Avatar portability

Basic Idea

To enable user avatar travel from a grid service to another grid service, There are 2 problem to be considered:

1. How to enable foreign user login - Authentication
2. (If a foreign user can login)How to get a foreign user's belongings(including appearance, inventory)

To achieve the 1st, client side changes are needed. SO, so far, I have only implemented 2nd, and would like to explan my idea:

Authentication

This is only partially implemented, and most of this topic need special client support. a simple demo will be avaliable somewhere soon. For detailed idea:

OpenID for data portability in virtual world

Avatar Portability

In "users" table, "UserInventoryURL" and "UserAssetURL" have been there for a long time, and they are not used yet. My idea starts from the 2 properties;

1 UserInventoryUrl UserAssetUrl

• U1 is an user of GridService G1, so probably, U1's "UserInventoryURL" and "UserAssetURL" are pointing to G1's default Inventory/Asset server.
• R1 is a regionserver in GridService G2, so R1 used to fetch assets from G2's default Asset server.

2 Fetch data from multiple Inventory/Asset Data

• U1 login to R1, If U1 want to also bring in its apearance, R1 should have the ability that can get U1's appearance from U1's "UserInventoryUrl" and get U1's assets(textures) from "UserAssetUrl".
• So, in this case, because an asset request("RequestImagePacket") only sends asset UUID to R1, R1 has to determine which asset server provides the reuqested UUID.

3 ForeginAssetHashTable

>R1 has to determine which asset server provides the reuqested UUID

• At the right-bottom of this picture, "ForeginAssetHashTable" is used to solve this.
• When an user login,
  1. region gets its "inventoryurl", "asseturl" from its "profile"
  2. region gets its appearance(UUIDs) from its "inventoryurl", and add the UUIDs into "ForeginAssetHashTable"
  3. Then when client send a "RequestImage(UUID)", RegionServer can look up into "ForeginAssetHashTable" to get the proper "AssetUrl"

Implementation

Authentication

not prepared yet

Avatar Portability

4 Implementation - ForeginAssetHashTable.Add

5 Implementation - ForeginAssetHashTable.Get

6 Implementation - ForeginAssetHashTable.Remove