Important questions for me..

> Hi Michel,
>
> I'm glad you've included Croquet in your evaluations. What you desire
> sounds a lot like recreating Second Life services. Unfortunately, for
> those with needs like yours, Croquet is a programmer's tool rather
> than something you setup for your own virtual worlds. For example,
> there are no e-commerce functionality tools in Croquet, nor are there
> many tools to create the content to populate your world.
>
> I'm not sure what financial resources you have for such an important
> project. From the sound of your "web server" hosting service, it
> sounds like you want to run on a budget. I can't tell from your email
> why you wouldn't just use Second Life. If it's privacy you need, you
> can buy your own Second Life island. I believe you can collect stats
> if you own an island. In Second Life you might also find others with
> Phytotherapy interest to grow your community. If you want all the
> features of Second Life on a budget, you might try OpenSim, but you'll
> need to own your own server or lease a whole server and not just a
> "web hosting" service as you described that you have.
>
> Is this to help you with your BAZI PILIERS DE LA DESTINEE project?
> Perhaps, if you describe what you want to accomplish, we could help
> steer you in a better direction.
>
> You might also be able to use the mod features of several games to
> accomplish most of what you want, except the e-commerce functions
> which you might be able to do on a parallel web service.
>
> Croquet is better for those who wish to control every aspect of their
> shared virtual worlds and have the programming expertise, time, and
> money to create something which they need to control to that degree.
>
> Cheers,
> Darius
>
>
>  

>  If you're looking at a multi-user environment, I'd tend to concur with
> Darius that SL might be the best bet for the time being. We're working on an
> application that allows direct links down from a Web site to a private
> island, a contained group kind of idea, such that users don't even really
> need to know they're "in" Second Life. If they choose to explore out, great.
> Otherwise it allows us to control the user experience a little more and is
> vertical rather than horizontal – driving users to 'sealed' regions from the
> Web rather than to the region from within SL itself – although frankly the
> combination is probably best.
>

> There are folks running private islands and starting on world building
> using second life.  The results are starting to get good.  Check out
> OpenSIM and libsecondlife.  You just run the second life client with a
> command line option to specify the world to login to.
>
> Are any of the croquet folks planning on allowing a croquet world to
> be accessed by a secondlife client, or a croquet client to access a
> second life world?
>
> It seems you need a large user base to really get things going, and
> supporting multiple protocols would help with that.
>
> Imagine a virtual bazarrre where people can connect from multiple
> clients to a small  server that provides a portal to private servers.
> The bazarre becomes almost like DNS, google and the yellow pages for a
> virtual world.
>
> Folks have a stable place to connect to, and debug their client
> implementations, and they can enter a shop or go through a portal to
> enter other worlds with content they want.
>
> Once the worlds get more common, a better search paradigm would
> emerge, but this solves the problem the web had before search engines,
> how do I find content.
>
> It's just a thought, but I can say for me without places to go, who
> cares how cool the protocol spec looks...
>
> Janet Plato
>
> On Dec 3, 2007 10:18 AM, Doug Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> >  If you're looking at a multi-user environment, I'd tend to concur with
> > Darius that SL might be the best bet for the time being. We're working on an
> > application that allows direct links down from a Web site to a private
> > island, a contained group kind of idea, such that users don't even really
> > need to know they're "in" Second Life. If they choose to explore out, great.
> > Otherwise it allows us to control the user experience a little more and is
> > vertical rather than horizontal – driving users to 'sealed' regions from the
> > Web rather than to the region from within SL itself – although frankly the
> > combination is probably best.
> >

> Hi, James,
>         Without a protocol spec, and especially one that is accepted by the
> various developers, having multiple worlds that you can visit, and
> especially worlds from different developers you can visit is impossible.
> Think of the protocols as the formal specification of the communications
> between the various elements, thus setting the language of common
> discourse.  If the different worlds all speak differently and the
> clients cannot talk to or with them about the worlds they represent,
> then there is no way that one can understand the other, and your avatar
> cannot cross the boundary, even if you can deal with the language
> differences on the other side of the boundary, which requires a whole
> different level of understanding.
>
>         Right now, Croquet has a spec, Second Life has a spec, MMORPG's each
> have their own spec, and one cannot talk to or visit the other.  This
> has to be sorted out at some point for the web to become fully or even
> somewhat virtualized.  We are all just taking baby steps at this time,
> learning how to accomplish the virutalization is but one piece of the
> puzzle, learning to get from world to world is another, learning how to
> populate and set the environment in these worlds is yet another, and
> this doesn't even touch on the issues with external development.  This
> is just the internal issues within each of the various virtual languages
> and structures.  Furthermore, cross content virtualization will not
> likely come until a breakthrough in expression of the necessary
> requirements for virtualization, characteristics of Avatars and
> environments, and the communications necessary to set the communications
> methods, expressions to use, and structures of components that are
> common to all such environments.
>
>         Progress is being made, but this is a big puzzle, with things like how
> to associate gravity with an object (i.e. property lists and how they
> should be declared?)  or perhaps the means to express the date, time,
> location in the overall virtual world of each location, and what will be
> the standards?  Will there be 3, 4, 5, or who knows how many dimensions
> to the ultimate expression of virtual worlds.  And do the objects need
> to express the full dimensionality of their location, or should there be
> a world location, followed by offsets to tell the objects shape and
> geophysical properties?  Some of these issues will be worked out by
> individual developers, but conferences, and meetings of stakeholders
> like Linden Labs, and the Croquet Consortium will be necessary to
> determine these issues and how to present them across platforms.  During
> that stage, the objects will have to change, inherit the new properties
> so that they will be consistent with the virtual world interface and
> protocol that emerges.
>
>         But do not be discouraged.  Early developers, and especially those with
> interesting concepts, well developed platforms, and large user bases
> will all eventually be drawn to support the further development of the
> Virtual Web.  I can foresee addresses perhaps beginning with VW vs WWW
> to help guide virtual visitors across the new world.
>
> Regards,
> Les H
>
> On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 11:59 -0600, Janet Plato wrote:
> > There are folks running private islands and starting on world building
> > using second life.  The results are starting to get good.  Check out
> > OpenSIM and libsecondlife.  You just run the second life client with a
> > command line option to specify the world to login to.
> >
> > Are any of the croquet folks planning on allowing a croquet world to
> > be accessed by a secondlife client, or a croquet client to access a
> > second life world?
> >
> > It seems you need a large user base to really get things going, and
> > supporting multiple protocols would help with that.
> >
> > Imagine a virtual bazarrre where people can connect from multiple
> > clients to a small  server that provides a portal to private servers.
> > The bazarre becomes almost like DNS, google and the yellow pages for a
> > virtual world.
> >
> > Folks have a stable place to connect to, and debug their client
> > implementations, and they can enter a shop or go through a portal to
> > enter other worlds with content they want.
> >
> > Once the worlds get more common, a better search paradigm would
> > emerge, but this solves the problem the web had before search engines,
> > how do I find content.
> >
> > It's just a thought, but I can say for me without places to go, who
> > cares how cool the protocol spec looks...
> >
> > Janet Plato
> >
> > On Dec 3, 2007 10:18 AM, Doug Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >
> > >  If you're looking at a multi-user environment, I'd tend to concur with
> > > Darius that SL might be the best bet for the time being. We're working on an
> > > application that allows direct links down from a Web site to a private
> > > island, a contained group kind of idea, such that users don't even really
> > > need to know they're "in" Second Life. If they choose to explore out, great.
> > > Otherwise it allows us to control the user experience a little more and is
> > > vertical rather than horizontal – driving users to 'sealed' regions from the
> > > Web rather than to the region from within SL itself – although frankly the
> > > combination is probably best.
> > >
>
>

> I think you meant Janet and not James, but I could be wrong.
>
> I understand that you need a protocol spec in order to develop a
> server or client to implement a protocol.  I understand that this is
> all a large problem and will take a lot of work to solve.  But I think
> you missed my entire question.
>
> What is the road map for interoperability between protocols and is
> anyone working on it?  Initially I see croquet, x3d and libsecondlife
> as the protocols of choice, but I am not certain how this will really
> work out.
>
> Mailing lists are relatively slow.  I think people need to be able to
> download the SDK and connect to a place to go and hang out with other
> users in order for a community support network to develop.  IMO, that
> support network and community will greatly accelerate world building.
> I have no interest in making commercial worlds, or in proof of concept
> work.  We are past that.
>
> We need to get people the tools to start building large scale worlds
> and then get out of their way.  Much of this is happening, I just want
> to know the roadmap so I can determine where I fit in.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Janet
>
> On Dec 3, 2007 1:09 PM, Les <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > Hi, James,
> >         Without a protocol spec, and especially one that is accepted by the
> > various developers, having multiple worlds that you can visit, and
> > especially worlds from different developers you can visit is impossible.
> > Think of the protocols as the formal specification of the communications
> > between the various elements, thus setting the language of common
> > discourse.  If the different worlds all speak differently and the
> > clients cannot talk to or with them about the worlds they represent,
> > then there is no way that one can understand the other, and your avatar
> > cannot cross the boundary, even if you can deal with the language
> > differences on the other side of the boundary, which requires a whole
> > different level of understanding.
> >
> >         Right now, Croquet has a spec, Second Life has a spec, MMORPG's each
> > have their own spec, and one cannot talk to or visit the other.  This
> > has to be sorted out at some point for the web to become fully or even
> > somewhat virtualized.  We are all just taking baby steps at this time,
> > learning how to accomplish the virutalization is but one piece of the
> > puzzle, learning to get from world to world is another, learning how to
> > populate and set the environment in these worlds is yet another, and
> > this doesn't even touch on the issues with external development.  This
> > is just the internal issues within each of the various virtual languages
> > and structures.  Furthermore, cross content virtualization will not
> > likely come until a breakthrough in expression of the necessary
> > requirements for virtualization, characteristics of Avatars and
> > environments, and the communications necessary to set the communications
> > methods, expressions to use, and structures of components that are
> > common to all such environments.
> >
> >         Progress is being made, but this is a big puzzle, with things like how
> > to associate gravity with an object (i.e. property lists and how they
> > should be declared?)  or perhaps the means to express the date, time,
> > location in the overall virtual world of each location, and what will be
> > the standards?  Will there be 3, 4, 5, or who knows how many dimensions
> > to the ultimate expression of virtual worlds.  And do the objects need
> > to express the full dimensionality of their location, or should there be
> > a world location, followed by offsets to tell the objects shape and
> > geophysical properties?  Some of these issues will be worked out by
> > individual developers, but conferences, and meetings of stakeholders
> > like Linden Labs, and the Croquet Consortium will be necessary to
> > determine these issues and how to present them across platforms.  During
> > that stage, the objects will have to change, inherit the new properties
> > so that they will be consistent with the virtual world interface and
> > protocol that emerges.
> >
> >         But do not be discouraged.  Early developers, and especially those with
> > interesting concepts, well developed platforms, and large user bases
> > will all eventually be drawn to support the further development of the
> > Virtual Web.  I can foresee addresses perhaps beginning with VW vs WWW
> > to help guide virtual visitors across the new world.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Les H
> >
> > On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 11:59 -0600, Janet Plato wrote:
> > > There are folks running private islands and starting on world building
> > > using second life.  The results are starting to get good.  Check out
> > > OpenSIM and libsecondlife.  You just run the second life client with a
> > > command line option to specify the world to login to.
> > >
> > > Are any of the croquet folks planning on allowing a croquet world to
> > > be accessed by a secondlife client, or a croquet client to access a
> > > second life world?
> > >
> > > It seems you need a large user base to really get things going, and
> > > supporting multiple protocols would help with that.
> > >
> > > Imagine a virtual bazarrre where people can connect from multiple
> > > clients to a small  server that provides a portal to private servers.
> > > The bazarre becomes almost like DNS, google and the yellow pages for a
> > > virtual world.
> > >
> > > Folks have a stable place to connect to, and debug their client
> > > implementations, and they can enter a shop or go through a portal to
> > > enter other worlds with content they want.
> > >
> > > Once the worlds get more common, a better search paradigm would
> > > emerge, but this solves the problem the web had before search engines,
> > > how do I find content.
> > >
> > > It's just a thought, but I can say for me without places to go, who
> > > cares how cool the protocol spec looks...
> > >
> > > Janet Plato
> > >
> > > On Dec 3, 2007 10:18 AM, Doug Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > >
> > > >  If you're looking at a multi-user environment, I'd tend to concur with
> > > > Darius that SL might be the best bet for the time being. We're working on an
> > > > application that allows direct links down from a Web site to a private
> > > > island, a contained group kind of idea, such that users don't even really
> > > > need to know they're "in" Second Life. If they choose to explore out, great.
> > > > Otherwise it allows us to control the user experience a little more and is
> > > > vertical rather than horizontal – driving users to 'sealed' regions from the
> > > > Web rather than to the region from within SL itself – although frankly the
> > > > combination is probably best.
> > > >
> >
> >