Metaverse Ink

Yesterday, Stefan wrote down his thoughts on Linden Lab’s troubles. I loved that post, he’s right on. Let me add to that by stating the importance of the work that many of the laid off Lindens did, and the role of OpenSimulator from here on, at the technological level and beyond.

Things are moving into 3D, including the Web. I’ve been very excited with everything that is going on with WebGL. Sure, WebGL is still not good enough to render very rich scenes like those we find in highly immersive games, especially when the scenes aren’t optimized, such as the case with user-generated 3D content. But I have very little doubt that the needed optimizations will happen, and that soon we will have immersion on the web browser. It’s already happening. People want it, Google wants, it will happen.

So, let’s fast forward to the time when the Web browser can render rich 3D scenes, which, at the rate that the Google people and the Unity3D people are going at it, it probably is only a couple of years away.

Technically, the client-side is not the whole story. In order to develop highly immersive real-time environments with that kind of viewer, we still need a server side that can serve those 3D scenes in real-time to several clients. HTTP alone won’t do, it’s too slow. All MMOs use some sort of UDP-based protocol for the rapid state change notifications. HTML5’s Web sockets are there precisely for that reason.

Bottom-line: the server-side must serve more than HTTP.

There are a few of these game servers out there, the vast majority of them proprietary. Which is fine for the companies that own them. In the scenario where the browser is the 3D viewer, those companies can easily develop the necessary JavaScript components that talk to their back-end servers via WebSockets.

All these proprietary servers, however, are a bottleneck for the massification of 3D content on the Web. Just like for the Web itself, we need open source 3D scene servers. At the very least, we need open, standard protocols, so that people can focus on developing content without having to reinvent the network connectors, and the servers, from scratch all the time. (But with open standards come open implementations, so the result is the same: we need open source servers). Yes, we need an Apache for RT 3D scenes. Hmm, where did I hear that before…?

OpenSimulator, of course. When WebGL is good enough to render those rich 3D scenes, OpenSimulator will be there to serve those scenes in real-time to multiple clients. For free. This is the real importance of OpenSim, its main contribution. Another, secondary, contribution is all the research work that we have been doing in secure, portable identity with the Hypergrid. This is something that doesn’t exist on the Web, but it can be ported back. I’m not entirely sure the 2D Web needs it, but I’m pretty sure a web of virtual worlds needs it. Not all 3D environments will want to be connected in a web of peer servers; but many will.

In all of this, we must thank Linden Lab, especially Cory Ondrejka and Marc Lentczner, for making their protocol public; that made OpenSim legally possible. All other game companies are protective of their protocols, to the point that they go after anyone who tries to reverse-engineer them. That was not the case with Linden Lab, and we must thank them for that. They allowed us to focus on the server side. The fact that the client was available independently, for free, was no small thing either: it made the effort appealing to lots of people who got instant gratification of a Linden-like world on their own computers. More people means more eyes, more energy. MW and Lbsa were right on from the very beginning!

Going forward, the main challenge for OpenSim is to step back from the monstrosity of LLUDP and LLCAPs, which were designed for one very particular kind of environment, and figure out the minimum set of messaging that’s necessary to serve 3D scenes in RT to multiple clients. Minimum is good. The good thing about OpenSim is that the client protocols are plugin modules; OpenSim is not tied to any one particular client, not even LL (in theory; the reality of the code is a bit different… that’s why I say that stepping back from the LL protocol will be a challenge for OpenSim).

I feel like we’re parting ways with a long-time, dysfunctional, companion who decided to make a left turn, and I’m looking forward to what’s coming!

The news came yesterday after lunch: major layoffs at Linden Lab, as much as 30% of their employees. Lindens who had been there from early on, respected engineers, all laid off. All of those who had, at some point, been involved in the idea of virtual world interoperability — gone. Then the new vision: Second Life on a browser, accessible to the masses via well-known social networks. Wow. This is what I call a 90-degree course adjustment.

Clearly, I know nothing about the internal situation at Linden Lab. Probably their VC money has dried off, maybe their revenue is not enough to pay so many people. Who knows what’s behind a 30% ‘rightsizing’… But the new vision is an indication that this is not just about balancing the budget sheet; it’s about redefining what Second Life is. LL’s CEO wants it to be more like FarmVille than like World of Warcraft. Too many people have commented on his vision, I’m not going to do it. He’s the head of the company, he should try to make his vision come to life.

What I want to talk about here is what this 90-degree course adjustment entails for OpenSim. I confess yesterday I had that familiar feeling of having reached the point of having to stand and lead. Not me, personally. But the OpenSim project, as a whole. The torch is on us. Let me explain.

In spite of being inherently a rebellious project, OpenSim has always existed in the shadow of Second Life. The rebellious nature was, indeed, just a confirmation of that dependency; the kind of relationship teenagers have with parents. A lot of people in the OpenSim community have been assuming that, sooner or later, the large Second Life virtual world would be trading avatars and money with OpenSim-based grids. The Open Grid Protocol (OGP) prototype, first unveiled in the summer of 2008, was a teaser; a promise of what could come next. Many OpenSim core developers have been deeply involved in efforts for virtual world interoperability, first in the Architecture Working Group, and, recently, in the VWRAP working group at the IEFT. Both of these working groups were led by Linden Lab engineers… who have been laid off.

In the wake of these layoffs, the idea that Second Life will be part of a larger web of virtual worlds is today more remote than ever. There’s no one left in Linden Lab to carry the interoperability torch, at least not of the kind we were thinking. It looks more likely that Second Life will be part of the Web itself, complete with the Web’s inability to deal with portable identity, and therefore eager to serve the largest pool of users on the Web, the 400 or so million Facebook users.

It’s always hard when the driver we were relying on suddenly makes a left turn from where we thought we were going. The question for OpenSim now is this: do we really want to follow Linden Lab on that left turn? Or do we take the torch and lead?

Personally, the last thing I want to do is to be involved in one more Facebook app. That’s the kind of interoperability project that I give my undergrad students on a 3-week time period. Not only it’s technically uninspired, but it’s missing the core of what I believe interoperable virtual worlds can bring to the Web itself: true, S2S portable identity. Not just “this is me” a-la OpenID, but “this is me, and I have a lot of baggage that I want to access while I’m visiting your site.” The vision of interoperable virtual environments is as exciting to me now as it was 3 years ago.

As usual, I don’t speak for the entire OpenSim project. And it’s probably too early to internalize what this course adjustment really means for OpenSim. But one thing is for sure: if there is going to be a web of virtual worlds, a decentralized S2S system of 3D environments that can seamlessly exchange user agents securely, that web will be made of OpenSim servers entirely, for the foreseeable future. Second Life is out of the picture.