OpenSim versus Second Life
Second Life has been in existence long enough for the Open Source community to now have developed a completely free version of Second Life called OpenSim. OpenSim is available for anyone to download and runs on Microsoft Windows based servers and even on Microsoft Windows based personal computers. There is also a version of OpenSim that will run on the most current installations of Linux. Technically OpenSim is still not fully developed – it is currently in version 0.76, with version 1.0 being a full release – but having tested it, it appears to work much better than Second Life.
One particularly well refined stand-alone installer for personal computers running Microsoft Windows is available from OSGrid: http://www.osgrid.org This installer includes a Microsoft database in which a user’s land information is stored. More importantly, it also includes a way for personal computer users to attach their land simulation to the existing OSGrid land mass. This means that every personal computer can potentially extend the OSGrid.
As good and as promising as OSGrid’s standalone installer is, there are two features I feel still need to be further developed. Currently, in order to allow a user’s avatar to appear the same when it moves from one simulation to the next, all of the user’s appearance information and inventory are stored on OSGrid’s servers. Because of the loss I suffered of Dante Portland, I will never trust another virtual world server to hold my inventory again.
My solution is that virtual worlds users have the option of providing their own web server space to store their personal inventory. This will allow users to maintain their appearance and keep all of the possessions that they own regardless of what simulation or virtual world that they visit. I know that both Comcast and Verizon provide web server space for users, and I suspect that most other high speed Internet providers offer this as well. All that the user would need to do is provide log-on credentials to allow the virtual worlds they visit to be able to save information to their servers. There is also a question of how a user would protect their inventory so that other people could not copy it, but I am sure that this problem of encryption could easily solved. It is also likely that this approach to distributing inventory would provide faster data access than if only one server were providing this information. Even if a user’s server were not fast enough, the virtual world server could cache this information if needed. But more importantly, since user information would be stored on their own servers they could make a backup copy whenever they wished.
The other feature that I feel is needed is a one click installer that allows webmasters to install OpenSim on low cost, non-dedicated Linux servers. Since this is a special technical topic, I have written a separate page that covers this information. OpenSim Needs a One-Click Installer.
The most instructive part of configuring an OpenSim grid are their server guidelines. There is clear documentation of how much server resources are recommended for the number of concurrent users in a given simulation. Following these guidelines, I have personally tested my own OpenSim installations, both on personal computers and on commercial servers. What I have found is that if I do not exceed the recommendation for separate objects or users in a given simulation, the speed of image download is at most a few seconds, and the avatars operating in my virtual world have no noticeable user lag. Since these recommendations are well known I can only conclude that the Second Life servers are both well below specifications and horrendously oversold, despite there being strict limits on the number of avatars in each simulation at a given time.
Finally, it is useful to know that in addition to there being open source virtual world servers there are also open source virtual world browsers. I would need to write another web site to cover how these open source virtual world browsers are better than the ones offered by Linden Lab, but I will name a few that I have used. Among the best of these alternative virtual world browsers are Firestorm, Dolphin, and Catznip. A partial list virtual world viewers can be found at: http://wiki.Second Life.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory
More can be found by doing a Google search on the term, “virtual world viewers.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=virtual+world+viewers&oq=virtual+world+viewer&aqs=chrome.0.59j57j0l2j62l2.6837j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8