[Opensim-dev] rex auth & avatar systems (Re: future rexviewer merger)

[Cristina Videira Lopes]

With the Hypergrid it is also possible to roam through different domains 
of control carrying not just the avatar (the carcass) but also accessing 
the user's inventory. As such I would like to understand better what the 
differences are, besides the name.

For example, OSGrid's User-Asset-Inventory trio is effectively an 
"avatar server" in the sense that people who have accounts there can 
hypergrid jump to other grids and still "carry" their avatar and access 
their OSGrid inventory. But that's just the most popular one. Anyone who 
can start a standalone can have their own trio of servers who act like 
"avatar servers" -- at least as far as I understand what avatar servers 
are doing.

In implementing the hypergrid there was no need to introduce new 
services or even modify the functionality/interface of the current 
services in opensim.

So what else do Rex avatar servers do? Why did you have to introduce a 
new service and modify the existing ones?


Antti Ilomäki wrote:
> Just a small clarification: the trusted authentication service structure supports both blacklists and whitelists, making it a bit more decentralized. It's possible to choose only certain users and/or authentication services you allow into your world, but it's also possible to ban certain users/auth. services and allow everyone by default. This makes the system inherently a bit less decentralized, which is a point I agree is an important aspect of the future 3D web.
>
> As has been said earlier, it is of course possible to host an authentication service and an avatar storage service on your own computer just like it is possible with email today. It is not as simple as having your avatar on a USB stick, but that's of course just a technical challenge for someone to fix if necessary. The way the experimental reX authentication system works isn't very centralized at the moment, since anyone can host them, they're not dependent on each other or anything else. Personally, just like Toni, I prefer to have a service online that I can access from anywhere and especially if I would for example want to send an IM or VoIP comms to a virtual world through a mobile device ("Just a second, guys, I'm on a bus and I'll get to the meeting soon"), I would rather not host the services on the phone.
>
> The avatar storage is usually coupled with an authentication service, but since it is pretty much just a storage, we might be better off with having just a generic content storage service instead.
>
> Anyway, it is important that the avatar portability services (and pretty much everything else) are distributed and freely available for everyone to use. Anyway, this is a really interesting topic in general and since we are now talking, it would be very interesting to hear everyone's opinions on how this kind of a system should work.
>
>
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