[Opensim-dev] avatar system or similar

Fri Apr 11 20:44:57 UTC 2008

Its not at all clear to me which "universal avatar" system will be the one adopted. There are notions from SecondLife with Zero's SLOGP (Second Life Open Grid Protocol). The AWG (Architecture Working Group), IBM has some notions, other developers have notions and REX has notions.

All of these need fleshing out  and discussion in the open. 

As we move forward with OpenSim, personally, I tend to favor the SLOGP notions over others as SecondLife has the greatest momentum. 

What others will favor, I do not know yet. But I do know that some amalgam of all the notions will eventually be the one adopted by OpenSim as we move forward in a world that has as much SecondLife compatibility as possible and uses their official client to reach the greatest number of users.

Charles

----- Original Message ----
From: Jani Pirkola <jpirkola at gmail.com>
To: diva at metaverseink.com; opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 12:28:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] avatar system or similar

Diva,

Your offer is greatly appreciated. As I mentioned a while ago, we are just now merging the newest OpenSim code to us, which makes the patching process back to OpenSim easier. We will have first (still buggy) version of the merged code available 14th of April, next Monday at our sourceforge SVN. We will continue to add patches as they appear to OpenSim to keep codebases aligned and we continue to fix and test things so that they really work. Mikko will start some patching as soon as possible.
If you want to help us, Mikko can add you to the sourceforge project.

Thank you!
Jani 

2008/4/11, Diva Canto <diva at metaverseink.com>:  OK, understood.
If the realXtend programmers-extraordinaires could find a way of usinga proxy, like 3di's  load balancing (or even their proxy +- as is), Ithink that would be a good thing.

My main point is that having inter-grid TPs is a must for anyserious=scalable purposes of virtual worlds (that's what I see fromwhere I stand); you guys already have it, in some form, so there's nopoint in me or others re-inventing the wheel; but it's taking quite awhile to integrate it with OpenSim -- there's been, what, 6 weeks,which is an eternity for this particular high-speed project. I thinkthe reason why it's taking so long is a process mismatch: realXtend didsubstantial changes not only to the code but also to the architectureof OpenSim; OpenSim is all about a very rapid sequence of smallpatches. So let's break what you did in smaller patches so that itplays better with the OpenSim process. If you don't want to do that, Ican try to take a look at your code and see how it could bechunckified/patchified/modularized more efficiently. I would *love* tosee what you did integrated with OpenSim asap.

Jani Pirkola wrote:Hi,

The LL viewer is supposed to login only once and stay connected to thatplace for the whole session. If someone is willing to do "a voodooserver side component" that can act as a proxy between the client anddifferent servers, then it might work. It just seems an awfully lot oftrouble to just be able to use current LL Viewer. 

Maybe OpenViewer guys could also be interested to support the avatararchitecture?

Jani

  2008/4/11, Cristina Videira Lopes <lopes at ics.uci.edu>:              Can't
wait to see that integrated with OpenSim!
    I like
your viewer a lot,  but do you think there is a way
of restructuring this so that it can be used with the regular LL
viewer? Why
does this need your viewer at all? Is it because the login process
requires
additional cooperation from the client? I mean, I understand that the
more fancy
avatar appearance that you have requires changes in the viewer, but I
don't
see why the inter-grid TPs require a different viewer. Isn't there a
way
of separating the inter-grid TPs from the avatar appearance? Could you
explain
that?

    Crista /
Diva

        From:    opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de[mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de]    On Behalf Of Jani Pirkola
    Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:29 PM    
    To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
    Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] avatar system or similar

    Hi,
                          1)     
Will VeriSign or Yahoo – or whomever – be able to set up these
kinds of account services?

Yes that is right. 

                  2)     Does it work more or less the way I described my usage scenario? Thatis, willI be able to go from OSGrid to the public IBM grid under crista at verisignvw.com,assuming both grids accept verisignvw accounts?

yes just like that. You get also possibility to change your account intheteleporting process in case you know that another grid is not acceptingyourexample crista at verisignvw.comaccount (actually this happens if you teleport to Second Life). 

                  3)     
Does this require the use of the realXtend viewer or can this be used
with the
standard LL viewer?

            Currently only realXtend viewer can be used, but I wish that
in the future there will be more support for this architecture. We
maintain the
realXtend viewer so that it can be used to access also SL servers or
standard
OpenSim. The avatar appearance from avatar storage can only be seen by
others
on realXtend servers. The architecture needs support from both server
and
client. 

Jani
            Crista /
Diva

        From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de[mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de]    On Behalf Of Jani Pirkola
    Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 1:20 PM
    To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
    Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] avatar system or similar

        Hi,

Some comments how realXend has implemented things:
        2008/4/10, Michael Wright <michaelwri22 at yahoo.co.uk>:
    I haven't been able to find too much on how the RealXtend avatar
system is
really going to work. And while in some ways I think its a step in the
right
direction,  it also seems to limit a lot of things. I'm not so sure you
should alway have the same avatar for everything. Or should completely
cut the
"region servers" out of the whole process. If I teleport to a region
that has a role playing game, maybe my avatar should automatically
change (at
least clothes, but maybe body as well) to fit into that game. So the
region has
to be able to have some say over the avatar. 

The current realXtend login process gives a control point for regionservers aswell. When a user logs in to a region, the viewer sends URL to user'savatarstorage. The region then sends that URL t other viewers so that otheruser'scan see each other's avatars. It is possible that in e.g. a strict roleplayingworld, the region uses it's own avatar storage which stores a specialavatarfor just that user. Then the region server sends URL to that avatarstorageinstead of the one that viewer sent to the region. If we want to getreallysmart here, it would be also possible to combine something from theuser'sregular avatar to the role playing game avatar to achieve niceresults... e.g.using face form from user's regular avatar but otherwise using regionspecificbody and clothes. 

      I have the same sort of thoughts about inventory. While it
should not be
centralised, the regions do need to be able to (with permission) do
certain
things, like maybe a region gives you a extra set of folders for use in
that
region, but they disappear when you leave it. I am also not sure there
should
be just one inventory set for each user. Why not a number of sub sets
that can
be combined etc. Maybe the region could restrict access to only a
certain set,
which might be a set that it provides, when in that region; no space
ships when
in that serious business region.. Inventory really needs to swap to a
more url
based system. 

We are just thinking how to build all this in realXtend. Currently wehavethought that each user will have a region specific inventory and apersonalinventory. The personal inventory is stored at avatar storage so itwill travelwith the avatar. 

          Also we need to remember not everything will beinterconnected. There willbe some applications (or possible grids) that want to be separate fromeverything else. 

So I don't think we should be forcing any centralised system on people.And yesfrom what I've read, I actually think the realxtend avatar systemsounds toocentralised, but that could be because I don't know enough details ofwhat isplanned. I'm not saying its wrong, it just doesn't fit all possibleuses. So weneed things to at least be modular. 

Currently realXtend components have been designed so that there are nocentralized control points, it would be really a bad planning to buildsuch anarchitecture on that kind of centralized assumptions. In realXtendarchitecture, everyone can set up their own avatar storages and userauthentication services and decide to trust or not to other user'sauthentication services. 
If a virtual world hosting company wants to make a completely walledgardensolution with realXtend, that is also possible. They can set up theirownavatar authentication and storage and trust no-one else'sauthentication server(there is a basic allow/deny setting for this). 

      Having said all that, of course I think a lot of people and
applications
will want to have shared resources like these. Just we have to be
careful in
how they are implemented. And for opensim at least, that should be a
open
process/design that everyone can be part of. 

A team of people almost always reaches better solutions overindividual. Allthe different use cases should be covered in a great care. I hope thatrealXtend initiative with the distributed avatar architecture is beingrefinedwith the OpenSim community involvement. I am sure that there are stillmanythings that need addressing. The realXtend code is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/realxtendserver/and as I mentioned in my earlier mail, we will have a new version,which isbased on current OpenSim, soon available.

Best regards,
Jani Pirkola
realXtend program manager

            Sean Dague <sean at dague.net>wrote:

                      On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 08:50:33AM -0700, Diva Canto wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> What happened to realXtend's "avatar system"? Is it beingintegrated 
> with OpenSim?

Short answers. I don't know, and no. The process for code coming into
OpenSim is to put a patch in mantis. I haven't seen any proposed
patches in this area in mantis.

> From where I stand, that, or something like that, is a major 
> architectural requirement for virtual worlds to get serious.Without the 
> ability for people to get an identity+inventory that they can port        
> around through different organization's grids, this is not goingto be 
> that useful. I see a lot of interest from organizations to set uptheir 
> own virtual worlds under their control (so, their own grid'edregions), 
> but if people have to get accounts with them to visit, this isjust not 
> going to work for serious usages - period.

Hence you've created the paradox. :)

* We want everything connected
* We don't want to trust a single authoritative source for info
(otherwise you'd be on Second Life)

Honestly, this is a hard problem to solve, and one that seems a bit
beyond the current scope. That being said, implementations and research
in this area which work with OpenSim are always welcomed.

> I understand there's a ton of stability work to be done, but this 
> particular architectural decision is really important, even 
> (especially?) at this early stage; we all trust stability willhappen 
> over time.
> Is there anything that I can do to boost the efforts in thatdirection, 
> besides sending this email?

Sample peer based User services that allow cross talk would be useful.
The moral equivalent of OpenID for virtual worlds (because you need more
than just what openid provides).

-Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net Linux Users Group
        http://dague.net        http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet. Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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