Subject: [mmox] Interop ongoing between OpenSim grids

From: Charles Krinke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:20:26 -0800

I mention this to help focus some ideas.

There is ongoing interop between various grids that have adopted OpenSim
now. The four grids "ScienceSim" from Intel, OSGrid, "UCIGrid" and
"PseudoSpace" come to mind as four I have observed and participated in and
is all using HyperGrid.

There have been folks from other grids at meetings on OSGrid, and folks from
OSGrid participating in meetings on these other grids. This has all been in
full avatar form with working chat and inventory across grids.

This development and testing is ongoing and the HyperGrid logic is
speerheaded by Prof. Crista Lopes at UC Irvine.

Currently, as I read the IRC and opensim-dev e-mails, the current focus is
on adding some of the needed security functions to protect both grids on
each end of this interop.

There very well may be some lessons to be learned from this effort that will
help MMOX.

-- 
Charles Krinke
OpenSim Core Developer
OSGrid Director

---

From: Morgaine <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 21:05:04 +0000

Excellent, Charles!  (and all participants)

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 8:20 PM, Charles Krinke <[email-masked]>wrote:

>
> There very well may be some lessons to be learned from this effort that
> will help MMOX.
>
>
The first lesson has to be that when people cooperate instead of blocking
change, interop is only a few steps away. ;-)

I look forward to hearing more details of the tests and progress, and I
might join in the fun myself sometime too.  This will get especially
interesting as we move further away from the initial world models and
diversify more and more.

Well done.

Morgaine.

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 8:20 PM, Charles Krinke <[email-masked]>wrote:

> There have been folks from other grids at meetings on OSGrid, and folks
> from OSGrid participating in meetings on these other grids. This has all
> been in full avatar form with working chat and inventory across grids.
>
> There very well may be some lessons to be learned from this effort that
> will help MMOX.
>
> --
> Charles Krinke
> OpenSim Core Developer
> OSGrid Director
>
> _______________________________________________
> mmox mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mmox
>
>

---

From: Charles Krinke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 14:07:56 -0800

Ok, well, please stop me if I get too wrapped up in OpenSim stuff that is of
little interest to others as I do not want to appear to be saying "this is
the only way it can be", but you encouraged me, so here is a bit more.

As I understand what is happening, Prof. Crista Lopes is using the CAPS in
the SecondLife viewer as much as practical. Her view of development is based
on the message_template file in LibOMV (formerly libsecondlife). I
understand that both the SL viewer and the Hippo viewer function.

It appears to me that she is keeping an assetServer connection back to the
originating grid to allow inventory to come along and be rezzed (instanced)
in the destination sim. So, this is a matter of re-directing the SecondLife
"circuits" to enable this interop.

Certainly, one can argue that SecondLife and OpenSim are closely related in
at least functionality since OpenSim strives to be compatible with the
SecondLife viewer. But, there are other viewers being used now and I see
this as an ongoing interop effort also. Whether the viewer<->sim definitions
become part of MMOX, I dont know. That will be partly up to this group as it
defines its charter.

Avatars are arriving on OSGrid with names above their heads of the form
"First Last@dottedDecimal:port", which seems as good a way as any to
distinguish some semblance of identity right now to avoid avatar name
collisions.

One last note on OpenSim for now. It turns out that OpenSim does not use the
notion of an AgentDomain or a RegionDomain at all. The OpenSim architecture
consists of five processes that tie a grid together. These five processes,
which can run all on one server on different ports are known as the UGAIM.
UGAIM stands for UserGridAssetInventoryMessaging, and denotes a UserServer,
GridServer, AssetServer, InventoryServer and MessagingServer.

Charles Krinke
OpenSim Core Developer
OSGrid Director

-- 
Charles Krinke
OpenSim Core Developer
OSGrid Director

---

From: Lawson English <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:41:52 -0700

Charles Krinke wrote:
> Ok, well, please stop me if I get too wrapped up in OpenSim stuff that 
> is of little interest to others as I do not want to appear to be 
> saying "this is the only way it can be", but you encouraged me, so 
> here is a bit more.
>
> As I understand what is happening, Prof. Crista Lopes is using the 
> CAPS in the SecondLife viewer as much as practical. Her view of 
> development is based on the message_template file in LibOMV (formerly 
> libsecondlife). I understand that both the SL viewer and the Hippo 
> viewer function.
>
> It appears to me that she is keeping an assetServer connection back to 
> the originating grid to allow inventory to come along and be rezzed 
> (instanced) in the destination sim. So, this is a matter of 
> re-directing the SecondLife "circuits" to enable this interop.
>
> Certainly, one can argue that SecondLife and OpenSim are closely 
> related in at least functionality since OpenSim strives to be 
> compatible with the SecondLife viewer. But, there are other viewers 
> being used now and I see this as an ongoing interop effort also. 
> Whether the viewer<->sim definitions become part of MMOX, I dont know. 
> That will be partly up to this group as it defines its charter.
>
> Avatars are arriving on OSGrid with names above their heads of the 
> form "First Last@dottedDecimal:port", which seems as good a way as any 
> to distinguish some semblance of identity right now to avoid avatar 
> name collisions.
>
> One last note on OpenSim for now. It turns out that OpenSim does not 
> use the notion of an AgentDomain or a RegionDomain at all. The OpenSim 
> architecture consists of five processes that tie a grid together. 
> These five processes, which can run all on one server on different 
> ports are known as the UGAIM. UGAIM stands for 
> UserGridAssetInventoryMessaging, and denotes a UserServer, GridServer, 
> AssetServer, InventoryServer and MessagingServer.

Agent Domain has pretty much evolved into an authorization/service 
introduction server, I think. It doesn't fit into the UGAIM directly but 
as a proxy between them, it seems to me, to facilitate the definition of 
trust relationships between the UGAIM services.

Lawson

---

From: Charles Krinke <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 16:14:03 -0800

Sure. So, as we move forward, I would think defining the steps in
negotiating the relationship between different grids with slightly different
or more widely different architectures is going to be one of the tricks to
overlap the solution space for MMOX.

One can imagine that an avatar on gridA would probably "touch" an object or
walk through a gateway or portal. That would then trigger a certain set of
actions on the part of the sim, if you will. Presumably, those actions will
be one of the first things we need to define in a more formal manner. I
think we all know what the steps are starting from a query to a server
running on gridB on a similar or different virtual world architecture, and
ending with the possibility of the avatar on gridB with clothes, attachments
and scripts instanced (or rezzed) and runnable.

Some teleports will have a fully succesful negotiation and rez an avatar
ready to completely interact with the new world. Other teleports will fail
one or more steps in the negotiation and have some capabilities that may go
from "chat only with a ghostly presence" to "some functionality and ability
to interact with the new world".

I think that is in the spirit of Morgaine's 0-100% interop compatibility.

Charles Krinke
OpenSim Core Developer
OSGrid Director

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Lawson English <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Charles Krinke wrote:
>
>> Ok, well, please stop me if I get too wrapped up in OpenSim stuff that is
>> of little interest to others as I do not want to appear to be saying "this
>> is the only way it can be", but you encouraged me, so here is a bit more.
>>
>> Certainly, one can argue that SecondLife and OpenSim are closely related
>> in at least functionality since OpenSim strives to be compatible with the
>> One last note on OpenSim for now. It turns out that OpenSim does not use
>> the notion of an AgentDomain or a RegionDomain at all. The OpenSim
>> architecture consists of five processes that tie a grid together. These five
>> processes, which can run all on one server on different ports are known as
>> the UGAIM. UGAIM stands for UserGridAssetInventoryMessaging, and denotes a
>> UserServer, GridServer, AssetServer, InventoryServer and MessagingServer.
>>
>
> introduction server, I think. It doesn't fit into the UGAIM directly but as
> a proxy between them, it seems to me, to facilitate the definition of trust
> relationships between the UGAIM services.
>
>
>
>
> Lawson
>

-- 
Charles Krinke
OpenSim Core Developer
OSGrid Director