Well, well, well. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had time to post anything. A lot has happened since my last post. First and foremost, I got so much into OpenSim that I ended up being invited to become a core committer, back in December. This threw me into a serious case of programming addiction, of that kind that you neglect everything else. It was great! My recent one-month vacation got me out of the addiction, let’s see for how long… But here’s what I got so excited about: the Hypergrid.
The Hypergrid (HG) is a system architecture supporting decentralized virtual worlds. In other words, you host your world and it can interoperate with worlds hosted by other people and organizations. Yes, it’s a Web of virtual worlds. Users can teleport seamlessly between worlds.
I did the Hypergrid back in October/November, and it got integrated in the main distribution of OpenSim since then. Lots of people have their sims HG-enabled, including in the main open grid OSGrid.
The work on the Hypergrid is not over yet, it’s only half-way there. One thing is to enable this kind of interoperability; another thing is to make it safe for everyone. Since March or so I have been working on that second side of the issue — security. It requires changes in the client, so it’s a bit more tricky to deploy these changes. But they’re coming.
I will keep making posts about the Hypergrid. In the meantime, here are some useful links:
The main technical reference / white paper
Interesting ‘Yellow Pages’ of HG sims
An on-line publication about OpenSim and the HG
… and if you want to find Hypergrided sims, simply use MI Search.