New non-Linden grid opening [updated]
by Tateru Nino 
Feb 10th 2008 at 2:57AM
Filed under: Betas, New titles, News items, Second Life, Virtual worlds
Adam Zaius Quiplash announces the opening of Open Life, an alternative Second Life grid developed in conjunction with Finnish developer RealXtend (apparently the companies Admino and Ludocraft are in there somewhere too, but we're still a little hazy on the big picture [Did I mention we're a bit hazy? Pardon the dust]) - who have developed a custom viewer with additional features (like real 3D meshes instead of prims, python scripting, textures-via-HTTP, multiple attachment points per body part, and more) that are unsupported in Second Life currently.
The new grid is going live in the next few hours, apparently, and it seems that everyone's invited. Open Life appears to be renting out simulators for $75US/month. We don't have a lot more information available to us right now, but it all looks very exciting , though reportedly there are stability issues that make the new grid only for the adventurous.
[Update: Okay, this is a bit of a muddle, and we've put together a correction based on better information, check below the fold]
Correction time:
There's actually more than one thread going around and they actually cover more territory than they appear. The post we linked to here by Quiplash, is actually talking about two different things.
One is the Open Life grid, as posted by Quiplash. As we mentioned above. The newest non-Linden grid on the block. The second part is all the nifty extra features that are being worked on by RealXtend -- stuff that had been being hinted at, but aren't presently complete, a part of Open Life, or yet associated with Open Life. Somewhere in the tangle we got Adam Zaius' DeepThink Labs accidentally mixed in -- though they're clearly not involved with this announcement to the best of our knowledge. Though they are apparently working on something dark and secret that we want to know more about.
Sorry about that, folks. We got the mistaken impression that Adam Zaius and Deepgrid Labs were associated with Quiplash and Open Life, and that doesn't appear to be the case at this stage - at least until someone tells us differently.
Oops. I'll just stand here while you throw fruit at me. We apologize for the confusion and now return you to your regularly scheduled comedy of errors.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rik Riel said on 9:32AM 2-10-2008
Apparently it's popular, or they are running their web server on a Commodore 64, because the link won't load for me.
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 10:22AM 2-10-2008
It's based on Second Life's grid technology in part, Rik, not Habitat.
http://tinyurl.com/yxvqsa xD
Patchouli Woollahra said on 10:26AM 2-10-2008
Part of the reason why the link isn't working in part is because they picked today to migrate to a new toolset for managing avatars on the grid. More's the pity really. If you had a avatar from earlier OpenLife testing, you're already in, technically.
Daman Tenk said on 10:24AM 2-10-2008
Yay!
A Second Life without Linden Labs.
/me is happy
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 10:37AM 2-10-2008
My first loyalty is to a healthy metaverse, and I acknowledge that it would be foolhardy beyond a certain complexity threshold, which SL seems to be inevitably approaching, to plan the future of the grid in one spot as Linden Labs has done to date.
Having said that, one must remember to 饮水思源。"to recognise where one has come from originally." It's okay not to cloud one's judgement with a bias towards Linden Lab, but a little nostalgia and recognition is due.
Daman Tenk said on 10:52AM 2-10-2008
"Having said that, one must remember to 饮水思源。"to recognise where one has come from originally." It's okay not to cloud one's judgement with a bias towards Linden Lab, but a little nostalgia and recognition is due."
Let me make myself clearer.
Linden Labs are great visionaries, and alright programmers. The SL codebase isn't the greatest, but remembering that (for example) LSL was created in one single night - that's kinda impressive.
HOWEVER, Linden Labs lack the qualities needed to RUN and LEAD the virtual world. Something I hope this new grid will do a much better job at.
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 11:22AM 2-10-2008
http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html makes it clear that beyond generalities, NOBODY is qualified to do so. the only thing that will seriously get us into the future of cyberspace is a morass of people bumbling around, with the occasional foot-stomping and fingers up your nose it implies.
there are also other aspects that that early paper addresses briefly. it makes for good readingif you're into metaversal studies.
Daman Tenk said on 11:41AM 2-10-2008
I vehemently disagree.
Just like the Real World has police and judges, and just like Roleplaying Games have Dungeon Masters - everything needs an authority to run it.
Anarchy is never a good thing. It may make exploiters and griefers happy but just look at Second life.
Griefers run rampant and are unstopped, DMCA reports for stolen content are ignored - further encouraging copyrights violations, etc.
All that exists because Linden Labs refuses to do anything about it.
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Tateru Nino said on 12:36PM 2-10-2008
It is to be noted that there is another non-Linden grid out there. There's Central Grid as well: http://www.centralgrid.com/
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dandellion Kimban said on 12:58PM 2-10-2008
... and OSGrid http://www.osgrid.org/
and DeepGrid http://www.deepgrid.com/
:)
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 3:07PM 2-10-2008
And I still can't port my wildcat avatar across grids.
Joy.
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dandellion Kimban said on 4:24PM 2-10-2008
oh, you'll wait for that.... after coders lawyers have to come to the party...
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Patchouli Woollahra said on 5:37AM 2-11-2008
I don't really think too much of that. I'm considering enabling Residents to get a copy sent to OpenGrid on a Gentlemen's Agreement as soon as I figure out how to work the system.
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daTwitch said on 9:03AM 2-11-2008
Wow,
It's amazing how much uninformed chatter can be found in the blogosphere.
openlifegrid has been around for quite some time, think of this as a 'grand opening' announcement. It is not the only, nor the first such grid. It is, however, the first to pick up OpenSim software from http://opensimulator.org, and try to base a business model on it. Will that work? can a business be built on open source software still labeled 'alpha'? it's been done before; the jury is still out on the relative sensibilities of such endeavors.
For the record, OpenSim software (see the wiki at http://OpenSimultator.org) is free as in beer. It is not even remotely based on Linden Labs grid technology. The *only* common material between OpenSim and the Linden grid is the format and payloads of the communications packets.
This software provides *anyone* the capability to host a grid, standalone regions, or region servers attached to a grid hosted by someone else.
If you are interested in giving this a go your self, access the wiki, and find the instructions for obtaining and building the software from the source code via svn. It's the best way to get the latest revision of the code. FIllow the instructions on the wiki carefully for configuration. This is -not- an apache webserver. You cannot simply run the software and toss a couple of region descriptions in.
Once you have your region(s) working in standalone mode, you may wish to connect them to a running grid. If so, drop by http://osgrid.org/ for instructions connecting to this community testing grid. Dont let 'testing' fool you - we are emphasising 24x7 uptime as a goal for the regions on this grid. Connecting your regions to osgrid.org is free as in beer, just like the software.
If you have additional questions concerning OpenSim software or OSGrid, please feel free to give us a shout on #opensim or #osgrid on Freenode IRC.
James G. Stallings
Operator, OSGrid.org
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dandellion Kimban said on 11:04AM 2-11-2008
daTwitch, thanks for supplying us with info we already have.
One thing is not clear to me though. How something that is BSD licensed is free just as beer and not as speech too?
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Ric Mollor said on 12:39PM 2-11-2008
This will become extremely interesting because of the BSD license of the OpenSim project. ANY startup can develop it's own enhancements to OpenSim and not be forced to contribute them back to the community.
Because of this there exists a real potential to create a moneymaking venture as a huge number of current SL users are unhappy (and for good reason) with the current state of affairs on the Linden ran grid.
Be sure to read Sakai Openlife's blog entry at
http://www.openlifegrid.com/Blogs/tabid/61/EntryID/3/Default.aspx
to get a glimpse of some of the possibilities. Absolutely fantastic!
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Dusan Writer said on 9:25PM 2-11-2008
Having visited OpenLife and posted it here:
http://dusanwriter.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/the-joy-of-unbearable-lag-crashes-and-bad-hair/
...I can say that, not being an SL old-timer, it feels like visiting what it must have been like in the early days. Lots of virgin land, no ad farms, but laaaaag, glitches, crashes (oh....hmmm...well, like the good old days compared to the ad-farmed good current old days).
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Joshua Meadows said on 3:03PM 2-15-2008
Since this article is still kindof off I wanted to let everyone know that there has been an official press release made available about realXtend, OpenSim and the viewer.
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/7027-now-here-real-shiny-realxtend-joins-opensim.html
OpenLifeGrid is a commercial application of OpenSim code and OpenSim has been around since 2007. The rex viewer is an extension of that and developed for OpenSim and has nothing to do with OpenLifeGrid aside from the fact that OpenLifeGrid is operating on code developed and made available for free by the OpenSim team. While undoubtedly OpenLifeGrid will make use of the rex viewer and server code, the realXtend team developed it for OpenSim and not specifically OpenLifeGrid.
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Tateru Nino said on 2:28AM 2-16-2008
We have been trying to contact RealXTend for almost a week, but their email servers have been non-operational.