How to Fix Second Life
The shortest answer of how to fix Second Life is to decentralize it. Right now, Second Life is where Prodigy was more than twenty ago during its decline. Linden Lab has proprietary content that they are trying to protect while alternative options become cheaper and more commonly available. At one time, web servers were expensive, running on proprietary hardware and using software that cost tens of thousands of dollars. In time, the Open Source movement produced free operating systems and free web servers that ran on low cost industry standard hardware. These Open Source servers now account for more than 90% of all web servers in the world. That same Open Source movement has now produced a free version of Second Life called OpenSim.
Now with the growth of OpenSim, it is possible for anyone with a web server, or even just a high speed Internet connection, to host their own virtual world. One example of an Open Source virtual world that is extensible by users is called OSGrid, which currently contains over 7,000 user contributed simulations. Linden Lab is now preventing inter-network linking in an attempt to protect its market share. The near collapse of Internet Service Providers offering proprietary consumer content demonstrates that this approach will fail in time.
A partial list of OpenSim alternatives to Second Life is available on the Grid List:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List
Based on the increasing popularity of these virtual worlds, it is inevitable that they will become a standard part of the internet vocabulary in the same way that Adobe Flash has become common on so many web pages. Going further, Flash’s functionality has been incorporated into HTML5 and will ultimately be included in every Operating System.
There are three significant features of OpenSim that will be needed for virtual worlds to become a standard part of the Internet vocabulary:
- A standard virtual world installer. This is necessary for hosting companies that currently provide installers for other Open Source software like WordPress and Drupal to provide hosting for virtual worlds. One of the critical components for this to be useful is an installer that will function on Linux-based servers running Apache, as opposed to the commercial Windows-based servers that OpenSim currently runs on. Another essential part of this installer is an automated way for simulations to be added to an existing grid. I have detailed my proposal for the existing and needed components for this installer separately. OpenSim needs an integrated installer. There is already an installer available for Windows based PCs and distributed by OSGrid.
- A browser plug-in for virtual worlds. Currently Second Life and OpenSim both use standalone browsers. The threshold for using Second Life and OpenSim worlds is made higher by the need to install and configure an additional piece of software on a user’s computer. If virtual worlds could create a browser plug-in, they would be more commonly used.This is such an important step that these virtual world browser plug-ins have been in discussion for many years. I know that Linden Lab beta tested one a couple of years back, and I know that there is a browser plug-in available to log onto the Spoton3D grid. I have also read that Tipodean Technologies has a browser based OpenSim viewer in beta, although I have not tried it. I do not know of any general use browser-based OpenSim viewer, but I am sure that there will be one available in time.
- Individual inventory repositories. Currently the model of Second Life and of OpenSim is that when a user logs onto a specific grid, the user’s specific inventory including their appearance and everything that they own are kept with the grid. If you have a name and an appearance in one OpenSim grid and you then visit another OpenSim grid, you will not have your possessions with you and your avatar will be set to a default appearance.
An alternative model would be for a user’s inventory to reside on their personal computer. Having inventory reside on each user’s computer would allow them to keep their appearance no matter where they went, but there are also problems with this solution. If a user visited a simulation with a hundred other avatars present, each user would need to download a copy of that user’s appearance to their computer from the user’s computer. Even with current Torrent and other file sharing technology, this approach is likely to provide a poor user experience.
One solution to improve user experience with inventories supplied from several computers would be for the distributed inventories to be cached on the server. When a user logged onto a virtual world, the user’s inventory would then be copied to the grid server. Naturally, the second time a user logged into a grid this download time would be much less because the server would only need to download the difference in their inventory if there were any.
What I propose as a better approach is for users to have the option of supplying FTP logon credentials to a web server where their virtual world inventory is stored. Because this inventory will be provided from many web servers, it is likely that this approach could even be faster than if this data were coming from one common computer. Most users who have a high speed Internet connection do have a limited amount of web server space offered with their accounts. However, since OpenSim inventories are small, being encoded in XML and JPG files, this limited server space should be adequate for most users. Of course, if a user’s server is not fast enough, virtual world server caching could still be used.
There are a couple of other problems to be solved. There would need to be options for encrypting the user’s inventory file, and encrypting the connection between the user’s inventory and the virtual server. But more important than the speed of data access is that the user would not lose all of their virtual property as I did when Dante Portland was deactivated. Until I can copy my inventory to my home computer as an additional backup at regular intervals to be sure about the security of my virtual inventory, I will never be part of another virtual community.