Metaverse Milestone: Interoperability Between Second Life And Open Sim Virtual Worlds (Updated)
Today at around 11:00am, according to Zha Ewry, a long hoped for landmark was reached: a couple Linden Lab staffers teleported with Zha from the Second Life grid... into Open Sim, the open source spinoff of SL. They came only as avatars, without inventory or attributes, and therefore, appeared as "Ruth", SL's default bug avatar. Even so, it was still the first instance of interoperability between one virtual world and another. "Next steps," writes Zha, who runs the Architecture Working Group, "will include better syncing with the OpenSim environment, handling teleport in and our requests, and then starting in on how to fetch assets from the test grid." It's a small step, but it opens up worlds of possibility. (Hat tip: Dusan Writer.)
Update, 7/8: Linden's PR firm tells me this demo above was actually from OpenSim to SL, while July 8th's announcement describes a direct teleport from Second Life to OpenSim, which is "more complicated from an interconnectivity point of view."
Woot, a whole new realm of pastures to crash in, unceremoniously. Or, I suppose... at least we folks will have somewhere safe, if not glamourous, to find refuge in, when such inevitables happen.
Posted by: Vidal Tripsa | Friday, June 06, 2008 at 07:06 PM
Just... wow!!
Posted by: Efemera Bisiani | Saturday, June 07, 2008 at 09:15 AM
time to dust off my OpenSim installation, I guess!
Posted by: Sered Woollahra | Saturday, June 07, 2008 at 04:23 PM
Nice work. It's worth noting that while the RealXtend client also allows you to 'teleport' from SL to an OpenSim server, that process is a bit clunky since the transfer is basically an automatic re-login via the client. It IS pretty cool though and pretty exciting in itself (well, maybe the first few teleports :D)
Today's news is a very welcome step toward true inter-world teleports. Thanks LL!
Posted by: jm | Saturday, June 07, 2008 at 04:25 PM
Is both great and terrible news! Can only imagine impact of people taking content from their pcs over to an opensim server and then back again...so the ultimate blackmarket on content :0 ! I suppose this can be done now, but I would imagine it will be much easier as these developments move along.
It is an interesting question as to whether or not someone is entitled to use SL content outside of SL. We would certainly view our content as being only licenced for us within SL (check legalese stuff. I think in general they are not, but enforcement is also an issue.
But it is great to see progress on liberating avatars from the confines of SL!
Posted by: RightAsRain Rimbaud | Monday, June 09, 2008 at 03:50 AM
Another example of interoperability between two worlds : SLOP http://nec.reation.free.fr/index.php?index=2&lng=EN
"SLOP is a tool that converts builds made into Second Life or OpenSim in a format that is compatible with either one of the worlds".
Posted by: Gehan Kamachi | Monday, June 09, 2008 at 06:42 AM
Fantastic! This is great news and was the biggest technical hurdle imho to get grid teleports from different providers working effectively.
Posted by: Nexii Malthus | Friday, June 13, 2008 at 03:01 PM