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From OpenSimulator
About OpenSim
The OpenSimulator Project is a BSD Licensed Virtual Worlds Server which can be used for creating and deploying 3D Virtual Environments. It has been developed by several developers. Out of the box, the OpenSim can be used to create a Second Life(tm) like environment, able to run in a standalone mode or connected to other OpenSim instances through built in grid technology. It can also easily be extended to produce more specialized 3D interactive applications.
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OpenSim is written in C#, and can run under Mono or the Microsoft .NET runtimes. Due to its clean modular nature it is possible to significantly extend functionality yourself via plug-in modules to suit your application. OpenSim is currently in the alpha development stage, with active testing of development versions encouraged. If you're interested in contributing, please read our Contributions Policy, and learn what OpenSim's values are.
History
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The OpenSim project was founded in January 2007 by Darren Guard (also known as MW), who, like so many other people, saw the potential for an open source 3d Virtual Environments server that could be used for many different applications. Also like many others, Darren had watched many other attempts at open source virtual world servers fail, often due to the massive task of writing both a server and a client at the same time.
Then in January 2007, the Second Life(tm) client was released as open source, and libsl (a BSD open source library for creating custom clients that could connect to Second Life(tm)), was reaching the point of being stable. So the idea of opensim was born, with the initial goal of creating a proof of concept server that the SL client could connect to and allow some basic functions. The idea was that over time the project scope would hopefully become much more than its humble beginnings. This has happened, with the current goal of developing a standard virtual world platform that any application could use as a framework. While we still maintain compatibility with the Second Life client, we have been working towards supporting several, other clients.
More information, see History.
Features
Check out the list of growing features to get an idea of what OpenSim is capable of.
Future Goals
Check out the Roadmap, to see what's currently being worked on.
Contributing to the Project
OpenSim is an open source project. This means that anyone who is interested in the project can contribute to it. You don't have to be a developer to help the project, people who can test and provide feedback helps the project tremendously. The best way to learn about and contribute to the project is to log into our IRC channel, located on irc.freenode.net in #opensim (for users) and #opensim-dev (for developers).
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