EvilMole

Well that's the thing: the difference between the web experience and the virtual world experience is consistent assets and identity, particularly when built on the kind of SL framework where you have an inventory, items etc which live on the server and not on your local machine.

Basically, if you have assets stored locally, it means you can never have a money economy - I can just boost my "Open Dollars" to $50 million once I hack it, as I inevitably will.

The alternate is to have no truly persistent identity or assets when moving from sim to sim. Identity because, say, there could be more than one "Joshua Nightshade" on two different sims - what happens when they cross into the same sim? For assets, you'd need to establish relationships of trust between sims when they hand off: so a sim has to say to the sim it's handing you to that yes, you really are this person and you really have these assets (and please don't just duplicate them all and put them in the owner's inventory like that hacked script is telling you to).

SL code, which is what all these kinds of things are reverse engineering, is built on a large set of assumptions about identity and assets, and I'm really not convinced that reverse engineering this system is better than simply building a whole new set of code from scratch.

Joshua Nightshade

Well I agree with you to a certain extent, but there are already systems that operate across platforms. I can talk to myspace IM contacts through Skype, despite neither platform owning the other, using my Skype ID. I can talk to people on hotmail using my yahoo login. I can use my yahoo login across several sites and properties whether owned by yahoo or not. Trillian's objective is to let you use one identity to manage contacts on five or six different networks. I don't think the objective with OpenSim is to diverge strong enough from SL to prevent LL from using OpenSim's advances, rather pushing LL to work with the open movement and get their code up to spec.

But I don't know how assets would work on self-contained sims, I agree that this is an interesting question.

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Joshua Nightshade

As I'm thinking about it, currency wise, what would likely be the case is that people don't accept virtual dollars but only real ones. There would be no way to prevent abuse as you say. So what would likely happen is people sell their wares for real money instead of a digital equivalent that can be switched out.

Aodhan McDunnough

For a sim to make an asset work it must have all the information needed to make it work: textures, prim definitions, sounds, animations, and compiled scripts (source can still be kept away).

It is reasonable to assume that any object entering a sim can be replicated perfectly later, with no impediments, by the sim's owner/administrator.

The only thing that can be kept away is modifying the script via source code.

Adam Zaius

Riddle me this: Why do these files need to live somewhere other than on the sim itself, or with your avatar's inventory (which would be on your own server, I suspect services like gmail.com will spring up for personal avatar hosting)

Aodhan McDunnough

One word: rendering.

Your computer cannot render pictures from CNN.com unless data that can create the pictures is sent to your computer. That is, a copy of the picture now exists in your comp. It may or may not be in a file format you recognize but it is there.

You can try to encrypt the data all you want, but the data I listed above must be decrypted in order for rendering to occur.

If you do not allow the compiled script onto the server you're visiting, the sim cannot make your devices work.

If you do not allow these data to transfer only you will see the assets. Everyone else will see naked Ruth.

EvilMole

But what you're doing there is actually NOT using one identity: you're using several identities, in a way which is (relatively) transparent to you as a user. You could conceivably build a system which did that for virtual worlds. So, for example, you cross from one sim to another, and the sim asks your client "who are you on this sim?" Your client replies, and your avatar changes to the identity you have on that sim.

But there's no real possibility in that system for your "physical" identity or your inventory to remain consistent across sims, unless as part of the handover process your entire asset inventory was copied over between servers. That, of course, basically means that all items effectively become full permissions at all times - you are giving the owner of each sim a copy of everything you own. Also, it would make it very simply to "clone" avatars, including their name and identity, and make it impossible to ensure that "Joshua Nightshade" was really you.

Joshua Nightshade

Actually this is pretty much what the reality of future sims, just as the reality of the web in general, will be. Every web site you view is full permission.

EvilMole

And that actually may be the answer: different trust levels. When I connect my sim to the grid, by default no assets are transferred off it. I could, however, set options that would effectively say "OK, I trust JoshWorld as I know he's a groovy guy - when I move to that sim, copy over all my assets."

To myself, no matter where I was, I would appear as my (pimped out) avatar: to everyone else, on a sim I didn't trust, I'd look like Ruth.

EvilMole

But the difference is, of course, that web sites are one way: When I visit one, I'm not transferring any assets to it. When I visit a sim, I face a choice: hand over everything in my inventory, hand over nothing, or hand it over on a per-item basis. As I understand it, what LL is doing is allowing hand over on a per-item basis.

Aodhan McDunnough

@Evil

Doesn't have to be all. Just take the time to specify what you will show in that sim and you're set. We can have profiles like default, Josh's sim, Prok's sim ... etc. Assets ought to be kept in some private space you control (some repository so you can access it from anywhere) or on your comp (if you don't mind not having them when you access elsewhere).

It's like forums. You don't know my real name because I chose not to release it. You do know what my av looks like without a shirt since I released a pic of it. I have a mechanical spider avatar made by hunter stern, but none of you know what it looks like since I never showed it here.

Adam Zaius

You seem to be under the mistaken belief that this all operates the same way SL does.

Under the long-term opensim model, there's no grid or grids, it's simply:

* Asset is uploaded to your sim from the creator/designer/etc. (just like designing a website)
* Sim sends it to users

If your pulling something from an 'inventory', then that comes from a seperate server where your avatar resides or the asset resides, as a URL -- ala remote linking a image into a webpage.

prinţesă nină

ok but you are one of the people creating a vanity grid though, so how can this be true?

Joshua Nightshade

You want to reword this statement in a way that makes sense and explains a viewpoint?

prinţesă nină

if adam believes that the future is one homogeneous grid, why is he setting up his own little separate grid?

Joshua Nightshade

The internet is made up of millions of separate websites operated on hundreds of thousands of separate servers organized by thousands of ISPs running along hundreds of nerve centers.

They're all still one internet though.

prinţesă nină

its one web/grid though.
its not millions of separate networks. it isnt like we log into prodigy anymore.

Joshua Nightshade

Eh in the beginning the internet was separate networks. Then they started talking to one another. SL is the same thing on a different system. It's the same logical evolution.

prinţesă nină

so how does that work then?
dozens or even thousands of intranets (grids) each with their own 'icann' (asset servers) and local domains (av names) are going to interconnect how? of those thousands of joshua nightshades, which will become the 'real' one? and what happens to the other 999?

Joshua Nightshade

As Adam suggested there will likely be "avatar hosts" springing up like services such as hotmail and gmail. I register my avatar with one of them and if the sim/grid I connect to utilizes their service when I log in as my avatar.com identity I appear in the sim as my avatar. My assets (clothing, inventory, appearance, monetary balance etc) would be held on this host and will be available when I am in a sim using this system.

There's nothing to prevent someone else from registering their own though on a different service, just as there's nothing to stop anybody from registering joshua.nightshade@yahoo.com when I'm @hotmail.com. Or I can choose to simply host my own identity server, where I would be joshua.nightshade@joshua.nightshade.com or whatever.

But again this is still a hold-over from everyone being used to the way SL operates and trying to extrapolate that experience to a larger system. For obvious reasons that isn't going to work in every instance.

Adam Zaius

Because a grid is a crutch while we get the nice big homogeneous internet thingie working. I set my grid back up last May (was the first grid. ) and I'm still working work on it, but I do expect in the next year all the work I've put into it to be not necessary or required. The problem at the moment is we dont support the homogeneous grid stuff properly yet (it's primitive and new code), and it's going to be a few months before we do.

That being said, a collection of regions in the same data center or hosting facility has some advantages when it comes to things like making a big contiguous space.

Walker

I met the eleven year old earlier. He kept saying "I'm 11!" so predictably every two minutes that I thought he was a bot. Then somebody told me the kid had got an IQ of 130. This somebody then told somebody else the kid had an IQ of 130. This somebody then told everybody landing on the TP pad that they were going to buy a sim, and pointing out the very inexpensive price. £70 dollars a month and a $15 dollar setup fee.

:whoosh, rez, repeat:

:whoosh, rez, repeat:

I came away feeling it was a trap.

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Gonta Maltz

Short of inconveniencing the user to a degree that pushes most people away, there is no method of verifying identity online.

I can view adult content on webpages simply by following a link stating "Yes, I am over the legal age to view adult content in my area." It is unrealistic to expect that a 3D web will be any different.

The "tickbox" method is the only viable solution. And saying that minors getting onto the openLifeGrid will "destroy" OLG before it gets off the ground is rubbish.

Shyotl

Regarding avatar assets and such, I can only suggest reading the "Global avatar architecture" section on Realxtend's website.

Opensim is planning on rolling in realxtends work into their project ( opensim blog ), which suggests that this 'avatar server' concept will more likely than not become a hot issue relatively soon.

Joshua and Adam's speculation seems to be rather plausible from what I surmise.

Adam Zaius

Heh, you might find my name on this page here down the bottom. Also here. (Josh has been probing me for information. )