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Second Life Project
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Second Life Project
CU There Background

Virtual Worlds on the Internet aka Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVE's) aka Virtual Experiences are on the rise. Linden Lab's Second Life is predominately used in (UK) Education but has it's limitations and setbacks. Linden Lab is and has been a pioneer in this field but currently there are several parties involved in the development a global grid of interconnected virtual world servers consisting of public, open spaces and private, closed spaces based on this technology.
The Open Simulator project has developed Hypergrid technology, allowing moderated and supervised interconnection of Open Simulator Virtual Worlds. Linden Lab and IBM are collaborating on realizing a secure, corporate solution connecting Second Life with Open Simulator servers hosted within an institutional firewall.
These developments signal a future growth of 3D internet based on open source, open standards and protocols, interoperability and compatibility, exactly the key elements that allowed the World Wide Web to grow exponentially in the past 2 decades.
The Glasgow Caledonian University is utilising Second Life to inform (potential, future, especially international) students and is in the process to establish a presence on the Teen Grid to reach people between 13 and 18 as well. Apart from the informative side the GCU is developing a number of educational tools, see current and future projects for detailled descriptions. Last but not least the GCU is hosting it's own Open Simulator servers (currently in private beta) and is going to use Hypergrid technology to connect our public regions with other public grids.

With this combination of initiatives the Glasgow Caledonian University is preparing for a 3 dimensional internet as is being enabled by the following parties or technologies:

  • Linden Lab's Second Life, which consists of 'Mainland' and a multitude of 'Private Islands' or 'Estates' (aka Sim - short for Simulation). A Private Island can be seen as an individual Virtual World Server hosted by Linden Lab.
  • IBM has released an enterprise-ready solution that adds new levels of security and scalability in connection with their Lotus Sametime product branch. You can get 4 regions with (rather mediocre content) for the tidy sum of US$ 50.000. Obviously, there's a market for Virtual World Service Providers emerging.
    Linden Lab has (supposedly together with IBM) developed a stand-alone, behind-the-firewall Second Life solution which is currently in alpha, beta has been announced but because of the corporate incompetence of Linden Lab's communications has so far been impossible to suss out.
  • Open Simulator; an Open Source (BSD) project to create a Virtual World Server which any individual or (corporate, governmental, educational) organization can install, maintain and operate. Open Simulator can also easily be extended to produce more specialized 3D interactive applications.
  • Hypergrid Technology which allows for the interconnection of individual (OpenSim) Virtual Worlds. This means that avatars (the digital representations of users) can travel between virtual worlds, taking their inventory and appearance with them, and only have to register once.
These four ingredients all use the same program to access the Virtual Worlds; Linden Lab's Second Life viewer which is open source and can be seen as a web browser like Mozilla Firefox; software that is downloaded and installed on an individual computer and connects with outside (internet) or inside (intranet) servers. Like Open Simulator, this viewer can be modified and adapted to cater to individual needs. Other viewers are available, some of which allow the transfer of content from one 'grid' to another (from Second Life to open Simulator &c) and accomodate the travel of avatars between several grids
These developments will lead to a sprawling Metaverse of thousands of virtual worlds, some hosted by Linden Lab, some using a corporate, secure IBM virtual world server, many others will be Open Simulators, all interconnected by a Hypergid. These servers will either be maintained by a Virtual World Service Provider (much like the publication of 'The Internet' (html) by CERN in August of 1991 resulted in a multitude of Internet Service Providers) or by the IT department of corporate, governmental or educational organisations.
Again; there is a market emerging here. The turnover within the World Wide Web was 0 dollars in 1990 since it didn't exist yet. The turnover within Virtual World on the internet, or Virtual Experiences as there are being called will most likely grow exponentially.

Links
Open Simulator main page
Open Simulator Hypergrid
Meerkat Viewer
Hippo Viewer

 

Updated: 06 March, 2009 | Site editor | Legal