[Opensim-users] grid operation

[Rhian]

Hiya Kyle,

You did a nice job on the wiki-page!

I do agree with Stefan, the tone is a bit too informal. Keep also in
mind that the audience is coming from all over the world and are of a
variety of age. I doubt that the majority understands the comparison
with MUD-technology.
And one thing I don't get at all: "All of the users have to be known
by all regions", if this was true we would see every login of every
user on every region, this is obviously not the case. All of the users
have to be know by all the grid services (of that grid) is true. Each
user is know by the region it is in as well as the direct adjacent
regions.

In your email you have an interesting point of view and I must say I
completely disagree.
You have mixed up client versus server views and put client demands on
server side, which is in my eyes incorrect.

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 9:54 PM, Kyle Hamilton <aerowolf at gmail.com> wrote:
> As for grid versus standalone... my way of looking at it is this: when
> I'm browsing the web, I have (currently) 5 separate tabs open.  Often
> I have more than 40.  I'm going to claim utter and absolute
> selfishness here and state that I cannot see any situation under which
> I would have only 1 location open in the 3D web.  I can't see how I
> could get any work done in that way, at all.  Others may see how they
> can exist in that limit, but since the server is still being developed
> I'd like to ensure that my use-case is at least identified and
> reasoned about (even if it's never implemented in the core).

Actually it's the other way round! You're connected to more than 40
servers (or multiple locations on the the same server), in any case
you do this from the client side!
Nothing (except the limitations of the client side) prohibits you from
connecting to the same "server" (can be a single standalone region or
multiple regions on one server/instance) more than once (with
different credentials). Actually I am already "multi-tabbing" in 3D
VWs, once client connecting to SL, another to OSG, another to my own
grid... It is already there! The server-side doesn't care to the
amount of grids/standalones you're connected to! In the same way that
a web server doesn't care how much other sites you're connected to.
(Keep in mind that even a webserver creates a fork for each connection
and closes it when done, so it's not the same at all. Just disconnect
the network with a web page open and a Viewer with an avatar in a
3DVW, the web page stays visible the avatar gets disconnected!)

The other consideration is the visual representation, the problem with
your example is that it is like reading 40 books at the same time. You
have only one pair of eyes! You don't read the 40 tabs at the same
time. I'm mean and draw again a parallel to the Real World, you can
not visit 40 countries at the same time, you have only 1 physical
body, yet you can open 40 books! See the difference? Web-pages are
usually non-interactive, you can only read them, 3DVW are interactive,
you can't just read them (or view them just like photographs).

I am against allowing multiple logins with the same avatar/UUID on the
same or multiple connected grids, why? Because eventually you'll run
into big issues. What happens with your idea when you have two "tabs"
connected twice in the same region? To who should I talk when I'm in
that region? Who is the active and who is the passive one? How are we
dealing with inventories that are changed? It will be one big can of
worms. We do *need* separate entities in a 3D visual world.
Besides, do you use the same login for all your banks, email accounts
and everything on the internet? I highly doubt that! You can not
demand that from grids either. The Hypergrid solution is one way of
dealing that. The other way could be some sort of keyring on the
client side. (Keepass for example allows you to keep multiple logins
with different usernames/passwords saved in one database for many
different sites secured with only one password, it keeps the
responsibility at the client to secure the different credentials).
Again you can *not* demand a single-to-multiple login on the
server-side, for one it's an obvious security flaw.

As Paul said already Standalone does have its advantages over Grid
mode. There are plenty of things you can do in a standalone. It's not
that hard to grow from a standalone to a mini-grid, when the need
arises. And HyperGrid enables us to travel beyind our mini-grid.