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metaXLR8 streaming media and game server

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Produced by metafuturing

In the article on Metaverse platform gambling 1 I have described the three open source “official” next generation immersive education platforms selected by the Immersive Education Initiative: -Second Life in its open source OpenSim version, Open Croquet and Sun’s Java-based Wonderland - Darkstar platform-, as the best candidate Metaverse platforms available at this moment. This was correct: all three platforms have made significant advances in the last few weeks. In the image above my Second Life avatar is watching my Qwaq Forums avatar in a video presentation of Qwaq Forums (in Spanish) produced by metafuturing and Innovex4G, a Spanish company specialized in business oriented applications of VR technology. This is only a video streamed from our server and shown in Second Life, but it suggests the forthcoming interoperability of platforms. Qwaq Forums, a business oriented value added layer based on the open source platform Open Croquet, advances steadily by introducing some new features in each release and is a very useful tool for professional collaboration in geographically distributed teams. Voice and text chat, collaborative web browsing and drag-and-drop importing office documents from the desktop permit very productive business meeting in QF.

The New Media Consortium, a consortium of nearly 250 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies, has announced its Open Virtual Worlds Project, an effort that is aimed at making it easier to learn, work, and exchange ideas in virtual space. The project will develop a range of standards-based, portable open-source educational spaces, content, and objects, and use them to extend Sun Microsystems’s open source Project Darkstar and Project Wonderland virtual world platforms. The collaborative editing of documents in the virtual space shown in this NMC presentation video has been compared to Qwaq Forums. A comment to this article describes the differences between the two approaches and the superiority of the P2P features and licensing model of Open Croquet. However, it is clear that the Open Virtual Worlds Project will permit important advances also in Sun Microsystems’s VR worlds technology.

OpenSim, the open source version of Second Life, is where the most interesting recent advances have been announced. The project has reached its 0.5 release, that has beed described as an important milestone. Independent OpenSim based metaverse operators like Central Grid are beginning to make headlines. IBM is exloring (also) this platform and has built a 3D data center application in OpenSim.  Aimed at IT professionals, the application should let them monitor data centers more effectively over long distances. IBM presented the idea of a 3D data center in Second Life last year (see video below), but the new OpenSim application should allow more security with privately hosted environments. See also the articles of Tish Shute and Gwyneth Llewelyn. Perhaps the most interesting recent OpenSim news come from the Finnish company RealXtend, see Tish Shute’s articles Evolution of OpenSim: RealXtend joins OpenSim and RealXtend’s Vision for Avatar 2.0.

So what is the best bet? At this moment I tend to agree with Tidalblog: “It’s too early to predict the winners and losers in all this—perhaps there won’t be any. SL continues to break concurrency records (64,300 most recently) as the service stability improves. Those keen to capitalise on SL skills are presumably going to be tempted either to stay or to go down the OpenSim route”. Yes, SL is still there despite the bad press and, perhaps in a new OpenSim based incarnation, will probably continue to be the best choice to reach wide audiences in the Metaverse. While Qwaq Forums and other initiatives based on Open Croquet may be more attractive for the high-end corporate and educational markets.