Hypergrid is still in it's infancy, there are numerous security and compatability concerns. To address these Crista Lopes has created Grider - a Hypergrid proxy or wrapper for viewers.
At the end of March 2009, Crista Lopes announced her new Opensim
Hypergrid client, Grider. It is not self-standing
client, but a proxy that takes care of the security aspects of
Hypergridding around.
Crista has been working on a client whose goal is to explore
architectural options for a safe HyperGrid. The client originally
evolved from an email discussion about security and authentication
- the conclusion was that there is no options for a secure
de-centralized virtual world system without some sort of
client-side cooperation.
The challenge stems from the fact that Opensim is very reliant
on the Second Life viewer which is governed by Linden Lab. The SL
viewer was designed for connecting to their walled garden. It is
not meant for open 3D web use neither technically nor
security-wise. Remember that in any walled garden you get to choose
what plants you grow - remove the walls and the weeds creep in.
While SL Viewer is open source, it is licensed under GPL, and
has caused many to worry about possible license infection creeping
in to Opensim via developers who have been exposed to the viewer
source code. To avoid this Opensim has chosen not to accept code
contributions from SL viewer developers.
Grider makes the equation easier. It stands between Opensim and
SL Viewer, and allows efficient development of features that need
cient side cooperation.
Grider is not a viewer; it's a grid-proxy-based viewer-wrapper
for LL-based viewers. It works with any OpenSim servers out
there as of today, so r8931 and higher. The basics are
described here: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grider
Crista writes "This first version is like a baby trying walk, at
points still holding on to the grownup's hand. But it proves the
two main concepts that I wanted to illustrate, teleports and
inventory access. Don't expect too much. In fact the whole
experience is fairly anticlimatic, since you probably won't notice
any difference from the normal viewer :-)"
"Having this level of control on the client side, while
still using the official LL viewer, will enable us to
take OpenSim-based systems to an entire new level. It helps
the server-side too, immensely, as many things become a lot
clearer."
"While Grider is perfectly usable by non-techie people, I don't
necessarily see it as a production client. Grider is an excellent
playground for experimentation, really easy to modify the viewer's
behavior, but I can imagine (hope:-) that as these experimentations
are solidified, other viewers will take those lessons and run.
But, who knows! The proxy architecture is awkward at first, but
when you think about it, it might make sense to architect a
universal client like this! (By universal client I mean a client
that integrates several viewers for several different virtual world
technologies)"
Grider may prove to be a useful intermediate solution to remoce
some of the viewer constraints with Opensim. In the long term, a
fully open-source viewer, not derived from the SL Viewer would be a
better overall choice. Grider could potentiall continue to
provide a useful bridge in the long-term have a role even after
that in interfacing the rapidly changing virtual world environments
and providing the framework for many separate projects to work
toward a common goal.