(Originally posted at SLNN.COM)
Representatives of various open source virtual world projects participated in a round table as part of Virtual Worlds 2008.

New York - Representatives of several major open source virtual world projects discussed their projects and the future of open source virutal world projects during a roundtable at Virtual Worlds 2008. Remy Malan of Qwaq spoke about their system which is based on many open standards and open source systems including LDAP, XML, Python, Collada and most importantly Croquet. Nicole Yankelovich of Sun Microsystems spoke about Project Wonderland which is based on Darkstar. She also spoke about JVoiceBridge which supports SIP based Voice over IP telephony. Jani Pirkola spoke about realXtend and Adam Frisby spoke about OpenSim.

Also in the audience were Philip Rosedale from Linden Lab and David Levine from IBM. The discussion rapidly went to protocols and the work of the architectural working group. Concerns about the protocol that Linden Lab uses for Second Life, which OpenSim also uses, were explored. The protocol was deemed obtuse and lacking in robustness, particularly in wireless environments where packet loss of greater than 1% can seriously corrupt virtual world sessions.

Over the coming months the protocol will evolve. It will be a difficult process because no one wants to break existing functionality, but new ideas need to be explored.

The impressive movements of avatars in realXtend were lauded, yet they too, raised serious issues. As support for gestures becomes more sophisticated, especially using functionality such as inverse kinematics, the rendering becomes increasingly computationally complex. Seeing one avatar break dance is impressive, but thirty avatars break dancing together could be too much for many installations.

Another key issue that arose was how virtual currency would be handled. The previous day, Sean Kane, an attorney at the firm of Drakeford and Kane, LLC, which represents various game makers, spoke about the legal issues surrounding Virtual Currency. These issues, along with technological issues around trust and security has caused members of the OpenSim project to avoid implementation of currency. A basic framework has been provided so sites running OpenSim could add whatever backend currency processing is appropriate for their worlds.

Yet as Open Source projects make it possible for groups to establish their own islands or worlds, another problem pops up. Where will the content come from? Without content, the islands will be desolate and uninteresting. To the extent that content becomes exportable between worlds, the issues of copy protection becomes greater. Copy protection has proven difficult enough simply in Second Life. Copybots provide ways to circumvent copy protection. Open source systems will make copy protection even more difficult and ultimately all copy protection systems are bound to fail as objects get displayed in the frame buffer of the graphics card.

A few different methods of addressing this problem were addressed. First, while copy protection schemes will not ultimately prevent material from being copied, asserting the copyrights, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property rights can prove useful. It will deter some and provide recourse when intellectual property rights are not honored. As virtual worlds proliferate, especially with the advent of open source virtual worlds, the licensing of objects needs to be expanded. Permissions to copy material from the host world need to be added and these permissions may need additional options specifying which other worlds or types of worlds it will be permissible to copy objects to.

A second aspect of the copy protection was illustrated by Mr. Rosedale who pointed out that anyone could copy all the material that is displayed on the Amazon website, however, without a robust and sophisticated infrastructure to back up the material, the copied material would be useless. The same applies to copying material out of the Second Life environment. This, Mr. Rosedale suggested, is part of the reason open source virtual worlds are not viewed as a threat to Linden Lab. A widely trusted grid operator is essential to and successful virtual world, and Linden Lab intends to remain the most trusted name in grid operations.

This, together with the billion user created objects is why Linden Lab will remain a key player. Yet methods of moving objects between worlds are being explored. Methods of bringing in object from other 3D systems, like Google Sketch and objects in the Collada format are also being investigated. With this full-featured open source virtual worlds are bound to emerge. This will raise many issues of interoperability. It will also cause people to reconsider revenue models for virtual world hosting companies. Companies that provide higher levels of functionality and reliability will be able to charge higher prices, but the pricing model may change to more emphasis on tier prices and less on the price of buying land.

The voice system that is used for Project Wonderland is SIP based, as is a voice system being considered for OpenSim. This could facilitate voice interoperability between Project Wonderland and OpenSim based grids. There are many other issues about interoperability that could have been explored, but the time for the round table was soon gone. It was noted that a session on interoperability as well as more time to discuss open source virtual world platforms would have been beneficial.

Perhaps, some suggested, future virtual world conferences could take place as mixed reality events, including mixed reality interoperability. There is still a lot of work to be done before an interoperable multi-platform mixed reality conference can take place, or even before open source based virtual worlds become ubiquitous, but the round table at Virtual Worlds 2008 help people move one step closer in that direction.