Six months ago Linden Labs increased their pricing for "open
space" sims - this resulted in many users seeking alternative
avenues to channel their creativity. For many the logical
alternative was to start experimenting with running their own
simulators on their own servers which naturally led them to
discover the OpenSimulator (or Opensim) project. While
there are many public grids available the main entry point is
OSGrid, who benefited directly from the Open Space price
increase. This was very nicely illustrated by Adam
Frisby's OSGrid
Snapshot, here we can see the huge jump in sign-ups for
OSGrid. Indeed one of our contributors Zonja Capalini did a
great job of documenting her journey from Second Life into
Opensim in her Openspace Fiasco: Six months later
article.
With a further price increase over at Second
Life scheduled for July we anticipate that many
more residents will be thinking about leaving.
The purpose of this article is to
examine Opensim from the
Second Life Users perspective and what
they should know about the differences in both functionality and
underlying concepts.. It is not so much a direct
comparison such as Rezzable's well considered "Comparing Opensim with Secondlife" . Nor
will we announce a high-level
of compatibility as Hypergridbusiness recently
did in their misleadingly titled article:
OpenSim reaches 95% compatibility with Second Life.
![osgrid_userreg1[1]](/media/26952/osgrid_userreg1[1]_299x176.jpg)
We feel there are some key reasons why a direct comparison
is misleading - the principle one being that Opensim is an
application that runs virtual worlds, Second Life is a grid,
not an application - so really we are not comparing apples
with apples. Opensim does not intend to offer a
replacement for secondlife, However grids run on the opensim
software, such as OSGrid and others could be viewed as a
However, we recognize that many SL emigrants will look to
compare the platforms so we do present a feature matrix that
identifies some of the principle (and often talked
about) technical similarities and differences .
None of the above is wrong - but difficult to understand. If you
see a comment by Justin CC on another of our articles - and you know
all people (Justin, Charles, Adam) are
core developers - it is difficult to understand why one votes for
98% and another for below 65% of SL
functions in opensim. Or what does
functional coverage or compatibility mean ? Will this be
interesting for the SL user looking
for a new home? Maybe not.
This article will primarily target the private user and the
SL inworld
business - but it may be still an interesting start for real life
(RL) business firms interested in a
comparison.
The pricing difference is very clear (~295US$/month for a
full region in SL - about 60US$/month for
an opensim based hosted full region)
- We will not cover that in detail here, rather we will
offer an overview on the hosting and "do it yourself" options.
The conclusions drawn in this article are based on some
years (business and private) experience in Second Life and building
a community in Opensim, as well as from
feedback doing support in Opensim and
being someone often asked to
help when users make their first brave steps into Opensim
based worlds.
Furthermore, let me make a clear statement, that there will be a
market for SL even if some people leave.
Many inventions have been well accepted, that is the reason for
this article. One of the more complicated things is to define the
commercial concept to operate a service like Second Life.
Personally I would not have chosen to raise the price for
Openspace regions like this. Maybe
limiting the usage to "non-commercial" and limiting the free
avatars to 10h/month (to have a free start and visit sometimes
events for free) would have been wiser. But it is completely
on the business owner´s decision.
Common terms
Region - the 256x256m piece of virtual land
Simulator (SIM) - the server instance running one or more
regions - in Second Life a "Sim" is commonly understood to mean a
region - so this may result in some confusion for the
newcomers.
Grid - A collection of regions sharing the same region operator,
login, and management infrastructure - in
other words the Users, Groups, Assets, Inventory and Messaging
services required to run a grid are under the control of a single
entity.
See http://
www.maxping.org/resources/glossary.
aspx for more.
The Opensim philosophy
Opensim is NOT a Second Life clone. It
is a piece of opensource software with
some abilities around the 3D web. One of the feature sets is to
support the Second Life viewer protocol, so people with experience
in SL can use
Opensim somewhat like
SL. One of the maybe wrong (in technical
terms) but well understood comparison is the Apache web
server. Second Life is a Service based on a infrastructure
operated by Linden Labs. Opensim is
a piece of software to offer such or comparable services.
There is no concept for the service included, not support or
complete solutions. It´s like Apache - you can build
your own web server, you can rent one and let other design your
webpages (content) or rent one and design
yourself. Apache 'supports' all those models. Apache
and Opensim are free (like in
"don´t pay - but maybe donate or contribute") software.
Opensim DOES support
features SL does not have. Opensim
DOES support other viewer types than the ones used for
SL. Like Apache servers can be used for
html, php, java
or other languages. So, it´s more kind of a framework
that does support SL-alike viewer besides
others.
--> what the SL emigrant is looking for is
NOT opensim, rather an opensim based
Grid (osgrid, reactiongrid,
openlife, ...)
Some thoughts on the virtual cosmos
Second Life is a "place" with high land prices - which means you
get a small piece of land for a given
price. Opensim is much cheaper, so
you get a bigger piece of land for the same price.
This makes a big difference in building a grid. Think about
central Europe and rural Australia. I can´t remember to have
driven for an hour without seeing anyone in Europe.
Low landprices offer chances to
express yourself in terraforming etc -
but there is usually no "high traffic" spot to place your ads or a
shop. If you want to have "traffic", you must offer things
for free (freebies will work in SL and
opensim grids, beer will work in
Australia) to attract people - or even better cultural events,
great architecture or a nice club.
If you run a business or are in the grid to socialize - these
are things to keep in mind.
If you want to take your items with you...
Sadly, Second Life offers no native backup or export.
There are options like 3rd party commercial products , e.g.
Second
inventory (SI). The problem with SI is, that they are somewhat
slow with their releases (last from January) and important promised
functions (nested prim restore and folder restore) are still
missing. Besides that very nice - and maybe they add the two
missing important functions now, when they see the market
opportunity. Second Inventory respects Lindens rights system - so
you can only export full perm items.
Another option is the openmv testclient, formerly known as libsl
testclient. This was the basis for the well known copybot - so you
may know you can copy everything without even owning it, but no
foreign scripts. You are responsible for all legal aspects, so
respect other peoples IPR. Having said that - the testclient may be
the solution e.g. if you did build an object with another avatar
(maybe paid someone). Now you have the rights (maybe an email
agreement), but no practical way to export via SI. That is where
the testclient may help.
If you are an inworld
developer...
...and think about potential markets or just about the
functionality - here are two things to read.
a) a very nice and short comment about compatibility:
"I also don't believe that many of the
OpenSim developers see 100%
SL compatibility as a goal for
OpenSim. Rather, the
SL viewer has been the first viewer used
for development. As OpenSim continues to
be developed and support for new viewers and protocols are added,
there will likely be substantial divergence from the
SL path." (Dahlia
Trimble on
dev mailinglist)
b) an impression on what will be
upcoming in OS, not
SL
http://forge.opensimulator.org/
gf/project/mrmloader/
No more comments needed, I guess.
Features often talked about
There are a bunch of things people on
SL as well as in OS often speak
about - so last but not least, here is a small
table listing what you can expect on both
sides.
Please note: if a feature is available in opensim, it is
in the regions (or grid) decision to use it or not.
| feature |
Second Life |
opensim |
remark |
| groups |
fully implemented |
partly implemented |
active work going on |
| instant messaging |
fully implemented |
fully implemented |
bridging SL/opensim IM possible via message bridge |
| offline messaging |
fully implemented |
fully implemented |
| building |
fully implemented |
fully implemented ,
huge/tiny prim support ,
large linkset support
|
For the advanced option in opensim, a viewer tweak or capable
viewer (e.g. Hippo or realXtend) is needed. |
| texture up/download |
fully implemented |
fully implemented |
| estate management |
fully implemented |
partly implemented |
missing e.g.: region restart |
| remote region management |
partly via http/LSL |
partly via Remote_Admin
powerful
|
direct comparison somewhat difficult,
SL does not offer access to the customer
|
| rights management |
fully implemented |
partly implemented |
direct comparison somewhat difficult,
different concept
|
| content protection |
partly implemented |
partly implemented |
SL´s means are ToS-based and a (weak)
inworld system.
Highest level of proction reached by monolithic grid.
Commercial opensim-grids reach the same level (e.g.
Openlife).
|
| automatisation |
partly implemented via LSL-scripting |
fully implemented |
opensim has several levels (operating system,
opensim console injection, Remote Admin,
MRM, osscript, LSL) of automatisation
|
| backup / restore |
partly possible via third party tools |
fully implemented |
complete region backup and restore via .oar
more upcomming for inventory and single items
|
| search |
fully implemented |
partly implemented |
opensim now offer people, groups and places in search |
| Grid2grid teleport |
partly implemented (OGP) |
fully implemented |
The OGP does not offer inventory access and is disabled for the
common user in SL. |
| events (social) |
pretty much |
slowly starting |
| events (technical) |
up to 100 avatars on a region
needs region ownership for big events
no content preparation and rollout possible
|
30 avatars to 60 avatars possible
a load balancer from 3DI makes higher counts possible
regions on demand possible
content preparation and rollout via oar possible
|
While Second Life has a bigger base capacity, opensim offers
more options to handle big events and get capacity.
This means as well: more knowledge is needed for the same
result.
|
| portability |
not implemented |
fully implemented |
Opensim can be installed on e.g. laptops and used while travel
or in presentations etc |
| land ownership |
fully implemented |
fully implemented |
| service / SLA |
full service |
full service to no service |
Second Life is a service - you get no defined SLA (service
level) . In opensim you see everything from diy to service
with SLA. |
| community (social) |
pretty much |
slowly starting |
| Email for scripting |
fully implemented |
fully implemented |
| http for scripting |
fully implemented |
partly implemented |
the http-server in LSL is just being introduced. The
http-request to the internet is there for a while, as well
XML-RPC. |
| scripting overall |
LSL - fully implemted
OSscript - none
MRM - none
|
LSL - partly implemented
OSscript - fully implemented
MRM - partly implemented
|
important for script creators: there is a subset of
LSL-function that is expected to act similar in opensim and Second
Life.
opensim offer 2 more scripting solutions and more possible
scripting languages. E.g. a gridwide/hypergrid teleport is not
available in LSL, but OSscript.
|
| inworld currency |
fully implemented (service) |
somewhat possible |
SL offers the function (scripts, browser, ..) as well as a
service (trade virtual vs. real currency). From a legal perspective
not banal. Opensim has example code how this is done and some
commercial grids offer those at the same level as SL. For other
(community, small) grids a workaround is available with virtual
wallet. It should be expected that payments in the future are more
and more using real world services like paypal with scripted items
using http. |
| use for commercial project |
some - stable, no big movement |
starting - notifiable rise since 2009 |
Maybe due to the porn and gaming publicity on the SL side and
the option to review code and run own server on the other side,
opensim is well accepted for the early business adopters. |
| new user impression |
near perfect |
for brave adventurer |
while Linden Labs put effort in polishing the first 5 minute
impression, you get nice avatars - well produced welcome regions
and helping avatars taking cars, the first opensim experience can
be something totally different. As a bad shaped ruth, landing on a
region only offering english help (if any) with no personal helper
at all. But the first grid are trying to improve the service
here. |
One word about content protection - there should be no
discussion thread about this here. We have plenty other articles
about the topic (here here here and here ) , but till now nobody did take
the chance to build a licensing server platform as a business. And
only very few content creators did take the chance to market with a
license bundled to the product. On the other hand, a platform
like rexxed
seems well accepted. The problem tends to be moaned about very
much, but the pain seems to be very low in average.
Conclusion
Can you expect opensim to clone the
SL functions on the technical basis?
Somewhat..
Is opensim a low budget choice for
SL emigrants? Maybe.
Is opensim a choice for
SL emigrants seeking more possibilities?
For sure!
The things emigrants from SL will
mostly miss are the pure mass of people and content (both tend
to fix them self over the next months) and vehicles, where a
very active discussion at the opensim mailing lists makes clear
that there will be work on this most likely in the
next weeks.