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Presentation of realXtend.org by Toni Alatalo at NVWN Monthly Meeting
This month’s guest was Toni Alatalo of realXtend.org (Python Morales
in Second Life), an open source platform for interconnected virtual
worlds.
Background
Toni has been working with internet development for the past 20
years. realXtend.org was started by a private investor, Juha Hulkko,
in Finland in 2007 as a result of his encountering second life and
seeing the possibilities for business. He saw that if VWs were to be
really big then need to so that there is nothing controlled by one
single company, but it should be an open source project.
Organization
Currently, there are four companies involved – 3 in Oulu, Finland and 1
in Spain – that are developing the software and these companies use
technologies to make their own business services and products while
realXtend coordinates the core platform. A new addition from beginning
of 2011 is the Center for Internet Excellence (CIE) at the university of
Oulu, where realXtend platform is used in several projects, including
the Intel and Nokia joint innovation center
(http://www.cie.fi/intel-and-nokia-joint-innovation-center-oulu.html)
LudoCraft (www.ludocraft.com)
Evocativi (www.evocativi.com)
Playsign (www.playsign.net)
Studio Enne (www.enne.es)
CIE (www.cie.fi)
Previously realXtend was a project with some Finnish public funding
but now they are establishing a permanent structure. There is the
realXtend Foundation, similar to the apache software foundation – open
source foundation – and the idea is that the foundation can never go
away – the Foundation owns the name. Then there is the Association in
which there is no money involved. The Association coordinates the
collaboration and develops interest in realXtend. For example, the
Association can suggest projects to the Foundation and the Foundation
then can collect money from big companies and fund projects. The
organizational setup is similar to that of Blender.org, which has a
foundation that owns copyright and name, and then have the Blender
institute where get funding for projects. The difference is that in
realXtend the Association will not hire as many people and will try to
keep the organization as simple as possible and not have money
there. Work is done mostly in the companies that utilize the platform.
So the development is more decentralized than in Blender or perhaps
even Mozilla.
Toni works in the Association and he is the “benevolent dictator” –
making decisions as to what code to include in the core. This is a
bit different than the open sim organization in which there is a set
of core developers and all those core developers have a veto right. So
nothing can go in the kernel if one person uses the veto.
In the future the association will decide the model with which
realXtend continues.
At the moment there are 15 people working on this – four companies
with few people each – and then at the local university. Also it is
important to note that Nokia is a funder as well.
Benefits of realXtend
realXtend is modular and is not built on the Linden Lab model.
Open Sim primarily based on Linden Lab and Second Life and this
restricts what you can do. When working with Linden code, they saw
that it was “spaghetti code”, ie it was not modular so that it was
difficult to add things. realXtend wanted to create a generic platform
on which you can make any kind of application and that was not tied
into the basic model of Linden Lab.
For example, some times the user does not need an avatar or does not
want a land/sky setup, but it was difficult to do such things that did
not already exist in the Linden viewer and in the protocol. Sometimes
you may want a virtual app that does not have avs at all but you just
want to control the thing by some other means – for example with
Celestia, an astronomical simulation, you control how view the solar
system and can change the time so it would be weird if you were a
human in this space. Also simple things like creating a demo with old
Linden-based viewer so you could swim as a fish – but to make a good
fish behavior you had to hack the code to disable flying above water and still you
could not simulate fish movement well.
But you can use any kind of 3d model as avatar in realXtend and can
animate them how you want and use motion capture, which also works
with second life avs, but two differences 1) in sl there is always
same base mesh so all more or less similar unless build with prims, in
realXtend you can use any mesh – so can be anything you like such as a
mushroom very easily, 2) like a decentralized system so the avatar is
not tied to some world, but av server is independent and can use same
av in any world – global avatar system - Indeed this was the main
focus in the first stages and we are not giving that up – we like to
have decentralized stuff.
Our manifesto is that we should not rely on platforms that are
hardcoded for a certain kind of a worlds – opensim, Linden Lab –
always have terrain and regions of fixed size and human activities. But for
example, here is pong game and it is implemented in realXtend. Our
company makes fun fast arcade games and you do not always need avatars
in games. Perhaps you do not want sky or land in environment. So we
have a generic client, like a web browser, with which you can visit different servers which
define how the app behaves. In comparison, if you take a normal web browser and go to
google mail, then the browser looks like mail app, but if go to google maps
then functions like map app. This is idea in realXtend – always the
content, the application defines all the behavior. This way you can use
one generic platform for all apps, one app type is the second life app
with terrain, avatars, chat etc. but also anything else is possible too.
This way realXtend is an open source alternative to unity 3d, which is
also a generic engine.
In addition, realXtend uses the same code base to run the server and
the viewer so that when you make an improvement, it is made on both
simultaneously. One drawback with Open Sim is that you are not allowed
to see the Linden Lab code due to the possibility of copyright
infringement. So if you want to do something for Open Sim and
contribute code to the core, you are not allowed to look at Linden
viewer code. So this makes development very difficult, but for
realXtend, it is the opposite so does both automatically so very happy
to have simple server for modular viewer.
As for payment system, the idea in realXtend -- like in Opensim -- is
to keep the core independent of any particular money, authentication
etc. systems. Integrating any existing payment system should be easy
and we wan't to support that. For authentication e.g. Facebook works
since it provides OpenID, like google, which we we had
already in our old version, thx to Intel's Cable Beach which is now Simian Grid
where can use OpenID. In a project with schools in Oulu we also integrated Microsoft live id
as that is what they use in schools here. So easy to integrate but core does not
have any money in it itself, since not all apps need money. Also on the web,
webservers and browsers do not know anything about money. But we do
not have any integration yet – like paypal.
It is a good idea to make a technology similar to the web, without
the Linden inworld economy going on – but it is still
interesting what Linden has achieved with its inworld economy – we want
to support that – but do not always need it.
Also Sirikata is similar to realXtend – one difference is that
sirikata has had more of an academic focus. Sirikata is maturing,
and they have a webgl client now. We talk with them, and have also an
experimental WebNaali client, which uses the same webgl engine that Sirikata uses (GLGE).
Examples of use of realXtend
1. Meeting spaces for business people
2. MMORPGs
3. Academic uses such as the Nantes project in which designed Medieval
Nantes together with an art school and Professor François Garnier at
L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs AII. Tekes of Finland
designed a virtual expo world
4. Tekes had virtual expo world – not sure if still online. Have to
check. Currently the organization is in transition since the
developers and companies that were using opensim realXtend have
stopped using it and now are using the tundra platform. So no one is
maintaining the old demos anymore.
5. Finnish School of the Future – designing future learning
environments for school kids. On the left side have menu that is
custom code that is part of the service, made as simple tool for
school. Also have built in custom functionality so can grab objects so
can place objects in world just by carrying them and then walk around
and then press drop button when find place where want to put it. All
made with scripting – changed how avatars work and user interface – do
not need to compile the viewer – all done with scripting.
6. Chesapeake Bay with Immersive Education and Smithsonian Institute – sneak preview video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUKuDnEMuAk&feature=related
On May 1, a demo server will be opened.
Users
We have more or less only corporate users now, less academic now –
because it is developed by small private companies and we have to do
business to survive and so we have to find customers to pay so we make
apps and then make money. More in companies now and this collaboration
with academia that is something we should improve. There are some university
labs and student works that have been and are being done now, though.
Technopolis company in Finland that has many different locations so the Ludocraft company
arranged meetings and collaboration tools for them-
Also it is very difficult to know about all the uses of realXtend
since users are everywhere. For example, I know that some people in
Korea improved the VNC shared desktop functionality only because happened to see a video on youtube.
But this is new technology and we are really happy with it – happening
right now in 2011 when it really becomes something you can build on.
Challenges
One challenge is this thing with human networking – and communicating
about these things and having a nice website for this but our website
is dead. We are doing a good job with the code but perhaps with
Northern Finnish people we are not doing such a good job with PR and
communicating what we have done.
Challenge is that webbased client is in early stages and that when
with unity 3d and people use it with webbrowser plugin – so this
webbrowser client is one challenge.
Links
Downloads: http://code.google.com/p/realXtend-naali/downloads/list
Tundra download: http://code.google.com/p/realXtend-naali/downloads/detail?name=realXtend-Tundra-1.0.5.msi&can=2&q=
Naali Wiki: http://wiki.realXtend.org/index.php/Getting_Started_with_Naali#Getting_and_running_Naali
Tundra Wiki:
http://wiki.realXtend.org/index.php/Getting_Started_with_Tundra
Video on Tundra:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg6SAQPW-9k
Project visualization
http://code.google.com/p/rexprojectspace/
Paper on “An Entity-Component Model for Extensible Virtual Worlds”: https://github.com/realXtend/doc/blob/master/arch_article/simple.pdf?raw=true