At about 11:00 AM, Linden, Ruth arrived on an OpenSim server, quite quietly. and to her surprise. We had been testing some code, and I’d asked Layla Linden to try to log on again, to see how the bug looked on the client side. But.. the latest fix, put on moments earlier, was, in fact, the last one we needed. I logged in as well, and several other folks from Linden lab joined us. Here we have Me, Layla Linden and Tess Linden.

What’s to unusual about logging into OpenSim? Nothing. But.. this wasn’t a normal login. All three Avatars had been logged on via the Agent Domain in the Linden Lab Aditi test grid. The Agent Domain took a “place_avatar” request from the client, and issued a “rez_avatar” request to the OpenSim, which handed the Agent Domain the necessary details so it could relay it to the client, and permit a login. We’re all Ruth, because we’re not yet syncing the agents with openSim inventory yet. That’s just a small matter of programming… (Well, that’s what we programmers always say.) We have no inventory, and we’re stuck on the single region. But.. It’s a very nice first step.

Next steps will include better syncing with the OpenSim environment, handling teleport in and our requests, and then starting in on how to fetch assets from the test grid. As the code gels a little more, it will get posted to the OpenSim tree, so that people who want to explore this function, can enable it for testing.
Perhaps as importantly, we’re starting to generate concrete feedback to the protocol and architecture work, based on actually coding to it.

~ Zha

* * * * Added June 8th * * * *

Just to clarify a few points after talking to a number of people. This is very preliminary testing, and very much a “Oh, ok, so we can make this work, now we need to solve these three or four problems.” And, of course, when I say get posted to the OpenSim tree, it means submitted to the community, for the usual review process. Additionally, one of the things which needs to happen for me to feel comfortable with the shape of the code, is making it very easy to chose whether or not to run it, and how to manage it. Trying to be a good open source community member and all.

For those wondering about the implications of this work in terms of how Second Life is going to evolve? I’m certainly not the person to speak to about such things. Linden Lab runs Second Life, and they are the only people who can speak to their plans. I will point out, that this is a very first step, along a fairly long path that’s been discussed repeatedly by Linden and participants in the Second Life Architecture Working Group.  There are a large number of steps from simple hacked code, to anything resembling a set of inter operating worlds. Discussion and proposals on how to manage trust, content protection (Bounded by technical reality) and similar issues, are part of the ongoing discussions.

As always, feedback, comments, and thoughts are more than welcome. Here, in world, or via e-mail

~ Zha