RealXtend, lively, Vivaty, Smallworlds, JustLeapIn

ReadXtend

A lot of development has occured since my last post. Many opensource viewer clients have be launched. Most notably RealXtend’s viewer seems to have some more features than SL viewer. OpenViewer is another open source 3D world viewer, written in C#.

RealXtend enhances the SL viewer and provides some good facilities like inverse kinematics. RealXtend uses the Opensim Server and promises us truely free 3D internet. A RealXtend viewer can connect to any ReadXtend server. This allows viewers portability accross Servers. This is the openess which 3d web would need.

Uni-verse

Effort to make open source internet platform. It is based on verse protocol, which is a light weight , low latency protocol for transfer of 3d data across applications over network. Has plugins for Gimp and Blender. Not very easily deployable. Keeping track.

Lively

Google launched browser based virtual world viewer lively. I installed lively and am experimenting with it. Created the room for the institute here. Currently no support for money or scripting.

Vivaty

Vivaty  has a browser based virtual world and they have started their presence through a facebook application. Currently no support for money or scripting. Works only with Internet Explorer.

Smallworlds

This is completly flash based browser client for virtual world. Good quality.  Created room here

Just leap in

Browser based client, seems to me the best overall look and feel. However still need to explore.

Scriptable Virtual Worlds

Second Life inspired me to have a look at some other virtual worlds. I checked a few of them. There are virtual worlds for kids, for teenagers, for adults and the list is growing!!!. I am particularly interested in virtual worlds that allow me to do some scripting. With scripting, I have more control over the world and an ability to automate mundane activities.

I will scribe my findings to date.

Virtual World	Scripting Language
Second Life	Linden Script
Active World	C programming
Multiverse	Java on Server Side and Python on client side
Areae	Lua

The Fundamental Building Block (Prim)

It is said that there are two great joys in human life. The joy of giving and the joy of creating. There is a tremendous satisfaction when we see our creation at work. Virtual Worlds like Second Life allow us to create our own objects. Being a 3D universe , Second Life provides the basic tools and infrastructure to aid 3D modeling.

Today let me show you some fundamental building blocks provided by Second Life (SL) . In SL parlance we call them prims, which is a short form for primitives. We can create very complex objects by composing and manipulating prims.

Basic Building Blocks

Box

Cylinder

Prism

Sphere

Ring

Torus

Tube

Virtual Worlds

In this blog I am planning to write about virtual worlds. I was introduced to virtual worlds through second life. Since then, I have been fascinated by the immense potential of this new medium. I have my own island in Second Life “RajeshPatkar” . I am conducting several virtual world activities on this island. Currently I have kept it open for the students of my Institute “Rajesh Patkar Institute Of Software Engineering” .

Some where in near future I am planning to open it up for others as well. Through this blog I will be sharing with you my experience of living in the virtual world.