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Second Life Client Open Sourced

In my fourth blog post of the day, Linden Labs has Open Sourced the client for Second Life in a blog post entitled Embracing the Inevitable.

Linden Labs always said that Open Sourcing the code was part of the long term plan, I remember an interview on LUGRadio a while back. It's a shame it's only the client and not the server-side code, but they say they are staying open minded about that. One step at a time.

My dream (as I described in March) would be a distributed system where anyone could set up their own server. It would use web standards and would just be like a collection of 3D web pages in X3D. It might be difficult to attain the same kind of user experience you get with Second Life, but it would be a great extension of the web.

Update: I've started a wiki page posing the question "What would be required to create a 3D web with a similar user experience to that of online virtual worlds like Second Life?". You can log in with username:iwontspam password:ipromise or start a new account. I'd value input.

tola – Mon, 2007 – 01 – 08 15:45
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Have you come across Croquet

Have you come across Croquet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_project)? Thought it sounded up your street.

Elliot (not verified) – Tue, 2007 – 01 – 09 15:47
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Yes, but what about web standards?

Thank you for the link. Actually yes I have heard of that project, it was mentioned in the original blog post I linked to from back in March.

OpenCroquet looks brilliant, it's both open source and designed to be decentralised. It's in the hands of a lot of academics rather than being developed purely as a commercial venture. But while Croquet is based on a similar model to the World Wide Web, it isn't a direct extension of it. It's also heavily based around one programming language... though they are working on a Python and JavaScript compiler. I am interested in OpenCroquet though because there's a lot of work going into it and there's a lot to understand.

I have a vision of something which basically *is* the web, but in 3D. In fact, I think the user should be able to choose how they wish to view a given web resource - in plain text, 2D shapes, 3D shapes, simulated speech etc. This can be done with content negotiation in HTTP. The same resource could be rendered by lots of different devices, from a light switch to a 3D headset.

There are web standards for this kind of thing, like X3D (sort of a 3D HTML). But what I'm interested to know is whether it's possible to create a user experience like Second Life using these standards. It might be that it's just not possible and the protocols used for the web just don't have the features to support this kind of system. If that's the case, then a bottom-up design like OpenCroquet is probably the best approach. But the advantages of extending the web directly could be huge...

tola – Tue, 2007 – 01 – 09 18:56
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