Unity versus OpenSim for being “in-world” at i live in science land

Unity versus OpenSim for being “in-world”

we’ve seen Unity move into our virtual world community in the last year or two but its adoption is very low for our community. i should define my perspective on what “our virtual world community” means

to me our vw community is a group of people who use Second Life and OpenSim as a way to socialise, create, and hold events. i think of this vw community as a creative group, not just in making content, but in the deployment and use of OpenSim

InWorldz is a great example of a commercial grid, OSGrid is a fantastic example of a cooperative grid, and there are grids for universities and businesses, and grids on people’s computers and usb sticks. OpenSim allows this group of vw enthusiasts an approachable way to participate and to create in the virtual world. OpenSim (and Second Life) are nice tools that are all-in-one tools. you can create and display your work in one application. you can hold events and meet with people in real-time

Unity is a different beast. you can’t create in-world and it is not as easy to deploy as OpenSim as far as a multi-user world goes

but . . . Unity is also meant to be a way to display virtual worlds, not create in them. OpenSim allows for a true collaborative in-world experience that many can participate in at the same time. Unity uses outside programs, like Blender, to make content that is then imported

for building more detailed worlds, Unity wins over OpenSim - but for “being in-world”, OpenSim surpasses Unity. the “shared” aspect of OpenSim, in that i can make something and pass it off to someone else to use and modify for their specific use is a big “plus” in my definition of our virtual world community. for Unity, i can create a Blender model and email it to you so that you can modify it, but that makes creating it removed from what i think of as a virtual world experience. being able to look at an OpenSim build and understand how it was made because i can see the torus or hollowed cube makes me feel more connected to it and to its creator. it’s more intimate if that makes sense

this fundamental difference – being able to create in-world and in a collaborative fashion is a huge differentiator in my mind

this doesn’t mean that Unity and meshes are bad, they’re just different and i think the simple prims we use do help us feel more connected with each other

this conversation only makes sense if you are an active part of the virtual world community. for those in the mainstream that have never participated in virtual worlds, like Second Life and OpenSim, this perspective makes little sense and they are more likely to be swayed by the “better” graphics of Unity (this can be argued though by looking at how many people do Farmville and Minecraft)

for the mainstream, Unity makes for an awesome experience to visualise future projects and one company that does exemplary work in this sector is Urban Circus. it’s worth a trip over to their web site to see really incredible examples of Unity being used for urban planning. i was a bit overwhelmed (even feeling inadequate) but when i realised that their examples are created by a team of 20 people or so and that these are real municipal projects probably costing in the tens and hundreds of thousands, i felt a little better =)

written by Ener Hax

November 25th, 2011 at 3:12 pm

posted in OpenSim,virtual worlds

tagged with unity, urban circus

here is a respond about unity:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/722-Unity-vs-Torque

i think you can make a unity client and hook into opensim.

bristle

26 Nov 11 at 3:37 pm

that’s an informative thread (i had never heard of Torque) and those guys are pretty frigging hardcore game programmers!

i’ll reread it all and try to digest it – it’s a lot of info!

thanks! =)

Ener Hax

26 Nov 11 at 3:42 pm

I would say that there are different technologies for different purposes. While Unity 3d is most used for game development then Opensim is used for grids and virtual worlds, even OpenSim it is still not prepared to be used it as a game platform:

“OpenSimulator lacks support for many of the game-specific features of Second Life” (This was taken from Opensimulator website).

Who really knows what can happens into the future ?, one of the nicest things of OpenSource Development it is the hability to add things that can make the software better and yes one could thing of Opensim is the continous colaboration between developers.

In the other site, Unity has some developer tools that you can use to make games but I haven’t tried yet (because I am still learning all about OpenSim). I just read in some place that someone or some company wants to use Unity in metaverse but I don’t remember right now.

It could be nice, if near the future to compare OpenSim, AuroraSim and Realxtend, just to see what are their strengths and weakness capabilites.

P.D: And speaking about Games platform or 3d libraries, there is Unity and Torgue but there is another one may be you don’t know. The name is Ogre. You can see in here:

http://www.ogre3d.org/

xpontaneus

26 Nov 11 at 4:18 pm

i have play a little with udk3, unity, torque, and panda3d. i have a torque license but the game engine it is written in c++ — the common lanuage for graphics.

i also look at ryzom but they dont have collada yet or fbx. since i dont know how streaming graphics works, i have no idea how to have an object ready for streaming. it looks like a big black box to me. but radegast has a 3D scene and for the most part, looks good. and it is written in c#.

i think the NET is the way to go but both client and server although i am a little warying of the graphics.

26 Nov 11 at 7:05 pm

@bristle you can make the unity client connect to opensim. http://www.tipodean.com/web/index.html

chris collins

27 Nov 11 at 8:06 pm

agree that opensim type grids are great for collaborative content creation, but how many people really want to make stuff versus just experience it? We are using Unity3D now and I guess we collaborate with the developers the old fashion way. But from the user side, I think the experience will be a lot better and much easier for them to use. You can see what we are doing here http://questhistory.com/ . I guess you have to decide on what is most unique the shared experience of making something or the value of experiencing the content for a many people as possible. BTW, Unity3D has a few MMO options that are not so hard to deal with (compared to running an opensim grid).

xlent1

30 Nov 11 at 9:55 am

thanks xlent1! (great name btw)

it also boils down to time and resources as well. i have 5 years of Blender experience but there’s no way i could build what i have so far in the time i have spent on it

the “tech” threshold” for doing OpenSim is significantly lower than Blender/Unity

but this argument is the same as FarmVille versus WoW or Shrek vs. Lord of the Rings – these use different mediums just like OpenSim is diff from Unity =)

thanks for the insight from someone who is an expert in both!

30 Nov 11 at 10:25 am

Hello Science Land
Just saw your comment re Urban Circus (my company) – thanks for the praise! But…
We do not use Unity (much). We have built our own application called the Urban Engine – certainly all the virtual examples you see on our site are from the UC Vis tool.
You are welcome to download it and use it for 60 days.
And yes, it is all about real municipal design projects – the science of civil space for a civil society!
Cheers