I hesitated for a while to write about the interoperability announcement on the Second Life blog. It is stated that:
This is a historic day for Second Life, and for virtual worlds in general. IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another.
Ok, wait one moment. About one month ago various blogs reported the same thing or at least something very similar. Virtual Worlds News for instance:
Zha Ewry, working on the project from IBM’s end, Tess Linden and Layla Linden were logged in to Linden Lab’s Aditi test grid, but were able to jump, as the default Second Life “Ruth” avatar, to OpenSim.
This time, the avatars once again arrived at destination as Ruth-avatars. So what happened? Various possibilities:
- I even understand less about this technical stuff than I thought. On the other hand, even the experts at Virtual Worlds News did not see much difference with the previous information:
It doesn’t seem significantly different from the limited interoperability achieved between OpenSim and Second Life last month (there’s still no transfer of assets and inventory items), but it’s another step towards promoting larger interoperability between Second Life and other virtual worlds.
- The information which was reported a month ago was wrong.
- The information was correct, but for some reason Linden Lab and IBM wanted to wait with the official publication. Which seems odd, for a “historic” achievement. Like the first man on the moon, and the US waiting to confirm the news for about a month. Strange.
Anyway, there is a nice and funny video illustrating the event:
However, even though I don’t see much spectacular new here, the reason why I post on this event anyway is a remark made by Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch:
Interoperability between virtual worlds is fine, and is definitely a step towards breaking down the walled gardens they are increasingly finding themselves in. But ultimately it is the wrong answer. What we really need is interoperability between virtual worlds and the Web.
He refers approvingly to Vivaty Scenes, which brings 3D rooms into Internet Explorer on Windows machines. The project is in open beta now and just as Lively (Google) it is making use of classical social networks (Facebook, AIM). Here is a video clip demonstrating Vivaty:
Schonfeld seems to recognize that, for now at least, Second Life is superior as an immersive 3-D world but he believes that the browser based worlds will get better and will never experience the interoperability problems, because they are embedded into the web from the very start. Schonfeld:
The Web will just become more 3D over time. Will Second Life join the Web, or will its legacy architecture (built when there was no other choice) prevent it from doing so?
Many questions here, and interesting ones. I am too ignorant as far as technology is concerned to judge whether it is realistic that one can achieve in a browser based application the same immersive quality as in Second Life or World of Warcraft. For now, I have some doubts.
Of course, maybe that degree of quality is not necessary for all uses of virtual environments. For a company meeting I can very well imagine that some trade-off can be considered: less graphical quality or less “world”, but easier to access and to run on office computers for instance. I have the feeling that the experts at Clever Zebra would be in favor of such a trade-off.
But for now, Second Life seems to stay a reference. This is not only because of the graphical qualities, but also because of the social characteristics: it is a world of many many extremely creative and assertive people, mostly adults. Even for a meeting or a conference if feels far more special to do this in such a world rather than in some virtual room which is integrated in the web as we know it, but which is not part of a real virtual world. Of course, it has to be possible to give all participants access to such a “real virtual world”, but the social and “world” aspect is another element to take into account making a trade-off.
Roland Legrand