2008/11/02/moving-to-canada-pt-3-openlife-round-2/comment-page-1/#comment-453 Kai Ludwig Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:48:52 +0000 http://radarmasukami.com/?p=390#comment-453 The OpenLife Grid may have building a commercial alternative for Second Life in mind but you are right, OpenSimulator is much to premature for letting anyone succed at that task for now. To many things like content, hosting, business concepts, etc. (you named them) have to be set right before. And rebuilding Second Life is only a singe use case for the OpenSimulator technology. As there are many more we'll probably see a whole bunch of other interesting applications emerging and becoming successful before the OpenSimulator based Second Life has matured enough to really catch people. But many people are working hard on it so its just a matter of time. IMHO there will be no commercial overtaking of SL, just the silent growth of a new standard which than everybody may decide to use. And as it happened with the WWW at some point a critical mass will be reached and after that everybody want's to have his own OpenSimulator based world in the internet because it just became the standard way of working in/with the Web 3.0. We again live in an most interesting era ... Greetings from the real world, Kai Ludwig Director TalentRaspel virtual worlds Ltd. http://www.talentraspel.de The OpenLife Grid may have building a commercial alternative for Second Life in mind but you are right, OpenSimulator is much to premature for letting anyone succed at that task for now. To many things like content, hosting, business concepts, etc. (you named them) have to be set right before.

And rebuilding Second Life is only a singe use case for the OpenSimulator technology. As there are many more we’ll probably see a whole bunch of other interesting applications emerging and becoming successful before the OpenSimulator based Second Life has matured enough to really catch people.

But many people are working hard on it so its just a matter of time. IMHO there will be no commercial overtaking of SL, just the silent growth of a new standard which than everybody may decide to use. And as it happened with the WWW at some point a critical mass will be reached and after that everybody want’s to have his own OpenSimulator based world in the internet because it just became the standard way of working in/with the Web 3.0. We again live in an most interesting era …

Greetings from the real world,
Kai Ludwig
Director
TalentRaspel virtual worlds Ltd.
http://www.talentraspel.de

]]> By: Radar http://radarmasukami.com/2008/11/02/moving-to-canada-pt-3-openlife-round-2/comment-page-1/#comment-452 Radar Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:10:43 +0000 http://radarmasukami.com/?p=390#comment-452 The problem is that the development of OpenSim as a platform is not the only challenge. In order for that to mean anything to VW residents, content creators, shoppers, etc, etc, someone has to implement it and create a stable environment with an economy, support, help, beautiful content, and more. In second life, you already have all that, and the expectations of the people who "live" in SL are set accordingly. They may whine and fuss when teleports don't work for a couple hours, and they may have a meltdown when the Lindens change a policy or two, but there's no way they'd give that up for a world with no real currency, IM's that are iffy, a grid that's unstable or slow due to the physical infrastructure and bandwidth, etc, etc. Those are issues that are going to fall outside of whatever code is contained in the OpenSim software. Those take money, skilled people (a lot of them), a shitload of hardware, and a lot of bandwidth to address. That's where surmounting SL is going to be harder than anyone currently using OpenSim might realize. And that's why I think overtaking SL will be done by someone with a lot of money, people, and a totally different technology. The problem is that the development of OpenSim as a platform is not the only challenge. In order for that to mean anything to VW residents, content creators, shoppers, etc, etc, someone has to implement it and create a stable environment with an economy, support, help, beautiful content, and more.

In second life, you already have all that, and the expectations of the people who “live” in SL are set accordingly. They may whine and fuss when teleports don’t work for a couple hours, and they may have a meltdown when the Lindens change a policy or two, but there’s no way they’d give that up for a world with no real currency, IM’s that are iffy, a grid that’s unstable or slow due to the physical infrastructure and bandwidth, etc, etc. Those are issues that are going to fall outside of whatever code is contained in the OpenSim software. Those take money, skilled people (a lot of them), a shitload of hardware, and a lot of bandwidth to address.

That’s where surmounting SL is going to be harder than anyone currently using OpenSim might realize. And that’s why I think overtaking SL will be done by someone with a lot of money, people, and a totally different technology.

]]> By: Kai Ludwig http://radarmasukami.com/2008/11/02/moving-to-canada-pt-3-openlife-round-2/comment-page-1/#comment-451 Kai Ludwig Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:37:33 +0000 http://radarmasukami.com/?p=390#comment-451 It has to be understood that OpenSimulator is still in alpha status. So nothing can be expected to work ... but astoundingly about 60% does. OpenSimulator is quite sophisticated for a project at 0.5.x version (Just think about how crappy Windows 3.11 was compared to e.g. actual XP that is btw still not the crown of software development). The non funtioning rest 40% of OpenSimulator are a bit annoying but get less every day. The more support OpenSimulator gets the faster it will become a viable alternative to Second Life. For early adopter projects it is already good enough and many people start working with it right now. It is just as we experienced in 1992/1993 with the WWW hype. We are just at the beginning of the Web 3.0 (=Web 2.0+OpenSimulator) hype and have to expect OpenSimulator becoming the standard for interconnected VR world applications. We at TalentRaspel work hard on bringing the OpenSimulator technology to the masses and support the OpenSimulator and realXtend development with all our devotion. Time will tell if this is the right train ... we believe in OpenSimulator and have a full load of awesome projects in our development queue. Stay tuned. Greetings from the real world, Kai Ludwig Director TalentRaspel virtual worlds Ltd. www.talentraspel.de It has to be understood that OpenSimulator is still in alpha status. So nothing can be expected to work … but astoundingly about 60% does. OpenSimulator is quite sophisticated for a project at 0.5.x version (Just think about how crappy Windows 3.11 was compared to e.g. actual XP that is btw still not the crown of software development). The non funtioning rest 40% of OpenSimulator are a bit annoying but get less every day. The more support OpenSimulator gets the faster it will become a viable alternative to Second Life. For early adopter projects it is already good enough and many people start working with it right now.

It is just as we experienced in 1992/1993 with the WWW hype. We are just at the beginning of the Web 3.0 (=Web 2.0+OpenSimulator) hype and have to expect OpenSimulator becoming the standard for interconnected VR world applications.

We at TalentRaspel work hard on bringing the OpenSimulator technology to the masses and support the OpenSimulator and realXtend development with all our devotion. Time will tell if this is the right train … we believe in OpenSimulator and have a full load of awesome projects in our development queue. Stay tuned.

Greetings from the real world,
Kai Ludwig
Director
TalentRaspel virtual worlds Ltd.
http://www.talentraspel.de

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