Users of virtual world Second
Life may soon be able to teleport between different virtual
environments, thanks to a collaboration between
Linden Lab and IBM.
Second Life creator Linden Lab and IBM have demonstrated virtual
world interoperability by teleporting avatars between the Second
Life Preview Grid and
OpenSim, an
open source toolkit for developing virtual world environments.
IBM said that an open standard for teleporting an avatar between
virtual world platforms would allow users to cross from one world
to another in a seamless transfer, just as they can switch between
websites.
Linden Lab and IBM are researching platforms and protocols that
will make the 3D internet and virtual world environment appropriate
for enterprise use. The two companies see interoperability as an
important stepping stone towards making virtual worlds
enterprise-ready.
"Interoperability is a key component of the 3D internet and an
important step to enabling individuals and organisations to take
advantage of virtual worlds for commerce, collaboration, education,
operations and other business applications," said Colin Parris,
vice-president, digital convergence, IBM. "Developing this protocol
is a key milestone and has the potential to push virtual worlds
into the next stage of their evolution."
IBM and Linden Labs are providing technical details to anyone
wishing to build virtual worlds. The protocol interactions used for
the teleport is documented on the
Architecture Working Group's (AWG) website, an open forum that
is designing and publishing the Open Grid Protocol.
IBM plans to offer the extensions developed for OpenSim to the
OpenSim community, and Linden Lab plans to make the extensions
developed for the Second Life viewer available as open source.
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