A Coming Fork In The Metaverse? Leading Open Source Developer Creates Non-SL Compatible Viewer

What you're looking at isn't Second Life, but the OpenSim metaverse Openlife, as seen through the Openlife R16 viewer.  Developed by KirstenLee Cinquetti, R16 is of course based on the original open source code of the SL viewer, but unlike other open source spinoffs, which work with both Second Life and OpenSim worlds, R16 only works with Openlife.

"[B]asically the changes with Openlife make cross-compatible viewers awkward," Ms. Cinquetti tells me. "R16 incorporates changes in many areas which won't work in SL or would make using the viewer very strange indeed."

This is significant for at least three reasons.  Cinquetti is renowned for her SL-compatible viewers, most especially her dynamic lighting-enabled Shadowdraft viewer.  Now she's working on a metaverse viewer that leaves SL behind.  On an even larger level, developments like this will surely complicate attempts by Linden Lab, IBM, and other organizations to create full interoperability between Second Life and OpenSim server. 

Looming even larger is another question:  what if KirstenLee Cinquetti's viewer is better in many respects than the official Second Life version? Then we face not just a possible fork in the metaverse, but a competition of viewers akin to the web browser wars of the 90s.

Judging by her feature description, that seems like a distinct possibility.  Check out her notes after the break, and decide for yourself.  In any case, we seem to be quickly converging on some very interesting conflicts.

Changes to the Openlife R16 viewer that make it incompatible with Second Life:

"Feature wise, increased build ceiling 10K meters, ability to create prims up to 100 meters wide, larger hollows 99% in most cases, ability to create nano prims smaller than 0.001m

"Changes in the viewer constants to reflect differing physics, this would affect how the viewer behaves in Havok 4.  Changes to collision tolerances, and 45000 prim limits on sims.

"Changes in the search system, different land buying methods (land store ),and of course L$ is gone. totally replaced by OpenLife Credit system.

"Different communication methods for voice such as Skype.

"This viewer is also a stepping stone, as the Rex viewer now uses a newer code base, and those features will be incorporated [into R16] in the near future, features such as avatar 2.0, meshs."

Comments

[Annyka Bekkers]

ooooh Avatar 2.0!

[Anonymus-Not]

Have you people ever understood why megaprims had never been officially accepted by lindens?

Like... have you ever tried to use sensor for pathfinding just to realize that the center of some bloody megaprim is out of the sensor's range and thus you never got back proper values. (And since non-phys + non-phys would never invoke a collision event you are pretty much dead with proper pathfinding or have to deal with awful workarounds.)

45k prims per sim? are you nuts? There are builders who can raise a sim from 3-5k and you want 45k?

Do you want to see sims created from tens of thousands of prims crashing your machine while loading zillions of unoptimized 1k textures...?

*takes a stress pill... and another one...* gaa... those lips sure use can some _more_ botox arent they...? *meds take A-Not away*

[Albert Revolution]

For mi is all right. I am workin only in the OpenSim's grids and project from some months, and I am using megaprims and buidings imported from 3dMax with 3000-4000 prims on them.
I do not understand the comments of the last useer "Anonymus". I used the Prim Composer from Shack to manage the buildings and the ussefull tools to manage megaprims, because than in OpenSim, and realXtend, using the xml2 options you can put al the prims from a sim in the x-y-z coordenates than you need, without need to manage the megaprim looking for it is center.

[Ananda Sandgrain]

New types of avatars and importing meshes!? Much much bigger deal than mega-prims and (mostly hypothetical) 45k prim limits. :D

[Macphisto Angelus]

Good article! I have been a Klee viewer user since I heard of them. I won't use any other as some that are being used out there are buggy and problematic at best. This includes the LL brand.

As for the 100M prim size. I use the routinely in the 3DX Studio Standalone available on the OpenLife website and I have seen them in world. No issues at all.

OpenLife is not SL. People need to realize that when thinking in terms of mega prims and the like. It is a new world.. leave your linden logic in SL if you come. :)

[Aplonis Ember]

I mainly look forward to the day when I can import a full NURBS model from a real CAD program like Rhino 4 or similar. Sculpties are a poor subistute for this much needed feature. Full-mesh avatars will be a major advance in that direction.

So I too have gone and registered likewise as Aplonis Ember in all three (RealXtend, OpenSim and OpenLife) on the expectation that it will sooner happen there than in SL proper. This will allow me to keep an eye on them for possible future migration. And I pop into each perhaps once a week or so to tinker around for a while.

Meanwhile I continue to spend most of my VR time in SL because that's where my friends are and not out of any mis-placed loyalty to the Lindens. I have zero brand-name loyalty. Haven't had for years. Having once owned a Harley Davidson cured me of it.

That said, I'll now be on the hunt in SL for freebies I can collect and export via Second Inventory to each of these other VR worlds. Call it hedging my bets.

[rightasrain]

@Aplonis -- be careful taking stuff out of SL. Free or paid stuff is only for use within SL and you could end up with heap of troubles.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Neat... now, how might I as a Linux user compile this viewer?

[Macphisto Angelus]

Melissa,
KLee will be making a Linux version. No time frame yet, but it is slated for after the MAC version is out.

[Torrid Luna]

You cannot blame the Opensimulator based worlds for sharing features that won't work in Second Life. Linden Lab had their fair chance to launch bigger prims after the implementation of Havok4, there even was a poll what sizes one would prefer, but they missed that chance. Not supporting more prims is just their pricing policy, if you need 45k prims, no problem, just buy 2 more sims...

And you really shouldn't blame Kirsten for supporting these worlds with a tweaked and improved viewer. Not only has she launched Openlife client, she also released one for Goode Olde Second Life(tm) lately, that seems to be the best and fastest rendering client ever. Another feature often missing with Lindenlabs(tm) own products...

And your sensor, Anonymous-Not can only show you the center of the prims, but many of the Hugeprims out there are tweaked in a way that their center is far away from the visible middle. Change them to a sphere, to see that you are probably more than 96 meters away. (96, again one of these arbitrary restrictions...)

Cheers,
Torrid (also waiting for a Linux version^^)

[Kevin Leake]

*** NEWSFLASH ***

During the past week, OpenlifeGrid has closed its doors to the Second Life Viewer and Second Inventory.