the answer is a likely no because the video below has been viewed less than 200 times at the time of this posting. thanks to Gaga, i just saw it this morning and my jaw dropped and i started drooling (okay, figuratively) =)
my first reaction to Aurora-Sim last fall was mixed because i saw it as a group of very talented developers working on what would eventually become a separate branch of OpenSim that at some point would know longer be compatible. my opinion was based on looking at the Blender 3D community and even the MOODLE community. both are huge and made of hundreds and thousands of developers. especially MOODLE, an open source learning management system. it has 1000′s of modules and such a ginormous range of possibilities – but all built on one base architecture
however, apart from my capability to be wrong (lol, one of my finer traits), my thoughts on that were exactly that – just my thoughts
someone that is very entrenched in the OpenSim community that i trust very much put it to me in a way that eased my perceived anxieties, he said that OpenSim has always been seen by its developers as a base to build other things on including branches that would go in any direction anyone wanted. that made me chill and go “cool” =)
and cool is exactly what the video below is!
I think it could be a great alternative for closed, commercial grids — like InWorldz. And, eventually, once they enable hypergrid connectivity, for other grids as well.
The big worry is the bench strenght on the development side. The mainline OpenSim has a large number of folks contributing code and patches — academics like Diva Canto (Crista Lopes), long-time committed guys like Justin Clark-Casey, folks working at IBM and Intel, small hosting vendors like Melanie Thielker and Dreamland Metaverse — real people, real companies. Even new guys like Kitely have been contributing patches.
The big worry is that Aurora-Sim has a small team of developers, who’ve done a lot of great work with an initial burst of enthusiasm. How long will that last? Without hypergrid connectivity to OSGrid or ReactionGrid how many independent grid owners will they be able to attract?
If they lose interest, or running into legal licensing problems over cross-contamination with viewer code, or hit other speedbumps, then switching back to mainline OpenSim won’t be easy.
I’ve talked to grid owners who spent quite a bit of time trying to get their databases migrated over to the Aurora system.
Finally, Aurora is missing the technology ecosystem that mainline OpenSim has, like the third-party grid management tools available from PioneerX and Dreamland Metaverse.
All of that might come with time, or Aurora could carve out a niche for itself, or some of its best features might get back-ported to mainline OpenSim.
Meanwhile, if people want to experiment with this, Nova (formerly New Voice) is renting out $9.90 regions on their Aurora-based Aurora Grid,
Ansky Grid is also running Auora (http://www.ansky.ca/), but they’ve lost a lot of regions during the switch, and have had some stability problems since then, and are currently down.
Maria Korolov
21 May 11 at 12:35 pm
I’ve been impressed with the group at Aurora from the start. They’ve accomplished a lot very quickly.
I do wish various distributions wouldn’t splinter from OpenSim just because focusing all of the energy on one product should make it mature quicker. But the different groups have different goals and at least Aurora remains open source.
I’ve watched the Aurora sim dev chat frequently. They are a friendly bunch and always seem willing to help or answer questions. You won’t always get that on the OpenSim dev chat.
Micheil Merlin
21 May 11 at 1:05 pm
I agree with many of the comments here. I too was really excited for Aurora when I first heard about it in IRC. Since then, while I’ve been really impressed with the things they’ve done, I’m not super excited about the lack of hypergrid compatibility. As far as I know, Aurora-sim is making their own version (called IGW? or something) that is not really like the opensim version.
I really want the new connected metaverse, made possible by things like hypergrid, to be universally accessible, like the web. You don’t use a different web browser to visit coke.com, for example, as you do for pepsi.com (even though I assume they are rivals).
Now, that alone is no excuse for using an inferior protocol, if hypergrid is indeed inferior to IWG (I have no idea). May the best ideas win. That said, the metaverse is still in its infancy, and is kind of a fragile thing. I just don’t want it to be broken before it has a chance to show everyone what it can do.
ZodiakosKyklos
21 May 11 at 3:07 pm
excellent perspectives and all very true. OpenSim and Aurora are both still so young and both have small resources (but very good ones)
i also would like to see some metaverse model that allows the ability to travel, like Zodiak says, so that my one avatar can check it out
Ener Hax
21 May 11 at 3:22 pm
IWC (Inter World Connectivity) is the Aurora version of hypergrid and the team intend to add a bridging module to allow connection with hypergrid so all that is coming. But, anyway, Aurora is intended to be compatible eventually with Opensim. Moreover, security is high priority and there is a lot more in there to come including advanced physics. And the pace of development is breath taking.
Gaga
21 May 11 at 3:59 pm
hiya Gaga! lemme know when you do that Aurora post, it is something many readers will eat up! =)
Ener Hax
21 May 11 at 4:01 pm
Sure I will Ener. First I just want to make a big region and make a movie, lol. Hey, talking of movies, I loved the use of the Lion King music in the video!
Gaga
21 May 11 at 4:08 pm
this sounds very exciting. it kind of messes with my “world” perspective! to think of a big place with no sim crossings is so outside of the SL paradigm! good luck and it should be a lot of fun for you!
Ener Hax
21 May 11 at 4:19 pm
Wow!
brinda Allen
21 May 11 at 8:51 pm
I must admit to being a little confused about Aurora and Opensim.
For example, is Aurora reliant on Opensim updates. IE Opensim is the code base.
A feature of Aurora is that “All LSL(Linden Scripting Language) functions implemented”. Opensim not yet having all LSL functions supported.
Could they not contribute these to the Opensim core?
I must admit to not being au fait in this matter.
Breen Whitman
22 May 11 at 6:36 am
/me waves to Ener! Hi! Hey, I love your blog. I just made my own first entry into the blogosphere. Can’t believe the size and complexity of some of these sites.
Can I get on your blogroll, maybe? Gosh, I feel like a noob all over again.
Lindal Kidd
22 May 11 at 1:02 pm
sure Lindal! now i do go through every now and then and hide inactive blogs, so if you are quiet for a month and start up again, just let me know =)
Ener Hax
22 May 11 at 1:41 pm
Breen.
Aurora started with the OpenSim code base and went on from there. There is some effort to maintain a level of compatibility with OpenSim.
You can start Aurora with an OpenSim database and Aurora converts it for you to an Aurora database. You can’t go back to OpenSim with the same database though.
Aurora and OpenSim can use the same viewer, predominately Imprudence. So, that forces some level of continued compatibility.
And of course, both OpenSim and Aurora maintain some level of ‘sameness’ with SL largely due to LSL and the viewer.
Aurora probably isn’t particularly reliant on OpenSim updates although they could certainly pull whatever they wanted to over to Aurora. This of course would seem to be more and more difficult if the Aurora code base diverges much.
As far as contributing code back to OpenSim, there is an issue with an OpenSim policy. One of OpenSim’s policies is that you can’t have studied Viewer code within 6 months and the Aurora devs didn’t want to be bound by that rule. There was talk about dropping that particular requirement but it appears that it is still there.
Micheil Merlin
22 May 11 at 3:03 pm
Why don’t the Aurora folks contribute the LSL functions they completed back to the open source community that fed them the originsl code base? It’s surely fine to extend and add on, but core items can and ought to be shared by responsible communities that use open source contributions made others.
Ai Austin
22 May 11 at 4:41 pm
Point taken on the viewer policy… That should be changed no wby the OpenSim side given the new LGPL licence for viewer 2 code base. Viewer 1 is now antique and Viewer 2 or derivative is required for an if the latest and important to some 0.7.1 features.
Ai Austin
22 May 11 at 4:44 pm
Aurora is open source so stuff could be pulled from it for Opensim but Aurora itself has a different structure so it can be fast tracked. In fact the pace of development is amazing.
Gaga
22 May 11 at 6:08 pm
I wanted to post another comment here because as it turns out, I was wrong, wrong wrong! According to this blog http://networkedblogs.com/ibIFJ (hypergrid business), the aurora devs ARE planning to make a bridge to make hypergrid teleports possible between opensim and aurora-sim. That’s fantastic news!
ZodiakosKyklos
23 May 11 at 11:02 am
excellent update Zodiak! that sounds like an ideal situation – being able to travel with your avatar should be like the web and my credit card. i can go to BestBuy.com and Amazon.com and use the same credit card at both
both OpenSim and Aurora are so early in their development – this may all look very differently in five years!
Ener Hax
23 May 11 at 11:15 am
Hi Ener and Zodiakos
I would just like to correct any misreporting of the IWC to HG bridge. I was in on the meeting when that was discussed and what was actually said by Revolution Smythe, lead dev at Aurora, was that he might code a bridge module once IWC had been implemented and was working. It was not stated as a diffracted but rather an answer to the question “will HG and IWC be compatible?”
Aurora team are making some serious advances in many aspects of Opensim that remain lacking and amazing new features like variable sized regions. They are working fast too so IWC wont be far off. I’m confident of that.
Gaga
23 May 11 at 12:49 pm
Mistake in last post; diffracted = definite ( damn spell checkers!)
Gaga
23 May 11 at 12:55 pm
Has anyone put together an Aurora on a Stick? Too many years under my belt to totally understand how to get MoWes woking with Aurora
Mrjoyce
29 May 11 at 9:58 pm
that’s a great question Mrjoyce and i don’t know of anyone. Diva’s D2 Distro of OpenSim is a special build of OpenSim intended for somewhat simple installation. if Aurora also uses MySQL (i would guess it did) then it should be possible to install on the stick the same way
it depends on what Aurora needs on the server side and if MySQL is all, then it should install just like it would on a server
if anyone has ideas about doing Aurora on a stick – even just from a theoretical aspect, give a shout out
Ener Hax
29 May 11 at 10:18 pm
I’m a minor dev on Aurora. What I mean by that is I work on my own branch of it focusing on NPCs. None of my code has yet directly made it back to the Aurora main branch but *plenty* of my ideas have been implemented.
I was originally trying to get NPCs to work on the vanilla OpenSim branch. I got bogged down on that and moved over to Aurora instead.
I will describe why (and this is not an attack on Christa or Justin or any of the other excellent devs there).
Here is what happened:
I know that Chrita had worked on NPCs before and had gotten a huge simulation running with 100s of functional NPCs. She appeared to be bound by some kind of legal agreement not to divulge what she had worked on. Nobody else had enough experience with NPCs or else was too busy with their own work to be able to answer my questions in the detail that I needed. All I really needed from Christa or anybody else were clues. But for any number of reasons they were unable to provide them. So I floundered. There were 3 of us working on this and we got nowhere.
Now let’s contrast that with Aurora.
I spoke to Revolution Smythe at length on the dev channel and he listened to me and coded up *that night* a very basic section of code I code take and run with.
Within a week I was able to implement AI chatbot functionality into my branch and over the course of a couple of months I’ve been able to get it to the stage where I have more or less functional gaming NPCs in my branch. I chatted to Rev and the other devs on the dev channel frequently and many of my ideas that I was working on have made it into the main branch.
Moreover, when I have a question I’m not left to figure it out by myself. I can ask rev, or latif, or skidz or enrico or any of the other devs and not only will they take the time to explain, but often they will give me code snippets.
I feel that the *culture* of the Aurora team is much more condusive to productivity than the culture of Opensim. And it’s the culture of Aurora that in my opinion is what will eventually drive it to be the number one flavor of SL compatible metaverse server systems.
But that’s my opinion.
x8ball
10 Jun 11 at 12:01 pm
hello x8ball! very nice to read your comment and pretty insightful (plus never worry about offending anyone unless you are just a meanie) =)
you must know your object oriented language eh? holy cow, so you do source work! well, even though i have yet to use Aurora, your contributions do affect the rest of the virtual world community
i think the OpenSim team is very cautious about licensing and do not want any adverse risk for OpenSim. it is further complicated by the real life work that the core developers do and boundaries
i hope to see Aurora continue to grow and have a feeling it will – ideally to a level like Blender3D or MOODLE, where 100s and even 1000s of developers work on it! =)
thanks for dropping by and if you ever want to do an online interview (just emails really) about your vision for Aurora, i’d love to post it
good luck with your scripting and thanks! =)
Ener Hax
10 Jun 11 at 4:34 pm
Hi Ener,
The person you really need to talk to about vision would be Revolution Smythe as he’s the main driving force behind Aurora. I’m part of the dev community but I’m really just a groupie who has his own branch. Basically I’m at the parties but I’m not the host!
Anyways, you’d be welcome to come visit my sim and shoot the breeze some time if you’re interested.
x8ball
17 Jun 11 at 2:50 pm
thank you x8ball! that is a nice offer and i will once some dust settles, what i hear about Aurora is all very good! =)
Ener Hax
17 Jun 11 at 6:07 pm