Interoperability with the rest of the worlds
Adam Frisby, co-creator of OpenSim announced earlier this day on the Opensim-dev mailing list that he added a new transport protocol to the OpenSim server, MXP or Metaverse Exchange Protocol is being worked on.
“MXP concentrates on messages required for the defined 3d simulation model. MXP specification does not contain application specific concepts but acts as a transport layer for specialized interaction and state data described in Metaverse eXchange Markup Language (MXML).”
He also announced to have several Virtual Worlds Environments checked for “Openness” of the protocol and possible interoperability:
- ActiveWorlds: No protocol documentation, and the company running it is likely to get snippy and involve lawyers (of course if they say otherwise, I’d be happy to look into adding compatibility).
- There.com: Ditto, no protocol documentation.
- Forterra: No protocol docs, described us as “Communists” at a UK Serious Games Conf panel. Probably not a great choice.
- Croquet: No adapter being worked on (I was working on VastPark – which we started today and will finish tomorrow/weds.). Would be interesting to try however – would definitely need help from the Croquet team.
- Wonderland: A option if we can get past licensing issues (it’s all GPL). If their protocol docs are nicely licensed we could build a library from that for .NET. If they make a concession on their protocol libraries to LGPL, then we could IKVM them.
Here’s Adam’s blog post about both the collaboration with VastPark and the new protocol implementation; an article on Virtual Worlds News is here.
P.S.: Congratulations to @Prokofy on her new job at Forterra! 
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February 24th, 2009 at 04:38
Er, I don’t have a job at Forterra, dear. I run a small business in SL and have nothing to do with any of these companies.
You might notice if you paid attention and weren’t such a literalist twit that the Forterra guy is bashing me as much as Adam, who, yes, is a communist. I guess social democrats, communists, they’re all the same to the conservatives.
No one has any real demand for interoperability, it’s just a content flush out of open worlds into cloned worlds and closed worlds. Thanks!
February 24th, 2009 at 05:51
Hi Prok, yes I know. It was just one of my lame jokes.
But you know, there’s more about the whole interop thing. It’s visiting strange new worlds, communicating and sharing the same identity. I just don’t want to logoff/logon, to hop from here to there, or chat.
But dare to come with luggage, because yes, we confiscate that at the border and give it to the poor, revolutionary, long haired linux commies.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:50
I find the idea of these virtual worlds fascinating, and have become an avid reader of the various posts and blogs.
One thing that remains a major puzzle though is the constant bleating by “clever content creators” about their IP rights and virtual businesses.
Surely with there undeniable talents, they could come up with the solution to the problem of content?
Of course they would have the problem that such a solution would have to be open source, which would mean working on solutions for the fun of it rather than payment, so perhaps not ?
February 25th, 2009 at 14:46
@Les
There is a solution to ripped content. Have the ISP cancel the rippers internet access account. Some countries have begun passing laws to this effect. Pretty drastic ya and a real bummer for the rippers.
February 25th, 2009 at 15:14
Guys, this article is about new features& connections of OpenSim, not content theft nor killing some people’s internet access. If you can’t stand Opensim: Don’t use it, same applies to SL and teh internetz at large.
Cheers,
Torrid