First, what is our general scope of activities?

We design 3D online virtual areas, we make virtual objects, we build virtual areas, we run 3D online scenes for visitors and we incorporate some social web features in real-time to make it most engaging.

Design

The design part is still good old paper, pen and flipcharts. We are seeing a need for more activities to engage users rather than just drop them in interesting spaces to explore and chat with friends. We have some new ideas rolling out now on Heritage Key for quests and virtual field trips for educators. Part of the design is to also share achievements beyond the virtual area to the broader web social action via things like facebook apps, wall postings.  Check out the contest for winning £1,000 to get an idea of how this is working.

Make

This is about creating high quality virtual objects that can be combined later into complete scenes. Main things needed here are textures, meshes, animations, sounds and scripts. There are quite a few tool options for creating these individual elements such as photoshop, maya,  zbrush, qavimator and many more.  Unity3D has a studio set for object creation as does the opensource Second Life Viewer and the SL-compatible third party viewers that modify and extend that code.

Build

Once the discrete elements are ready, then they need to be put into a 3D space for build. The 3D space also has land to be shaped and other virtual world features to consider. Unity3D allows for this build work to be done offline, where the Second Life model is online connected to the server, in our case our own OpenSim grids. Unity handles, presents 3D meshes, where OpenSim is based on its own class of pre-configured meshes called “primitives” (aka “prims” which is why we love prims).

Run

Once the build is ready then it can be published to visitors. The major issue here is dealing with changes after the scene is published. This is where the Second Life model is strongest in allowing for changes to be streamed out to all the connected users. Someone changes anything in an area or rezzes a new object and then it gets sent quickly out to all the people nearby. Unity deals with content in a more static way and also runs game physics locally on the users pc. OpenSim will deal with the concurrency where Unity needs to connect to a service, such as smartfox server,  to deliver the MMO side.  The big opportunity with Unity vs SL-compatible viewers (we suggest Imprudence btw) is to deploy 3D scenes to the browser and mobile devices (iphone, ipad and android).

Social

Then of course we need to deliver all the Social elements including avatar identity and communications for chat, IM and voice. For both games and virtual area access there is also a need for rights, roles and points of some kind.  Ideally the social elements should be available across the web, mobile touch points and integrated with social networks (where possible and not annoying). It looks like Freeswitch is a good enough voice solution even though it is not spatial. Drupal is our core community solution (simple diagram for our tech layout here).

The OpenSim plus Unity3D Issues and Strategy

On the one hand, it would be useful to make everything around an OpenSim region. This seems to give us the greatest flexibility for content creation within the existing limitations of minimum target graphics cards, bandwidth and computers. Actually I think more interactive, smaller scenes are currently more engaging than larger, more expansive areas. It seems to be more interesting for users to see a lot of intimate detail within the context of “placeness” than have them flying across bigger online spaces. This also helps to push users closer to each other and increase social activities.  (see my notes on 3D Web about key features here) Certainly for iPhone, Android and even pc’s wifi access, tighter scenes will run better for more users.

On the other hand, the SL-compatible viewers do not deal with real meshes currently. Although OpenSim can hold the mesh assets, the viewers cannot show them.  Meshes from Unity3D studio and other standard tools are easier to make more photo-realistic as far as I can tell. There are also tons of existing meshes out there to use as parts for scenes.  Yet, getting to high quality complete builds also requires workmanship in either environment and each has its own eccentricities and I guess we currently understand OpenSim a lot better. The definition/boundaries of a single region at 256m x 256m isn’t a major constraint until better physics can be deployed.

The other big open question is how to deal with the avatar in Unity3D. In OpenSim it is possible to customize the avatar with skins, textures and attachments. I think this is also possible to make customizable avatars within Unity, but is quite a bit of work and will make the Unity scene a lot bigger. Unity3D for the browser plug-in also also tied to the browser cache which is a pain. Scenes will reload on a refresh and you cannot create specific content folders to allow for content caching independent of the session.

Unity also does not stream media onto objects–so watching video, slideshows won’t work currently from a live streaming source. Although you can play media if it is shipped as part of the scene contents.  Then again, you can have a stream window in your browser next to the Unity scene if that were useful.

So it all comes back to the fundamental question — how big a deal is using a web app to connect to an engaging 3D virtual online area? My sense is that it is more about the ultimate user experience than making them download something in a few minutes (ok, a massive download is a show-stopper for mainstream users).  It would be a large, challenging undertaking to shove something like the SL-viewer into the browser completely–and what would you really gain vs just making a new generation web app purposely built for OpenSim? Seems like a lot of effort for little real gain. People download things like skype,  openoffice even large videos because they perceive the value in having it running.

Is then our current approach to using Unity3D for an on-ramp to the more immersive offerings still valid. Show them what they are missing and then invite them in? Even if that means the Unity browser sessions will have kind of  monotonous avatars? It seems so today. So we are looking at mashing the concurrency of the Unity sessions with the SL-compatible viewers over OpenSim regions.  In this way people can share some parts of the experience, see who is near them and communicate. Again our goal is to get out to mainstream audiences and we know they are all already on browsers, so this is an important step toward them. The concern is to still pull them into something unique and engaging.

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I was hoping to keep the list to 5, but I think following seem to be the 6 main roadblocks on why mainstream online users are not diving straight from Farmville, GTA, WoW into OpenSim-powered Virtual Online Experiences:

1. HOT ISSUE: Hard to Access

I was with some Noobies the other day and it was painful to watch them try to get oriented on using their avatar.  They were not gamers and the whole 3D spatial thing was a big shock. I was about to puke on the floor as they spun their camera all over.  However, after about 45 minutes helping them get around and customize their avatars, they seemed to get the main ideas. Some people think this is part of the “1 hour” experience challenge, but actually it is the first 10 minutes where they get so frustrated they close it all down and swear about how impossible it is.  I guess even with 3D movies, people complain about getting headaches and you don’t need to navigate anywhere.  The reworked SL viewer, while usable-ish, really is not an ideal solution. We are hoping our plans for using Unity3D will help here.

Even beyond all the tech issues, the people I was with had a lot of trouble with figuring out where to go and what to do. They wanted web pages to explain it all (which we even have and with video tutorials), even when there signs and info inside the virtual areas. They really just have too much coming at them all at once.

And people are wary about downloading new stuff–even if they have skype, java, virus protection, air apps  and other stuff on their machines. People don’t even like to get new browser plug-ins, which is way Unity3D is trying to get pre-loaded as part of Chrome.

Nonetheless, I think people would deal with this HOT ISSUE if point 2 below were  clear to them–>

2. HOT ISSUE: Compelling Content

In general, the gripe from the uninitiated is that there is not enough to do and/or that the content created is low quality.  The content in total though, is probably not any worse than the rest of the web. Really what people seem to be saying is that they can get content other ways and dealing with the 3D, immersive is not worth the hassle (see point 1).  I call this factor the “so what?” which challenges the early adopters to answering the reason for why something is interesting to these followers.

We have a lot of new, amazing content on the Heritage Key grid–more than 6-8 hours worth of high quality fun learning stuff.  We are also running live events regularly. But people don’t know what they are missing and then when they give a try they hit point 1…

3. Improve Performance

Once you can get Noobies over the line to being at least basic users, then they will start to hit some of the performance issues.  Even though some causes for crashes are due to firewall or are bandwidth related and require other types of admin support.

While OpenSim has made a lot of progress in the last year in terms of how well it works, there is still a long way to go. I am sure a better matched viewer would also make the complete experience better. We can design around a lot of the weaknesses, but frankly a better physics engine would also be…a lot better. Improving the concurrency at reasonable content load will also help a bit.

The avatars are also still quite limited and stiff.  In the first instance this isn’t a major turn-off, but certainly more fluid, smarter and more realistic avatars will increase interest.

4. More Interesting Places to Visit

People will need to have a stronger sense of the broader, more varied set of experiences out there for them. The only way this can really scale out to the web is by having more and more content across more and more grids made by more and more people.  It will need to be more than just empty regions to get people engaged.

5. Increased Features

OpenSim is short on a few key features right now — micro-payments and voice in particular. Sure there are ways around this, but it isn’t that easy or works in a very robust way.  There needs to be a larger developer community thriving as part of the ecosystem.

6. Movement Between Grids

Once each Grid is more capable, then people would probably find it exciting to move between them. Moving between grids is a lot more complicated and potential more rewarding than zapping between web pages.  The “closed world” destination is just too constrained.  We are not sure that hypergrid is the right kind of solution as it doesn’t give the grid owners the right set of management or security tools.

Massive Numbers of Users

My guess is that there will be 600 million people around the world that  by 2012 could potentially access 3D Web experiences. It will be really hard to sit next to all of them and pull them across the first 10 minutes of their virtual skill and orientation ladder.

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1. Wrong Target

While SL defined a kind of virtual online experience, the Virtual World as a consumer offering is not scalable.  The “land” concept benefits mainly the platform operator and not the content creators–who pay more for that resource than in general they can recover (ok, some people beat the casino, but most don’t). The fetish about being a “land owner” or the belittled role of being a “resident” are not compelling to mainstream audiences.

2. Persistence is Wasteful

What people will want is content on demand — not a false “land-centric” view of content that can only be accessed via pushing your avatar into a crowded (=laggy) or empty (=lonely) area. I think a more interesting target is “Placeness” which helps people understand content and consume it. But Placeness does not have to be persistent and can be delivered to multiple instances and even allow variance. So rather than have people queuing to enter a virtual area like King Tut’s tomb, we can provide that on-demand in whatever configuration a user wants. As well, if virtual content is not needed it is not rezzed and consuming server resource. It would sit in a database and be called when someone needs it.

3. Online Integration Needs Context

While people will want an immersive experience online, they don’t want to be cut-off from the web threads or have to register a new account. Facebook already bridges a lot of this. But the main point on integration is from a user experience perspective–in that you do things on the web or on mobile and they are seamlessly pulled into the virtual or push back out.  The virtual experience should not be some isolated experience.

4. Technical Hurdles

It still isn’t that easy to get into a virtual online session and move around. We still see a lot of issues with people trying to use wireless and laptops and getting in, but then having crashes, lag etc. A wired connection is a lot more stable.  School environments have a lot of firewall issues as well. We have a new Unity-based browser viewer that may address some of this, but not without some issues.

5. Lack of Compelling Content

We have about 8-10 hours of content on Heritage Key now which is very engaging, but of course it is not that vast or varied. In fact no one grid can ever be enough to meet the interests of the entire online userbase.  And content will need also to be more complex and high-quality to justify getting paid for it. There is also an issue here about what platforms to build new content for. I don’t see how anyone can make big investments in closed platforms where the created assets are not easy to archive or repurpose. Further content creators need clear copyright control over their work.

A Vision of the 3D Web Future

Our vision of the Virtual 3D Immersive Experience that should be more compelling might be described as (ok this is still a work in progress):

* 3D = not 2.5D

* High fidelity = photorealism for content including Avatars (of course this can be styled, but point is about quality and detail)

* Immersive = makes you feel like you are in a place. So actually if this is right the idea of having a virtual experience embedded in a browser is not that important.

* On-Demand = how you want it, when, where you want it

* Avatar-centric = built around user experience and social interactions. Avatars also need better, more fluid controls and be reactive to users in a rich manner.

* Useful = adds value to tasks, transactions, processes that are needed. I think this is a hard challenge to meet and in general it is difficult to deliver. There are a lot of opportunities for making entertaining education content, but this market is difficult monetize. So, beyond shooter games what will consumers find interesting?

* Pay-to-Use =Better Monetization Strategies. If making money on selling “land” is not scalable then what is? Advertising is obvious, but will need the scale that is missing at this stage. Paid to play will hit the quantity/quality challenge. Yet, pay to play is working for kids online and of course WoW makes it happen.

* Federated = thousands of interconnected grids all opt-in and controlled by their own grid owners. Moving between these grids should be seamless and secure.

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McDonalds is co-promoting KFPW with the usual in-store schmere. DreamWorks will also have in-world advertising. [and how much clickstream data are they collecting on kids and will they share it with parents?] The site will further have live moderators and some special software (heh) to track bad behaviour. Site is charging kids (err..parents) $5.95/month = $71.40/year to train pets karate and earn sashes.

It all seems a bit crass and unnecessary, although it looks pretty. DreamWorks is looking to make more money–fair enough, but do kids really need more of this kind of entertainment? Is it just creating addictive dependencies on empty stimulation? Let’s get kids ready for WoW and more violent shooter games? Will kids one day go “Panda” instead of “Postal”?

Says Nancy over at Mommies w/Style blog when she saw the preview:  “I loved the safety features. As a mom of a 4 1/2 year old who now uses the computer regularly — I liked the Parent Panel. It lets parents oversee and manage their child’s account.” Don’t feel too secure though as Habbo and other site users are often targets for phishing and other scams. See some notes from GData, especially on phone scams. “G Data recommends that all parents visit age-based sites together with their children. Parents should keep an eye on their children’s activities on the net.”

Kids can join these VW’s and try to avoid live moderators (are they state certified to supervise kids?), watch for the local bullies, avoid twisted adults, dodge spammers, scammers and phishers and also stay out of the clutches of Mom and Dad. Well, I guess maybe they are learning something useful after all?  The Escapist Blog notes that “Parents can also play and earn in-game items for their offspring.”

Anyway, I think Kids VW’s are a shady cocktail of what is “good for kids” and what is fast money for the merchandising people that target kid demographics scientifically. More disturbing is the effort invested by massive corporates into delving into their little, developing brains to suss out what will make them junkies.  Clearly manipulation of this scale should only used on adults.

The future 3D Web will not be necessarily any better in terms of content and or risk–but we can hope there will be more choice and more inspired use of web technology. Like SL back in 2008, we can expect to see all kinds of random stuff, some useful things, a lot of total junk, but also areas of amazing, inspired creativity.

Some notes on how Kids Virtual Worlds today and the 3D Web in the near enough future might compare:

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Rezzable created an on-line virtual questing environment to support Ytouring ‘s Starfish production where students learn through questing in a 3D environment about Scurvy and Clinical Trials. Steamfish website was created to hold all the information for the students to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials also see their scores, watch videos and link to other relevant sites.  After seeing Starfish audiences are invited to enter Steamfish a specially created world. First they create their own character (avatar) on the Steamfish Website . In character they arrive on board the recently ‘shipwrecked’ Stella Maris. This is where they start their quest to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials.  If you want to start your quest please click here to learn more at Rezzable.

The Steamfish game was developed by Rezzable as a virtual experience using Opensim technology.  The Opensim platform allows for more free-form immersion in a 3D narrative environment, the ability to surround players with objects small and large to investigate for enhanced learning, and the layering of a game engine to coordinate progress and scoring. In the game, players learn about the origins and basis for clinical trials by becoming part of an alternate-history version of the Lind scurvy trial of 1748, so a number of challenges were weighted heavily to that part of the story: including visits to the doctor for diagnosis, symptom reporting, and treatment. Woven in with those elements were the kinds of quests that help restore order to the ship, and locate enough equipment and knowledge to call for rescue.

How to Get Started:

Quick Tips to Get you started on your Steamfish Quest:

• Create your avatar at Rezzable
• Download of the viewer to be able to access the 3D environment
• Click on this link to access directly to SteamFish
• Click on the panel on the left side of the door in Steamfish arrival area
• Accept the hud ( Left hand side blue panel will come down)
• Open inventory on the bottom panel and find Steamfish Hud right click to wear it
• Now You are ready to start your quest go through the doors ! Good Luck!

Designing a questing system in a 3D world  to achieve a successful learning environment for 11- 15 years old Secondary school kids have been a great challenge.

Asked Fran Wilde, who is the lead builder in the project,  about the challenges of designing the quest in a 3D Environment :

‘There were a couple of primary challenges in designing Steamfish.  We needed to craft a storyline and a visual space that supported the quest elements and the educational goals of the project.   We had to make sure the quests had a good balance of different types of actions and expectations, as well as enough imagination to make them interesting, relevant,  substantive, and immersive.

A major challenge was keeping the material accurate, while keeping the experience from being dry or boring. That meant we needed to rely on all sorts of devices, from various objects that offered clothing and hints towards completing other tasks, to developing machines, tools, and dialogue that would capture the eye and the imagination.  Lastly, teaching the players how the game worked, and helping them feel comfortable playing and knowledgeable about what was expected of them at every stage was important, especially because this was a new platform to many.  User testing helped us define key points where additional hints were needed, quests could be refined, and signage and visual clues could help support the game play.  The game HUD (Heads Up Display) that Ordinal Malaprop scripted and we designed to show health, achievements, and quest instructions – as well as other collected items; and the feedback to players developed as a narrative from elements within the game were key elements in achieving that goal.’

How do you see the virtual worlds working together with education/schools?

I think that this is one major reason why I am involved with designing interactive elements in Virtual Worlds – because the opportunity for rich, immersive, adaptive experiences and activities — no matter where a student or school is located — is so vast on this platforms.  In the future, I see some virtual worlds being places that individuals and groups of learners can take private field trips to any virtual place, *at any period of time*, and  engage in a set of activities that is potentially tailored to their curriculum, before going ‘home’ again to reflect on their experiences and possibly build on them in their own virtual regions.  Rezzable’s ability to create a private, active region on demand for a group makes the first part of this possible now. I’m hoping that interaction becomes part of education in new ways – with both programmed aspects and live players who can move a lesson forward through a virtual experience.  I think with tools like these, education groups can use virtual worlds to teach, to immerse, and to connect with their own students as well as with students and educators interested in the same topics anywhere on the planet.

Steam fish project has successfully been integrated with web and 3D environment where we created both platforms to enrich the students with learning tools and material about the given subject and at the same time encouraging them to participate in a competitive environment where they are challenged. At the end of the quest each school can check the result on the leader board to see who is leading the quest. The website opens up to endless amounts of information about the subject if the kids were to learn more in this case about Scurvy or Clinical trials. In our experience, as the young minds feel involved in the process of learning they feel more concerned about the given subject. 

If you would like to learn more about the quest please sign up at Rezzable and start your quest now. If you would like to know more about what we are building in Heritage Key you can also follow us on Heritage Key Virtual

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Visit King Tut's Tomb online now and make your own discovery of the most amazing artefacts ever discovered.

Tech Radar did a nice little piece on Heritage Key recently saying:

It’s a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea. While Heritage Key is predominantly an educational website aimed at amateur historians and fans of archaeology, its heart is the 3D virtual exhibit.

They hit the key point really here, about what will bring virtual online to mainstream users.  At the core of any community-site there must be something to do and for Heritage Key that is about exploring and understanding more about ancient world places.  The virtual online experience will give people a great insight into places, artefacts and the overall history.  Virtual Tourism is becoming an interesting area also. It allows for a better visit or give a sense of place you may never have the chance to really go to. When people GoVirtual they will also meet other explorers and then the real-time social interaction kicks in.

Dinah Greek commented about Heritage Key for Computing.co.uk:

An interactive website devoted to historical studies offers visitors more than the chance to explore ancient civilisations using historical recreations.Wonderful those these 3D reconstructions are, the Heritage Keysite also offers people the chance to join live online lectures, ask questions and join forums where they can meet like-minded people.

Dave Bailey in his write-up about us asked a question more about how virtual online can be used by CIOs in future:

So the question for businesses is how big is the opportunity to monetise commercial web sites by introducing a virtual world of online activity?

UK firm Rezzable is one company pushing the boundaries of virtual world technology, both technically and in identifying how such a business model could work.

virtual online environments can deliver high photo-realistic objects and immersive activities now.

What are some of the issues blocking mainstream adoption for online virtual experiences?

So why isn’t everyone with a computer and good broadband trying out a virtual online experience? Well, they are doing other stuff online that sucks-up a lot (maybe too much even) of their time. More specifically there are some issues in the way:

• Lack of quality 3D content – 2.5D just isn’t good enough for non-kids. We think there are some interesting changes in flow now that will make it easier/faster to create photo-realistic content that can be streamed online. Watch Unity. Watch for the SL mesh viewer. Watch Web Alive.
• Variety — one thing that SL sorta has right is the way in which you can zap between different experiences. People don’t want to have to log-in/out and remake their accounts just to look at something for a quick blast. We are looking at this issue now and expect to have a good enough solution to move between our grids = Rezzable and Heritage Key with one identity and consistent avatar. Once this is in place we can extend to other grids.
• Something fun enough to do – We have released King Tut Virtual on our OpenSim-based grid and in general someone can wander around for 1-2 hours checking out some of the most amazing objects ever discovered. They can be seen in incredible detail. But we also think mainstream users and gamers need more goal oriented activities, like quests or contests.  Our new work on Stonehenge Virtual is starting to address this, but I think there is still a long way to get the mix of realistic content and activities right.
• The Avatars are not good enough — sure they move around in a jerky way that actually you can get used to. But the avatars are not the online proxy for real people ye. Mainly they are not expressive enough or smart enough to do stuff.
• Tech Stack is still unstable — it has gotten dramatically better, but we still suffer from random crashes and lag and generally high enough levels to exhaust enthusiasts. It seems clear though how to make the tech work better. It will just need focused work to improve key things like physics, viewer, scripting. See my OpenSim issues list here.

Visit King Tut online here.

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Go Check it out,  OpenSim works.

OpenSim works, is getting better and will be the future of the 3D Web.

First thing to point out is that we are using OpenSim in combination with Drupal as the core user and even grid admin system.  So your own usage may not be the same if you are just working with OpenSim all by itself. We also have about 10 servers cranked-up to support all of this on a cluster sharing 50mb bandwidth.  Info on the tech layout here.

In general OpenSim has come quite a long way in the last year. There is still quite some road in front to get it to be a sort of 3D Web Server like Apache. It is very complex–maybe too much so, but nonetheless it works. And it works a lot better than it did a year ago.

The greatest strength of OpenSim is that it is opensource and has a smart enough set of committed developers beating on it.  We have been luck enough to work with a few of them and meet even a few more.  Because it is opensource we have been able to create our own integrations and services around the core.

The core dvelopers have cleared-up a lot of real problematic stuff like cross-region boarders, assets vanishing, general caching/grey-goo. You can give folders now! The regions are snappy. The build issues are still there on some level, but the workarounds are also better understood. The most painful build issues lately have been with scripting (and not overloading scripting).

The use cases that Rezzable is focused on, try to aim for the what OpenSim does right now and not steer directly into known gaps. So, again you own use cases might trigger different issues.

Below is my list of Top 10 Issues we see with OpenSim —

OpenSim Issue 1: Physics is still weak

Physics engine options are not that good right now. This causes a lot of problems and work-arounds.  Shooting, dropping, collisions and driving are basically to be avoided.  The physics engine also seems to create a lot of issues with the bounding boxes and sometimes you can’t walk through doors easily or phantom prims get solid-ish.

The obvious solution here is to find a way to plug-in better physics engines. It would seem that OpenSim will support this, but so far I have not heard of anything implemented in the last year that changes the performance.

OpenSim Issue 2: SL Hangovers

OpenSim seems (and we really try to avoid most of this stuff) to have a lot of SL-oriented functions especially around land, parcels that are more interesting to SL-copycat virtual worlds than our interest in 3D online experiences.  Net Net is the core code isn’t as performance-oriented as we would like to see it.

The biggest gap vs SL is that OpenSim does not have a commerce feature and of course no $L which is still a trusted micro-currency.

OpenSim Issue 3: Perms are Not There

We did quite a bit of work to implement a fairly basic permissions concept, mainly using Drupal roles. This works fine for Heritage Key, and we also have a separate “sub-grid” for build work. On the Rezzable grid it will require a lot more manual switch-flipping to have quasi-group/collaborative control on access and prim-perms. We have not implemented any commerce concepts (and may not either). I think the whole issue of perms/DRM needs a more complete architecture to avoid the issues beleaguering/demoralizing SL content creators.

OpenSim Issue 4: Lack of Docs

I suppose if you like to read code, you should have all you want with opensource OpenSim–but for those of you, like me, that like something with pictures and some summary, we are out of luck. It is more of a Ouija-board process with the developers to understand what it is, does, might be. And of course things are also changing as new releases flow through–but getting a roadmap certainly would require a crystal ball and some incense.

OpenSim Issue 5: Admin Tools

We have made quite a few tools to track users, manage resources. I think we should even be able to share these (once we write-up what they do somehow).  I have seen that there are some basic tools also floating around to make some reports/alerts, but these are quite simple.  I would hope to see more user info and logging–especially relating to inventory and server memory.

OpenSim Issue 6: Voice

Vivox apparently has a OpenSim implementation. I have not seen it, but the gang at IBM seems to be messing with it. It would seem to make sense that it works. It is not free, so there is more of a cost consideration than a functional one.  We have been more focused on lectures and talk-show use cases and are using skype-to-stream solutions which works fine and also has the advantage of being broadcast to the web.

OpenSim Issue 7: Mesh Support / SL Viewer

Being able to deploy mesh assets is also a gap on the SL grid (although not on Blue Mars). Main points about this are 1) more cost-effective production for sculptural content 2) more realism for objects. I think Mesh will also need careful design and usage so as not to kill performance, not of asset serving, but of the user experience with viewing/streaming. Blue Mars looks great, but has apparently great than 1 gig client with all the meshes inside it.  The Mesh topic also hits on the Issue of OpenSim not having a native viewer. All the viewers are basically SL viewers in the first instance.  So there is a lot of overhead, random issues and workarounds to get the SL viewer to work — but our guys at Imprudence have done it for us! They rock! And even the new Imprudence code we are using on HK/Rezzable viewers works much better in the last 3-4 months.

OpenSim Issue 8: Concurrency

Concurrency on light interaction areas we think will scale out at 20-25 concurrent on a region. Now, this is a lot different than on SL for a couple of key reasons. First if you are running your own server, a region is less of a cost issue than it is on SL. So you can have more regions each with less content. I think the main focus is on server-loading then. We are running as much RAM as we can get on a machine and hope to see server concurrency at 400-500. The best news about OpenSim vs SL here is that you can have cross-region tps scripted. If you visit our King Tut Virtual you will basically visit 6 different regions on OpenSim that was just 1 in SL. So on a cost-basis OpenSim has better cost per concurrent user than SL by far (SL $300/month for 50 concurrent and OpenSim $350/month for 400+ concurrent).

OpenSim Issue 9: Scripting

We just had to unravel some scripting to get a new project to run with even a target of 10 concurrent. The good news is that the OpenSim modules allow for server-side coding instead of scripting. The bad news is that coding is more complex and of course see Issue 4 about about lack of docs. Scripting will still be very important, but I am hoping we can get a lot done in the code and create modules/integrations that way. We are making more Bots now that so far seem to work nicely. These Bots will access our CMS and have AI features for NPC interaction (= they will do smart stuff with our existing .com content).  Again, benefit here is that Bots will be also accessible from the web pages, iPhone etc.

OpenSim Issue 10: Cross-Grid Movements

Maintaining identity, roles and assets is still the biggest isssue holding back larger adoption of the OpenSim platform.  We are aware of other work and have our own initiatives in the area. I would think that within 6 months it will be a few clicks to move an avatar with inventor between grids effectively. I can see where a facebook connect will work well and I also am hopeful that DRM issues can be addressed as well.  Right now we are testing mechanisms to move avatar between our own grids (ok, that isn’t too sexy, but it proves a point).

So there it is. Stay tuned we are working on these issues as are many other OpenSim project, developers and enthusiasts. I think a year from now it will be even a bigger step forward than over the last 12 months.

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