For those of you who are not too familiar with Legend City Online (LCO) here is a potted history of their rather chequered existance.

Origins
Legend City Online was announced to the world on the 26th October 2008, and was created out of Central Grid, an Opensim-based virtual world. The team at that time was the proprietor Lala Xevious (aka Lala Legend), Asri Falcone, Sam Portocarrero, Aleister Holt, Melanie Miland (RL name Melanie Thielker, one of the core devs at Opensim, former CEO of Xumeo, a German continent/grid that was accessible by teleport from LCO, and current CEO of 3dHosting), Haplo Voss, Khalied Jameson (aka DocWes, see Trouble at Mill below), and others.

LCO had taken over Central Grid some 4 weeks previously, and pretty quickly established a hypergrid link to a German continent/grid called Xumeo, owned at that time by the aforementioned Melanie Miland/Thielker. Avatars could teleport between these two interconnected grids, and take their inventory with them. There was an initial small rush of sign-ups, especially when they announced that the regions they had for sale had more prims than Second Life, and was a lot cheaper. However, clouds were gathering.

Trouble At Mill
On the 16th November 2008 a very prophetic article was written by Prad Prathivi at metaversallyspeaking entitled, Why LCO is doomed to fail. Prad made the following observations:

The thing is, people don’t like change. Second Life has the market share and LCO is basically the “StarOffice” here. Yes, LCO offers you more prims on sims, a much lower tier and has avatars already made up. Yes it emphasises protection for designers, and it has cross platform connectivity with Second Life to transfer created content over.

But at the end of the day, it looks and feels exactly like Second Life. And the vast majority of SL users will see little appeal in moving over to this new grid. What would the point be when all their inventory is on SL? Additionally, there’s the lack of trust.. who is Legend City Online? Who is it owned by and what do we know about them? Their website is awfully basic, which doesn’t paint the greatest corporate image.. how do we know that it won’t be a “Here today, gone tomorrow” case? Despite all the flaws with Linden Lab, we’re pretty certain that they’re not going to be disappearing any time soon.

Why should we believe that you will not disappear overnight? People would invest in your grid, buy land, create content and set up shops... why should we believe that you will still be around in five years?

LaLa: Why would you believe that Second Life® would be? Our promise to our customer is this: We are working to create a lasting environment, where people can come and realize their goals and dreams at Legend City Online. We plan to be here for the long term.

As Blue Mars progresses through 2010 towards the full release one of the key features that users will be looking for is the ability to customise their avatar, or even import a custom one.

Right now users of Blue Mars may customise their avatar in one of three ways:

Gender
To change your gender in Blue Mars you must first log in to your User MyPage, from this link. After logging in click on the Edit button in the top-right corner of the My Profile window, then click on the Edit Avatar button.
To change your gender click on the Reset Avatar button and all settings will return to default values, including the gender, which can then be changed.

Face
To change your face in Blue Mars you go to the Welcome Area and use the Face Customization board. Clicking this will take you out of the Welcome Area level and into a separate FaceCustomization level, where you can start to customize your avatar's face. As this is a separate level it is not entirely clear why this is not an option in the Places Browser, so users can go there directly instead of through the Welcome Area.

The Face Cusomization window presents you with five tabs:

Variation
To start the process you first select a face that is closest to what you want from the nine choices available from the Variation tab. You can see what your face looks like from all angles by clicking the arrows underneath the main image. If you do not like any of the initial nine choices click on the Randomize button to get another set.

Selecting a face then presents you with another nine variations on that face, and so on, until you get the nearest you can. If you do not like the variations presented try the Variation button to get another selection to choose from.

You then go through a similar process with the Eyes, Eyebrows, Nose, Lips and Cheek options.

Montage
The next tab, the Montage tab, allows you to add further refinements, such as eye and skin colour, eyebrow height and shape, lip shape, etc.

Advanced
This tab gives sliders for making fine adjustments to the shape of the head: Light/Heavy; Gaunt/Round; Short/Tall; Thin/Wide; and Small/Large forehead.

Beware, use caution with the Head - Short/Tall slider, as moving this will change all other slider positions. Unfortunately there are no % gradations on the sliders so you cannot make a note of settings for future reference.

Once you are done with the Advanced settings you can click the Done tab, and your settings will be saved and applied. If you are not entirely happy with what you have achieved you can always use the Abort tab to return without any changes.

Cosmetics
To get up the Cosmetics Editor you select the second icon in the bottom middle icon set, called 'Face', within the Blue Mars client.

Twinity is a 3D online virtual world created by Metaversum GmbH of Berlin, Germany, and offers accurate virtual versions of real-world cities. It only runs natively on the Windows platform.

Twinity first opened its doors to public beta in September 2008, and I joined up for a looksee in November 2008. I must admit, I did not like it very much, and it used chat bubbles, which I hate (yes, I know Blue Mars uses chat bubbles, but there is a good chance they will give us the ability to switch that off). It uses the Global as the in-world currency, which you can use to buy new furniture and clothing.

So, what has changed in the 14 months since I last visited?

First Impressions
The first thing I was surprised to find was that Twinity is still in Beta.The next thing I noticed is that the number of cities has increased from 1 to 3. In December 2008 there was only Virtual Berlin, but now Virtual London, and Virtual Singapore have been added.There also appears to be lots of other locations added by tenants of Twinity.



A mini-map has now been added that uses Google maps, and shows the location of other avatars, places of interest and stores. Any of these can be deselected to clear up the map. It has a distinct GPS look to this map, as you see your avatar icon moving along the roads on the map as you explore the city.

Preferences
Also new is a System button that brings up various preferences:

•  
• The General tab allows you to select whether your name or other avatars' names are displayed or not.
• The Display tab allows you to select the resolution, windowed mode, anti-aliasing, texture quality (auto, high, medium or low), reflection mode (off, water only, mirror only, or all), mirror depth, and level of detail.
• The Sound tab is where you can set the sound master volume, enable your microphone for voice chat, set the voice and mike volume, and select your sound input and output devices.
• The Controls tab allows you to select Basic (normal keyboard characters are used for chatting in the chat window, and arrow keys are used for movement), or Action Games (you must press before chatting using the keyboard, else WASD are used for movement).
• The Record tab permits you to set the Screenshot folder, set the Screenshot hotkey, and a hotkey for hiding the GUI.

Toolbar
The lower toolbar has some nice features:








The first icon brings up the mini-map, next is the places browser, then the Messaging window. The Community icon is next, allowing you to see what events are on, join groups, and search for other residents, complete with their profile (from here you can also send them a Private Message, a Friendship Request, or teleport to them). The Instant Messaging and the Change Avatar (body and clothes) icons then follow. The final two icons bring up the Library (Inventory) and Animations browser.

Movement
You can use either the arrow keys or the WASD keys depending on which mode you select. You can walk faster by holding down the Shift key. The movement is smooth, however, when watching other avatars walking by they often suddenly rise into the air by a metre or so (not jumping), or walk into the floor, for no apparent reason. Many of the avatars around me appeared to be in running mode, but not actually moving. The mouse thumbwheel allowed me to zoom in and out with my camera, while holding down the right mouse button and dragging the mouse allowed me to pan and tilt my camera.

Conclusion
Twinity has many of the core features you could wish for in a Virtual World. However, there are no in-world building tools, but you can upload images and 3D objects (using the Collada format), at 1 Global per object. The avatars still look awful. You can buy or rent property in Twinity from the main website,

It will be interesting to see what the final feature set will include when Twinity eventually comes out of beta.

Now that Avatar Reality have released their special pioneer virtual land prices for Blue Mars a comparison can be made with with their already established competitor, Second Life, and its virtual land prices .

The main point of difference between land prices in Blue Mars and Second Life is that in Blue Mars the land size is user-defined (from 128m x 128m up to 16km x 16km, but see a note on this below), and you are essentially paying for concurrent user capacity, which gets cheaper the more you buy, while in Second Life you are paying for a fixed land size (256m x 256m) and 15,000 prims.

Blue Mars
Blue Mars has 4 standard packages, (but other packages may be negotiated as needed). These are:

• Outpost: 5 concurrent users, setup fee of $100, monthly hosting of $30
• Village: 50 concurrent users, setup fee of $750, monthly hosting of $275
• City: 250 concurrent users, setup fee of $2,000, monthly hosting of $1,000
• Metropolis: 1,500 concurrent users, setup fee of $7,500, monthly hosting of $5,000

For each package the land size is user-defined, and can be anything from 128m x 128m up to 16km x 16km. In practice I have found the best size is 2km x 2km, as the resolution of terrain textures are optimum at that size, while the higher sizes tend to suffer from instability on low-spec machines.

Although not strictly part of the land cost, it should also be noted that where land is used for commercial purposes (stores, etc) Avatar reality takes 25% of all transactions, with the land owner retaining 75%.

While Avatar Reality does not use the concept of prim limits in their land prices, there is a physical compressed file size limit of between 250MB and 500MB for all City Data, which is currently extended to 1GB until February 1st, 2010.

Second Life
Second Life has two pricing structures for virtual land, determined by whether the land is 'mainland region', i.e. it is part of a larger continent, so you may have neighbours on all four sides of your region, or 'private island region', where your region has no neighbours on any side. A region has a fixed size of 256m x 256m. In order to own mainland land a premium account is required, which incurs a monthly fee of US$9.95/month. In order to make as close a comparison as possible to land prices in Blue Mars, only the private island region prices will be used.

Second Life offers three private island region product offerings:

• Full Region: 15,000 prims, 100 concurrent avatars*, setup fee of $1000, monthly tier fee of $295
• Homesteads: 3,750 prims, 20 concurrent avatars, setup fee of $375, monthly tier fee of $125
• Openspaces: 750 prims, 10 concurrent avatars, setup fee of $250, monthly tier fee of $75

* It should be noted that the maximum allowed concurrent avatars is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in practice. Many residents of Second Life report that lag starts to become very noticeable when around 20 avatars are present in one region (20% of the maximum), and is similar to wading in mud when around 30 are present (30%), and few get to 40 avatars present (40%) without crashing.

In addition to the above prices, Linden Labs will apply Value Added Tax (VAT) for residents of the European Union.

Both Homestead regions and Openspace regions may only be owned by residents who currently own at least one Full Region.

Homestead regions have a lower performance than a Full Region and are intended for low-density rentals, quiet residential, or light commercial use.

Openspace regions are intended for very low-impact scenic use, such as ocean, forest, or countryside. No habitation, sub-rentals, or events are permitted.

Full details of all restrictions are here.

Comparison
Making a direct comparison is not so straighforward, due to the different concepts involved, so I will provide an illustrative example.

A Blue Mars City is 2km x 2km of virtual land (4 sq km), and comes with a guaranteed support for 250 concurrent avatars.
The cost will be a setup fee of $2,000, and a monthly fee of $1,000.

To achieve the same with Second Life you will need initially a Full Region, plus 60 Openspace Regions. This will provide 61 x 256 x 256 = 3.99 sq km. You will get then get a maximum concurrent avatar capacity of 710, but no guaranteed lag-free support, although applying the practical lag-free limit of 20% the useable avatar concurrency is probably nearer 142.
The cost will be a setup fee of $16,500 and a monthly fee of $4,870.

Conclusion
Many people in the Second Life forums and over at SLU predicted high prices for Blue Mars land. I think the above example shows quite clearly that they got that wrong, big time. However, the Blue Mars prices are special pioneer rates for early adopters, and will likely be revised sometime in 2010, so I would recommend getting in early here, especially with the added bonus of up to 1GB of City Data to those who buy before the 1st February 2010, and with 2km x 2km of land starting from as low as $30/month (that is 62 times the amount of land you get with a SL region, and at almost 1/10 of the monthly price), now could never be a better time!

Member MyPage
Today sees the launch of the member MyPage. The link is here.

• Change your User account email address.
• Change your User account password.
• Buy inworld currency, the BLU.
• See a list of friends in your Friends List and their online status.
• Download the latest Blue Mars Client and patches.

• An image of the item
• Its name
• Category of item
• Type of Item
• Description
• Date of Acquisition

General
The new Blue Mars release is now much smaller, at around 320MB compared with the previous download size of 1.3GB. This is mainly due to no longer bundling Cities in the download. See the City Browser section below for further details.

City Browser
The new City Browser lists all cities that you currently have on your HD and lists all the other cities available on the AR servers. Selecting a city in the browser will now download it in the background. The time to download will depend on your broadband speed. City file sizes will typically be in the 200MB - 500MB range. You must restart Blue Mars to be able to visit any City you have downloaded.
New Cities
The new Blue Mars release comes with two new Cities to explore, an update to an existing City, and a new bowling game.

Caledonia
Desmond Shang, well known in Second Life with his Caledon Victoriana sim, has established a colony now on Blue Mars, and named it Caledonia.

If Victorian Caledonia isn't quite your cup of tea, check out Pavonis, a tropical archipelago under the same management but with large islands available for development, not subject to Caledonia's 19th century thematic restrictions.

• Improved Communications Panel
• Purchased items go into Inventory
• Clicking the ground to walk no longer makes a sound
• New icon set

BlueMarsDev.com > dev.bluemars.com

Updated developer tools (editors)
All the Wiki pages for Item, Cloth, Shop and Furniture Editors have been updated, with new examples on how to create cloth and furniture.

All Editors will now display version number, build type, and build date on the window title bars, and you can also see this information in the Editors' splash windows and About windows.

Right-clicking on the Bluemars.exe file and viewing the Properties should now show the same version information.

Blue Mars City Editor
The City Editor is now available to everyone though the Dev MyPage. City developers can now:

• Load block layer files and export pak files.
• Upload pak (CTY) files to Avatar Reality through Dev MyPage.
• Upload pak (CTY) files to Avatar Reality through FTP
• Set an area that requires an item.
• Define a block

Flash functionality

• ARFlashEntity makes it easy to incorporate Flash anywhere in Blue Mars.
• Just drag and drop the entity to create a resizable panel, type the URL, then hit the Enter key.

How-to included on the wiki.

Blue Mars Block Editor

• Block Developers can now use Flowgraph.
  

Blue Mars Shop Editor
Shop owners can now:

• Create custom Shop interiors in the Shop Editor.

• Set Shelves on leased Shop through Dev MyPage.

Blue Mars Furniture Editor

• Developers can create furniture items and upload them for QA approval through MyPage, in the same way as in the Item and Cloth Editors.

New Female Avatar Mesh
Updated female avatar face and body mesh included in this release:

• Beautifully-formed
• Better animation
• Optimized for skin texture matching

COMING SOON

Pricing information
Expected tomorrow, 18th December. Check this page.

User MyPage ( http://member.bluemars.com/MyPage/ )
This will enable you to:

• Change your User account email address.
• Change your User account password.
• See a list of friends in your Friends List and their online status.
• Download the latest Blue Mars Client and patches.

Edit Avatar feature:

• Change your avatar's first and last name.
• Choose how you want your avatar's name to be displayed in the chatbox in Blue Mars (hiding both avatar names will show your User ID).
• Reset Face: Reset your avatar's face to default, while keeping customized cosmetics, animation and clothing intact.
• Reset Avatar: Reset your avatar's face, cosmetics animation, and gender to a default state. You will then be able to change your avatar's gender.

Even More

• Buy Blue Mars currency (BLU) to purchase items and rent Residences.
• Inventory page will show items you purchased with your BLU.
• Room page will show Residences you are renting, and a Guest List where you can give your friends access to your Residence.
• Message page to send and receive messages to and from your friends.

Today sees the start of a series of Blue Mars releases that promise to be the biggest yet. Of course, not everything that people want from Blue Mars will be included, that will have to wait for future releases (that is the nature of this beta period), so I intend to concentrate in these articles on what is included.  Do check back often over the next few days.

New Wiki


Blue Mars has now opened its wiki to all, including the previously off-limits City Editor sections, so no password is now required to access the City Editor information.

The Wiki is now also a true wiki, where everyone, developers and users alike can contribute. Initially, everyone can create 'draft' pages, and after review will be posted by the wiki admins.

Blue Mars Wiki

Blue Mars News
A new release is expected on the 15th or 16th December, and it promises to introduce a lot more content and a revamp to the UI. Also expected are a release of pricing info, a new website, and updated wiki and FAQ.

The T-shirts and apartments for volunteers, along with a volunteer training guide, are also expected this coming week.

The differences between the Blue Mars City Editor and the Crysis Sandbox has also been added to the Wiki now. The current state of compatibility is as follows:

Continuing this summary of currently available Virtual World platforms and engines, my final five are among the lesser-known, but do check them out.

Alice
Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn fundamental programming concepts in the context of creating animated movies and simple video games. In Alice, 3-D objects (e.g., people, animals, and vehicles) populate a virtual world and students create a program to animate the objects.
http://www.alice.org/

NeL
NeL is a toolkit for the development of massively online universes. It provides the base technologies and a set of development methodologies for the development of both client and server code.

NeL contains the following libraries:

• Miscellaneous library
• 3D engine
• Network engine
• Sound engine
• Collision engine (PACS)
• Form management (Georges)
• Landscape management (LIGO)
• Logic engine

NeL works on Windows, Linux and Mac under the GNU General Public License.
http://dev.ryzom.com/projects/nel/wiki

OpenSceneGraph
 The OpenSceneGraph is an open source high performance 3D graphics toolkit, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modelling. Written entirely in Standard C++ and OpenGL it runs on all Windows platforms, OSX, GNU/Linux, IRIX, Solaris, HP-Ux, AIX and FreeBSD operating systems. The OpenSceneGraph is now well established as the world leading scene graph technology, used widely in the vis-sim, space, scientific, oil-gas, games and virtual reality industries.
http://www.openscenegraph.org/projects/osg


Solipsis
Solipsis  is a French R&D project (ANR-RIAM) leaded by Orange Labs, funded by ANR and Media & Networks cluster of Brittany, launched in January 2007 and based on prior works dating from 2000. Five partners are involved:

• IRISA - Peer-to-peer networks & distributed systems
• Archivideo - Auto generation of 3D models & declarative method
• Artefacto - Avatars, contents & enhanced 3D modelling tools
• Rennes 2 University - Sociology of Community
• Orange Labs - Navigator, node and a bit of everything

Solipsis aims to create a public, massively-shared and user-generated unbound digital universe, sustained by a dedicated Peer-to-Peer protocol, with a modern day rendering engine and some great and accessible 3D modelling tools. In other words: a decentralized Metaverse platform. 

http://www.solipsis.org/

 

Syzygy
Syzygy is a programming toolkit for writing virtual reality or other graphical applications. Syzygy applications can run on a single computer, but it is especially designed for the creation of applications to run on clusters of networked computers. Programs or instances of the same program running on different computers in the cluster communicate with one another and share data.
Syzygy runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS X, and Irix. A cluster can be heterogeneous, i.e. you can mix different operating systems. Installation varies somewhat between operating systems.
The Syzygy libraries themselves are written in C++.

http://syzygy.isl.uiuc.edu/szg/index.html

Introduction
With 2009 rapidly coming to a close, we have seen a number of changes in open-source Virtual World platforms and engines, with the noticeable departure of M.U.P.P.E.T., the arrival of Unity, and the no-show of Myst Online. This is the year-end round-up of the current state of play.

Changes through 2009
Visitors to the M.U.P.P.P.E.T home page are informed that the website is down for maintenance, as they get ready for the next version. However, that message has been there since at least August 2008, and neither of the two links on the home page, to the latest version of the software, and to the SIGGRAPH documentation, currently work. I think we can safely say that after more than a one year absence it is unlikely that they will return.

The big news during 2009 was the introduction of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) from Epic Games, although it is still to be determined if this free games engine can be utilised to support Virtual Worlds. For this reason it is not included in this current list, but it has been the subject of separate articles in this blog. Also during 2009 came the announcement that the Unity multiplatform game development tool, was to be made available for free. Unity does appear to have all the ingredients necessary to support the building of Virtual Worlds, so I have included it in the current list.

Missing from the list is Myst Online, who made the following announcement more than a year ago:

Cyan Worlds, Inc. has agreed to put the program code sources for Myst Online: Uru Live into open source. The code sources that will be included are the code for the client, all the servers and tools. With the source to the client and the servers, fans should be able to set up and run Myst Online: Uru Live and bring Uru community back online.

However, there is still no sign of this being followed through.

Current Platforms

Croquet
The Croquet Project is an international effort to promote the continued development of the Croquet open source software development kit, for creating and delivering deeply collaborative multi-user online applications. Implemented in Squeak Smalltalk, Croquet supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation among multiple users. Applications created with the Croquet Software Developer's Kit (SDK) can be used to support highly scalable collaborative data visualization, virtual learning and problem solving environments, 3D wikis, online gaming environments (MMORPGs), and privately maintained/interconnected multiuser virtual environments. Since release of the Croquet SDK in 2007, the SDK has not been under active development. All continued development of the technology has taken place under the very active Open Cobalt effort.



Croquet is MIT licensed.
http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.croquetconsortium.org/index.php/Main_Page

The Metaverse Project
The Open Source Metaverse Project, or OSMP, was a multi-participant shared virtual world online platform. This platform was free and open source software co-founded in 2004 by Hugh Perkins and Jorge Lima.

OSMP is loosely modeled on the World Wide Web borrowing ideas from existing worlds such as Second Life, Active Worlds, and There. This project aimed to produce an open source engine for the creation of streamed 3D worlds, also making it possible to interconnect existing worlds into a single open, standards-based Metaverse.

As of 2008, the project was no longer active. Most developers shifted focus to development of open source software compatible with Second Life, but the software is still available on SourceForge.
http://metaverse.sourceforge.net/

Ogre

OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D rendering engine (as opposed to a game engine) written in C++ designed to make it easier and intuitive for developers to produce applications utilising hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. The class library abstracts the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other high level classes.

OGRE has a very active community, and was Sourceforge.net's project of the month in March 2005.[2] It has been used in some commercial games such as Ankh and Torchlight.
http://www.ogre3d.org/

Open Cobalt
Open Cobalt is a free and open source virtual world browser and construction toolkit application for accessing, creating, publishing, and hyperlinking avatar-based multi-user virtual worlds that are accessible both on local area networks or across the Internet. It is designed to enable the deployment of secure virtual world spaces that support education, research, and the activities of virtual organizations. The Open Cobalt application is a type of 3D browser that can be used to define and access a network of interlinked 3D virtual environments in much the same way that web browsers are used to define and access web based content on web pages.
http://www.duke.edu/~julian/Cobalt/Home.html

OpenMASK
http://www.openmask.org/

Opensimulator
OpenSimulator is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows you to develop your environment using the technologies you feel work best - we've designed the software to be easily extendable through loadable modules to build completely custom configurations. OpenSimulator is released under a BSD License, making it both open source, and commercially friendly to embed in products.
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

Project Darkstar

Project Darkstar is an open source MMOG middleware solution written in Java by the Project Darkstar team at Sun Microsystems. It is a research project currently headed by Sun Microsystems engineer Jim Waldo that was publicly released on August 30, 2007[1], and "aims to help developers and operators avoid a range of serious, yet typical, problems associated with massive scale online games, virtual worlds, and social networking applications today, including zone overloading, data corruption, and server underutilization."
http://projectdarkstar.com/

Project Wonderland

Project Wonderland is a 100% Java and open source toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio, share live desktop applications and documents and conduct real business. Wonderland is completely extensible; developers and graphic artists can extend its functionality to create entire new worlds and new features in existing worlds.
https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/
https://wonderland.dev.java.net/index.html

Sirikata
Sirikata is an BSD licensed open source platform for games and virtual worlds. They aim to provide a set of libraries and protocols which can be used to deploy a virtual world, as well as fully featured sample implementations of services for hosting and deploying these worlds.



http://www.sirikata.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Unity

Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars, but now available for free!
http://unity3d.com/unity/

VastPark

VastPark is virtual worlds technology done right. The framework is simple, distributed and extensible. It's not a single virtual world. Instead, it provides free software tools, APIs and open source libraries so you can deploy (and even monetize) your own virtual worlds and add ons for all kinds of organizations and purposes.
http://www.vastpark.com/

vr juggler

The VR Juggler project was started in 1997 by Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira and a team of students at Iowa State University's Virtual Reality Applications Center. This ongoing work has produced a freely available open source, community-oriented virtual reality application development framework. VR Juggler is released under the GNU LGPL and will always be available for anyone and everyone to use free of charge.
http://www.vrjuggler.org/

Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and propersous 2010.

Rock

As I mentioned in my Diary entry for the 13th November I have been involved with a small team of seven developers to establish whether the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) can be successfully used as a platform for creating standalone virtual worlds as opposed to just game modding.

With this purpose in mind, we started off by defining what users would normally expect from a Virtual World, then we investigated those definitions to see if the UDK supported them or not, then formulated tests to demonstrate compliance.

The definitions we used were that a Virtual World should be a virtual space, that is persistent, and where its residents can:

• Change their environment, either with inworld or offworld building tools
• Change their appearance, in terms of shape, skin, hair and clothing
  
• Teleport from one area, or one zone, to another
• Communicate with Chat, IMs, VoIP, Friending and Friends List
• Fly, run, walk, jump in a smooth and intuitive manner
• Have an economy, where virtual goods may be bought, sold and traded

I believe those are the 'core' functions of any virtual world that hopes to be successful, and it is these core functions that need to verified and validated to determine if the UDK can indeed be used to create Virtual Worlds.

Each of the developers took on an area from the above list to investigate, and the initial results are now in.

Building Tools
The UDK has no provision for inworld building (like SL), and objects are built offworld in 3d apps then uploaded. We are currently looking at a hybrid approach where there will be a low-def building toolbox within the world, using primitives similar to SL, but with the prim set extended, and with the ability to import far more detailed meshes from external 3d apps. We are encouraged by the amazing work of Gary's Mod.

Avatar Appearance
I don't think I have seen anything better than the one in APB, a game built on the Unreal Engine. It just shows what is possible with this awesome engine.




















Teleporting
We now know that a teleport system is available in the UDK, as a good example of this is in the "DM-Deck" map, where you can teleport from a low ground position to a high platform.


We will start looking at maintaining avatar appearance and inventory across teleports next.

Communications and Friending
Only basic console chat is available in the UDK. In UT3 and other Unreal games, VoIP, chat, IMs, Friending etc, was achieved by their tie-up with GameSpy, which became an integrated partner. Alternatives to GameSpy, such as Raptr, and Xfire are being investigated, but also possibly an in-house solution. At the very least, Skype could be used.

Movement
Walking, running and jumping are all included in the UDK, and the controls are what users of games expect. There is no native support for flying (as in SL) so this will need to be coded.

Economy
There is no provision in the UDK for an inworld economy, so offworld economy models are currently being researched (similar to XStreetSL). Inworld, money can be treated as just another inventory item, and be earned, paid, spent etc as normal. If the 'rezzing' of objects inworld can be solved, then inworld stores would be feasible.

Rock

Below is the text of the post I made to the OpenSim core-devs about my decision to leave the OpenSim project.

I have decided to leave the Opensim project. You will probably not even notice if I leave, as not being a programmer my only inputs were the writing of the step-by-step tutorials, the drafts of the OpenSim User Manual on the Forge, and helping out in the IRC channels, for newcomers. You may find my reasons for leaving Opensim interesting though (and please do not construe any of my reasons as an attack on anyone).

1. The Platform
I raised this several times in the past in IRC, and made posts on my blog about the product lifecycle of the platform. I believe that the platforms underpinning both Second Life and Opensim are quite long in the tooth now, and I questioned how much product lifecycle there was left, particularly given that Opensim is now nearing 3 years of development, is still in Alpha, and if the current release of 0.6.7 is any indicator, then still only around two thirds into the development cycle. With the (inevitable) coming of much superior platforms, such as Blue Mars (as a virtual world); and Unity, for browser-based Virtual Worlds; and now UDK (for creating sandboxes, standalones, and open grids), then I fear that Opensim has missed the boat as far as the remaining lifecycle of the platform is concerned. When you show people what is possible with these engines (for example this avatar editor for the forthcoming APB (using the Unreal Engine):  or this city  (using the CryEngine), then neither SL nor Opensim stands comparison.

2. Lack of Support for Currency in Opensim
I felt the impact of this when I first made the switch from SL to Opensim. I had a thriving RP sim in SL (over 50 people, mainly female) and they all agreed to follow me over to my Opensim and the OSGrid. However, within a month they had all left, citing the same reasons, the lack of places to shop to buy the quality stuff they wanted (skins, hair, clothes etc), as a quality appearance, and the fun of shopping is what all the females placed high on their requirements from a Virtual World. They drifted back to Second Life, and the guys followed them. I have always believed that the lack of support for currency in the core was a mistake, but that is just my opinion.

3. Marketing
I have also raised this issue several times, and blogged about it. It is far from clear just who an eventually released Opensim is actually aimed at. I think that any company that is interested in a firewalled corporate solution to collaboration and prototyping will already be looking at the Enterprise solution that is currently available from Second Life; that any indie group that is thinking of running a themed grid will need an economy to stay viable; and any individual who is looking for a private sandbox solution for their SL work will need full compatibility (which is not the case with the OS version of LSL diverging from the SL LSL). So, just who is the platform aimed at? I was also very disappointed in the view of one of the core devs who said that 'marketing is a null concept for us'.


I am currently designing and creating cities for Blue Mars, and involved in a team for proving the UDK as a platform for the design and creation of sandboxed or standalone Virtual Worlds (as opposed to purely games), and with so much documentation available for these mature engines (particularly for the UDK, Blue Mars lags behind somewhat in that department, but are working to put that right), I am achieving the productivity I want, building the worlds that I want, with stable crash-free platforms.

However, I do wish the Opensim team the very best in their endeavours, and I sincerely hope their goals are eventually achieved.

If anyone would like to take over the main Opensim Tutorials pages and the Additional Tutorials (they will need some updating following several changes) then I am more than willing to pass the posts over, and of course the Opensim User Manual is there in the Forge for anyone to develop further.

Best Regards and Good Luck

Rock

Blue Mars Progress Painfully Slow
I have been stalled in my city creation for weeks now. This has been mainly due to a lack of information on scripting, vehicle editing, and understanding the differences between the editors. I see in the Developer Forum poor Takuan has been soldiering on, with little or no support, in trying to get to grips with Lua scripting. He must be very frustrated.

I hope more resources become available soon so I can resume my build.

UDK Development Making Good Progress
I have been working on a proof-of-concept virtual world development using the Unreal Development Kit I blogged about earlier. With another developer from Blue Mars and a modder named Ridders from the UDK forum, we have been conducting experiments to establish a net-wide interface to enable a server running a map or game to be accessed remotely by another client across the net. I am happy to report that these experiments have been successful, and remote connections are now possible, and understood. The need for experimentation is also due to the lack of good quality step-by-step documentation, but in general the wealth of documentation available to UDK modders is huge, compared to the documentation available for Blue Mars.

Here are some of the resources I have been using:

UDK General Features with much useful Info

UDK Getting Started 

UDK Content Creation

UDK Programming Home

UDK Documentation Forum

Rock

Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available.

• Immediate access to Unreal Engine 3, the critically acclaimed 3D game engine technology for cross-platform game development.
• Easy content creation with the Unreal Editor, a fully integrated suite of top-tier development tools, which comes complete with:
• Unreal Content Browser, a revolutionary tool for browsing, searching and organizing game assets with collaborative metadata tagging system.
• UnrealScript object-oriented programming language and Unreal Kismet, a visual scripting system that enables rapid prototyping on the fly.
• Unreal Matinee, a powerful tool with movie director-class controls for building in-game cinematics and gorgeous cut scenes.
• Unreal Cascade, an advanced particle physics and environmental effects editor that aids the creation of fire, fog, explosions and other visuals.
• NVIDIA® PhysX®-powered physics system with Unreal PhAT visual modeling tool for creating character and object physics rigs.
• Unreal Lightmass, a global illumination system that dramatically lights and shadows with minimal effort required by artists and designers.
• AnimSet Viewer and AnimTree Editor, which give animators precise control over every muscle and bone movement.

• Time saved thanks to technology integrations with leading game development middleware tools including SpeedTree®, Bink Video®, and FaceFX®.
• Output of standalone applications: Games created with UDK run entirely on their own with no additional software required. This means anyone can make UDK content and distribute it for free.

Yesterday, November 4th, 11:15 am - 12:00 pm PST, Doug Thompson (Dusan Writer in Second Life) moderated a mixed-reality panel at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco and Metanomics inworld with:

• Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's CEO, 
• Neil Katz, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Director IBM Virtual Spaces, CIO Office Innovation Initiatives, 
• Steve Aguiar, Program Manager at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center's (NUWC's) Metaverse Strategic Initiative,
• Douglas Maxwell, Program Technology Lead also at NUWC's Metaverse Strategic Initiative.

Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, unveiled “Nebraska”, the LL code-name for a stand-alone solution based on the technology that runs the popular Second Life virtual world. “Nebraska” is the much-anticipated behind-the-firewall solution which allows enterprises to host their own virtual world environments within their organizations, which was first introduced back in April.

Mark spoke about the benefits of the platform, the intended audience, and how it fits into the broader challenges and opportunities of “enterprise 2.0”. Mark was joined by a number of customers who had used Nebraska during the closed beta phase of development.

Nebraska consists of two rack-mounted servers, hosting two software packages: a world server and a voice server, which can be installed on an enterprise's network, and as it does not have to stream all the content that LL normally streams for Second Life, it is blazingly fast. Similar to the standalone version of Opensim, but much more polished.

The avatars in Nebraska are all 'suits', with none of the Pamela Anderson and Professional Wrestling lookalikes that seem to predominently populate Second Life. The package supports up to 800 avatars over 8 regions, each of which can be turned off, and replaced with another using a different theme. So, you could have training regions one week, then replace the regions with conference and show regions the next, saving to, and loading from, the region inventory at will.

But how much does all this cost? Well, the mooted price is US$55,000, plus US$14,000/year in fees, which should bring a big sigh of  relief to the open-source Opensim community.

Nebraska is aimed at providing enterprises with a SL-looking virtual space for their corporate activities, without the seedy association of SL itself.

In addition to Nebraska, Mark also introduced the Work Marketplace, where corporate customers could download ready-made regions, providing solutions for virtual conferences, events, exhibitions, training, marketing, etc., and a selection of business and work-related avatars, office suites, and much more, for their Nebraska customers, under a site license.

It remains to be seen whether this is a major new direction for Linden Labs.

Rock

Unity
Early in 2009 I mentioned the recent trend in Virtual World design that required little or no downloads, and where all content was streamed directly to your browser (basically, if you can watch streamed movies on your PC you can use streamed games and virtual worlds). As we approach the end of 2009 one company stands out as the leader of this trend, Unity Technologies.



The Unity software allows anyone, with no programming experience whatsoever, to quickly develop games and virtual worlds, that can be run in a browser, using simple drag and drop tools. A player can start a game or visit a world on their home PC, then continue on the move via their mobile phone!

Up until recently, the Unity software came in two main flavours: Unity Pro, at US$1,499 and a cut-down version, Unity Indie, at US$200. That has now changed. Unity Indie has now been renamed to simply 'Unity' and is now available at zero cost, while still allowing the user to create commercial applications. The main restriction between Unity and Unity Pro is that Unity is limited to a maximum of 20 avatars per 'world', which is ample for most applications. Unity is available in both Windows and Mac versions, and versions are also available for creating applications for both the iPhone and the Wii.

The Unity download comes complete with a simple but powerful Editor, and a sample project, Tropical Paradise, which is available to browse, along with other projects in Live Demo format on the Unity website.



Models and objects for your world can be created in almost all current 3d applications. A list of 3d formats, image formats, video and audio formats supported is available on the Unity Asset Importing page.

Of course, once you have created a virtual world you will need to host it so your customers/friends can access it through their browsers. Hosting can be on a dedicated server, a Virtual Private Server, or even on your home PC if your upload speed is fast enough. So, what do you do if your ISP does not quote your upload speed? The answer is - you measure it. Use one of the internet connection speed measurement services. The one I like best is SpeedTest.NET Just select the recommended server to test with (click on the yellow pyramid), and it will measure first your download speed, then your upload speed. My upload speed is 1Mb/sec and it handled myself and a visiting friend with no problem at all. I did not check how many avatars 1Mb/sec could handle (but hey, you have to have something to check yourself, right?).

FriendsHangout
Many Games, 3d Chat Rooms and Virtual Worlds have been built now using Unity, and  one such company that provides over 4000 chatrooms, virtual worlds, and custom 3D worlds, using Unity, is FriendsHangout (terrible, unimaginative name, I know). You select the World you wish to visit from a rotating set of destinations boards (think Blue Mars Destination Island here, but rotating).


You can also create your own custom chat room and virtual world and buy furniture and various props to add your own design to each and every item in their catalogue.

While the most visible faces of the Avatar-Reality team have been working on the Blue Mars Client, providing more and more functionality, squashing bugs, arranging Meet & Greets, gathering feedback etc, other teams have been busy creating the developer tools, and providing detailed manuals for their use on the Blue Mars wiki pages.

The Wiki team is led by Scott Matsuda, the CSR, QA, and QC Manager at Avatar Reality Inc.

The Getting Started section of the Developer Guidebook explains the different types of developer in Blue Mars:

The Item Editor
Made specifically to have everything an Item Creator needs

Sandbox Item Editor is a 3D geometry model viewer and material editor for Blue Mars Project. The primary purpose of this tool is to convert 3D models in Collada format into a Blue Mars internal data format, examine the results visually and edit material properties of converted models as desired. Sandbox Item Editor uses CryENGINE2 for rendering; thus, it displays objects exactly as they will appear in the game. The manual provides a detailed description of its menu commands and special functions.

Note: in some images and documents, linked to this page, the Item Editor is also called Sandbox Viewer, which is the old name of this tool.