OpenSim is the future, and the HyperGrid is part of it

Hypergrid (thanks to HypergridBusiness)

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

Wagner Au’s post

Another Wagner Au’s post

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.

One reply

  1. Thanks for the link! Since I first interviewed you (here: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2009/05/hypergrid-101-why-its-good-for-business/) I’ve set up my own grid at grid.tromblyltd.com:9100 (well, it’s a one-region standalone, actually) that my employees, business partners and I get to by hypergrid teleporting from OSGrid and ReactionGrid. We’ve also set up a little hypergrid starport at the Hypergrid Business region of the OSGrid.

    I’ve also set up two hypergrid-enabled regions for my family members to play on, which live on an old family computer that was otherwise unused.

    We’ve been able to bring over a lot of (full perm!) objects that we got on other grids in order to furnish our regions. Lately though, we’ve been seeing some intermittent problems rezzing objects that originated on other grids. I assume that’s going to be resolved as OpenSim gets more stable and less buggy.

    Here’s my wishlist of things to see in hypergrid (some are client issues):

    * An address bar at the top of the browser.
    * No more 4096 limit for teleports! (Well, this isn’t just a hypergrid issue!)
    * The ability to type in a logical hypergrid address. For example, the hypergrid address for LBSA Plaza on OSGrid is now plaza02.osgrid.org:9102. It would be nice to type in osgrid.org:8002:LBSA Plaza. Or, better yet, osgrid.org:LBSA Plaza

    Finally, if any one region on a grid is hypergrid-enabled then the entire grid is effectively hypergrid enabled — all it requires is an extra hop through the hypergrid-enabled region to get anywhere. Why is the decision of whether to hypergrid-enable or not being made at the region level rather than at the grid level?

    Meanwhile, I’ve got to stay that I love the hypergrid, and so do my staff and business partners. The hypergrid is the reason that I’m on OpenSim — and why most people I know are coming to OpenSim rather than any of the other virtual world platforms.

    Thank you for all your amazing work on this!

    – Maria

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