Considering Other Grids — The Baba Yamamoto Interview
by Alphaville Herald on 28/12/08 at 8:58 pm
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
To gain some insight into the growing number of competitors to metaverse service provider Linden Lab, I visited Baba Yamamoto Saturday afternoon. Mr. Yamamoto has been involved in open source reverse engineering of the Second Life protocols for some time, is one of the administrators of the libsecondlife library, and a staunch supporter of open source alternatives to Second Life.
Pixeleen Mistral which of the Open Sim grids are going to take off, do you think?
Baba Yamamoto hard to say
Baba Yamamoto it depends on which one makes it easy to get started
Pixeleen Mistral it just seems like one of them should get some significant growth in the next year
Baba Yamamoto I really think it would be best if none of them win out and moving between grids was simple and normal
Pixeleen Mistral I wish there was an easy way to move avatar shapes – that seems like the one thing that people would want
Baba Yamamoto It could be done in a week or two but nobody wants to take the risk
Pixeleen Mistral what is the risk? I mean, I made my own shape
Baba Yamamoto well shapes are easy
Baba Yamamoto they could be stored clientside simple
Baba Yamamoto very simple
Baba Yamamoto but an avatar is more than just a shape to most people
Baba Yamamoto its prims and clothes
Baba Yamamoto textures
Baba Yamamoto which likely somebody else owns the rights to
Baba Yamamoto I'm certainly not wearing anything I made except my avatar shape
Pixeleen Mistral I was in one of the open sim grids and they had nice freebie hair and good enough skins – but the thought of fussing with the shape sliders again was distressing
Pixeleen Mistral actually one of the freebie hairs they had is one I bought in SL a couple years ago
Baba Yamamoto well client side shape is something that could be done in a few days and set easily every time you log in
Pixeleen Mistral I think it all starts with the avatar, so that is where I think it should be easiest for people to migrate
Baba Yamamoto I think it could be done in the Open Metaverse's Meerkat viewer within the next month or so
Baba Yamamoto we're working on finishing up the grid teleport stuff
Pixeleen Mistral how is that going?
Baba Yamamoto Slower than I had hoped
Pixeleen Mistral there are crude sailboats starting to work now- that is a good sign
Baba Yamamoto sailboats?
Pixeleen Mistral wind powered boats
Baba Yamamoto Muahahaha
Pixeleen Mistral you have to tack them to go upwind
Baba Yamamoto eh… that's all in world scripting right?
Pixeleen Mistral yes – all in world scripting
Pixeleen Mistral you should look up Owen Oyen sometime – he is working on getting sailboats going
Baba Yamamoto I poke at the protocol
Baba Yamamoto 
but it sounds cool
Pixeleen Mistral its a good test – but it also means the sim crossings need to be smooth
Baba Yamamoto I'm more of a car person I would love to see an actual working simulation of an engine
Pixeleen Mistral I met someone who made a working piston in SL using the in-world physics
Baba Yamamoto Action!
Baba Yamamoto that is a start
Pixeleen Mistral but it tends to tear itself apart\
Pixeleen Mistral the little errors add up
Baba Yamamoto yes
Pixeleen Mistral and the materials are not strong enough
Pixeleen Mistral weird to think of that – but material strength is a big deal
Baba Yamamoto sounds like the 1800s
Pixeleen Mistral is is very much like that
Pixeleen Mistral this builder also got a pendulum with an an escarpment to work on in-world physics
Baba Yamamoto the physics of this environment are really limited
Pixeleen Mistral but again, they tended to tear themselves apart
Baba Yamamoto they are not made for realistic calculations of complex machines
Baba Yamamoto they are meant for simplistic approximations
Pixeleen Mistral lately I have been thinking that SL needs to specialize more and stop trying to be all things to all people – this physics is an example of that
Baba Yamamoto I look forward to using opensim with high end scientific physics simulations
Pixeleen Mistral maybe the physics should be something that you can pick and chose
Baba Yamamoto yes
Baba Yamamoto physics is something that you should be able to choose
Baba Yamamoto some people need it and some dont
Baba Yamamoto simple physics will do for most
Baba Yamamoto but there are so many possible applications that are cut off when we don't have a choice
Pixeleen Mistral this is what we get from having a Linden monopoly though – one-size-fits-all physics
Baba Yamamoto sure, but the monopoly won’t last
Baba Yamamoto opensim is approaching critical mass if not already there
Pixeleen Mistral that gets back to my earlier question – when will there be a viable alternative, and who?
Baba Yamamoto that's hard to say
Baba Yamamoto I would love if a bunch of people came together and gave their time freely to make an awesome thing
Baba Yamamoto but in reality its going to take money
Baba Yamamoto developers have families
Baba Yamamoto maybe opensim.. adam zaius and those folks
Baba Yamamoto I'm not sure that opensim is on the right track though
Baba Yamamoto its a very chaotic development process they have there
Pixeleen Mistral I'm trying to figure out where to open the next SL Herald branch office
Pixeleen Mistral I guess I'll wait and see where all the cool kids go
Baba Yamamoto like I said before.. I hope that no grid will be out of reach and that the viewer will allow you to travel from grid to grid with ease
Baba Yamamoto so if what the Open Metaverse Foundation has planned for the viewer works out the Herald can have an office in one grid access to every grid
Baba Yamamoto as simple as a teleport
Pixeleen Mistral for people who want to start checking things out – where should they start?
Pixeleen Mistral what should I tell my readers to try first, second, and third?
Baba Yamamoto checking out other grids?
Pixeleen Mistral yes
Baba Yamamoto most of the open grids are small operations not very developed
Baba Yamamoto the three big ones with the most community…
Baba Yamamoto OSGrid
Baba Yamamoto DeepGrid
Baba Yamamoto ok maybe two big ones
Baba Yamamoto a few medium grids
Baba Yamamoto Francogrid i think is french mostly
Pixeleen Mistral well, that gives people somewhere to start, anyway
Baba Yamamoto You might get a few more suggestions from the opensim folks
Pixeleen Mistral The Herald is starting to get ads from people running the other grids
Pixeleen Mistral I take that as a sign 
Baba Yamamoto that’s good
Baba Yamamoto which grids are most represented by the ads?
Pixeleen Mistral http://legendcityonline.com/home.php
Baba Yamamoto ah they are one of the medium size grids
Pixeleen Mistral there was one other that asked, but didn't buy an ad
Pixeleen Mistral so it seems like I need to start covering that scene
Baba Yamamoto http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List
Baba Yamamoto most grids are represented there
Baba Yamamoto with approximate sizes and user counts
Baba Yamamoto all of them are relatively small compared to SL
Baba Yamamoto 1200 regions 9200 users
Pixeleen Mistral this will kill a bunch of the SL land barons
Pixeleen Mistral but LL seems to be intent on killing them anyway
Baba Yamamoto very high sim ownership per user on OSGrid
Pixeleen Mistral the prices are cheap enough
Baba Yamamoto yeah
Pixeleen Mistral SL land prices are crazy
Baba Yamamoto OSGrid lets you run your own servers
Baba Yamamoto others set the sim up for you
Pixeleen Mistral but SL has a very few landowners paying for tons of freeloaders
Baba Yamamoto well OSGrid is big with early adopters
Baba Yamamoto so its a different demographic
Pixeleen Mistral the real irony here is that Prokofy does not like the other grids, but they have high rates of land ownership
Pixeleen Mistral and high rates of land ownership are in Prokofy's theory related to a more civil society
Baba Yamamoto i have not paid any attention to Prokofy in years
Pixeleen Mistral SL is set up to NOT be very civil
Baba Yamamoto OSGrid is kind of a free for all open society
Baba Yamamoto the problem I think for Prokofy is that other grids conflict with her hate for open source and techies who make up a large part of the population there
Baba Yamamoto they may have high rates of ownership but they're the wrong kind of people
Pixeleen Mistral yup – but I'm tired of how LL runs things here
Baba Yamamoto i've been tired for a long time
Prokofy Neva
Dec 28th, 2008
>Pixeleen Mistral The Herald is starting to get ads from people running the other grids
Pixeleen Mistral I take that as a sign
Baba Yamamoto that’s good
Baba Yamamoto which grids are most represented by the ads?
Pixeleen Mistral http://legendcityonline.com/home.php
Uh, yeah, I take that as a “sign” too. Glad to get this frank tip-off explaining where the Herald bias will come down on the reporting of this story — which we can already see in the non-lawyer Jessica Holyoke’s report.
The Herald needs to get over their communism. The appearance of these new crappy grids doesn’t “threaten SL land barons”. LL itself threatens them with their land glutting and competition with their own content residential sims far more than any crappy outside grid could threaten them. And the appearance of lots of shelf-paper land rolling out somewhere is immaterial to whether it affects land value, as land value is affected by something far more simpler, and yet more complicated: when a willing seller meets a willing buyer. We have neither, in any of these current new set-ups. No automatic buy interface. No land that can parcel and sell. No viable currency. Etc.
The other groups do not at all have “high rates of land ownership” in any real sense in which it has come to be signified in the virtual world of SL. It isn’t an open market, in an open society — that is what is required to make a civil society. The fact that thousands of people might own closed silos that they pay for offsite to a Grid Diva via PayPal isn’t an economy – it isn’t anything. It’s just a bunch of separate PayPal transactions linking up to that Grid Diva. That does not make a world. That makes an ebay store. A real land economy is open for sale to the public, has auctions, can be developed and traded, etc. Open Life tried to put this in, but it’s a flop because they didn’t put in the groups that you need to manage such land and business on it.
Baba of course is lying that he hasn’t paid attention to me, as in San Jose in October 2007 he was pathetically eager to talk to me. My heart contracted when I saw what he was in real life. That sick creepy kiddie avatar of his doesn’t even begin to describe it. I asked him what had so poisoned his soul. He said with a leering grin, “The Internet”.
OSGrid isn’t an open society whatsoever. Opensource = closed society. Those grids and sims are fierce, tribal, horridly insular and insolent little freak sideshows.
The Herald ought to cultivate more suspicion of OS tekkies if it values its freedom to go on reporting the news without fear or favour.
If Eric Reuters thinks SL is like watching the paint dry, wait til you see these other worlds.
The Patriotic Nevas
Dec 29th, 2008
Stupid manginas…
Sam
Dec 29th, 2008
“OSGrid isn’t an open society whatsoever. Opensource = closed society. Those grids and sims are fierce, tribal, horridly insular and insolent little freak sideshows.”
Open Sim is changing the way the world views virtual worlds. OSGRID is an open society, one of the best I have seen so far.
Prokofy Neva thanks for the laughs! Very narrow minded perspective. (Stomach still hurts from laughing so hard!!!)
chucklez the clown
Dec 29th, 2008
“Baba of course is lying that he hasn’t paid attention to me, as in San Jose in October 2007 he was pathetically eager to talk to me. My heart contracted when I saw what he was in real life. That sick creepy kiddie avatar of his doesn’t even begin to describe it. I asked him what had so poisoned his soul. He said with a leering grin, “The Internet”.”
I lol’d.
MarillaAnne
Dec 29th, 2008
While it’s true that Prokofy almost always um argue … Prokofy has nailed it fairly square on the head re Legend city (translation = Prokofy has it right). I had high hopes for Legend but found from experience that a self-chosen title like “Grid Diva” is, indeed, fair warning — something like a pirate ship hoisting the skull & bones. Anyway, we got off extremely light compared to Simone. All we lost was money and a few dreams and a very small amount of time. Get your eyeballs over to Prokofy’s blog for the rest of the story.
As to the promotion of legend via a bias slant … I suspect what a great many of us have learned is that we can’t let our resentment of sl’s behaviors blind us with a giddy hope in another grid. i know that before i spend time, money, and my promotional skills again, i’ll be interested in having much more info re the grid and it’s owners — real life verification of the grid owners and documentation about them and their team’s qualifications, etc. — for starters.
Um so as i was saying. it’s my hope that the herald was simply blinded by hope. time and actions will tell all.
Orion Pseudo (Shamroy on SL)
Dec 29th, 2008
Pixeleen I cannot wait until I’m ready to open my grid to the public and rest assured you will be the first I contact when it comes to advertising!
As for Prokofy – Nice lady or man or whatever you are. You seriously need to get your head out of the sand and quit poisoning yourself on the Linden Cool-Aid.
Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that OpenSim has its bugs and problems. After all its still ALPHA software you know. Just think of what SL was like back before it entered into the beta stage. I’m sure it had just as many bugs and glitches if not more given the Linden’s style of programming. But technology wise, regardless of its problems I’ll also be the first to admit that even in its early stages OpenSim is already light years ahead of SL and that’s in just the basics.
SL as a whole seems to be built from the ground up around the concept of greed and capitalism. You’re limited as to how many prims you can have as well how big those prims can be. For what reason? Prims = money in that world which also means that you have to pay to be creative! On OpenSim by default each region can hold 45,000 prims (the maximum hard coded into the client), of which each prim is willingly clamped at 256x256x256 meters. If I want bigger its as simple as flicking a switch in the config file and I can do _ANY_ size I want. In regards to building and in world design, the OpenSim gang really did pick up where the Lindens left off and rightfully so. The false technological limitations that the Lindens built into their own system have been removed thereby clearing the way for creativity to thrive!
You need to realize that not all of us share your visions and ideals for the perfect virtual world. Some may be out to simply make a quick buck, others may be out to provide a service, while yet others simply want to have fun. Sure, my grid has an economy enabled but its not linked to any real world funding source and in all honesty it never will be. Mind you its rather easy to create that link too, at max 10 lines of code in a config file but in all reality I’d rather take an axe to the head and have my dying corpse dragged down a busy freeway then foster the sort of greedy mindset that Linden’s economy has created.
I’m currently working with a team of ten content developers and each of us holds the concept of free and openly distributable assets rather close and dear. Sure, there are a few items that are closed source but again that’s the wonderful thing about the in world permissions system. If you don’t want people to see how something is made or operates its as simple as ticking one little option while still keeping that asset freely distributable. However in most cases we prefer that our users have the ability to pick apart and examine whats offered if they wanted to so that they may either customize and build from it or if need be learn how it was created.
Light heart-idly I have to ask, how many times have you spent money on an item in SL only to have it delivered and find that you cant modify or even copy make a copy in your inventory? How many times have you purchased that perfect wig only to decide several months later that you want to change the color and found you can’t because its no modify? Instead you wind up having to go and re-buy that same wig or paying the creator even more then what its worth to simply slather on a new texture for you! Annoying ain’t it? But I digress…
In the end a virtual world is nothing more then a technology consisting of a client, a server, and a network in between. Bits, bytes, pixels, and packets all transferred, organized, and rendered into an interface that you can move around and interact within. Sure it takes money to run all of these things but how much all depends on what you plan on using it for.
Load wise, I’m planning for a small to medium sized crowd of at most between 20 and 30 concurrent users to start. Nothing big and nothing fancy, but if I need to I can always scale up or down. That’s the great thing about dealing with raw server space in comparison to a fixed Linden sim. If you need more capacity you can buy it. If you need less you can simply downgrade. In any case however its simply amazing how much less resources OpenSim takes in comparison the Linden’s software!
In regards to land, I’m not sure when you last looked at OpenSim but since I started experimenting with it over six months ago I’ve always had the ability to partition off plots. As for an instant buy tool, that too is available and running! Honesty, if I were you I would check my facts before claiming certain things to be broken or unavailable!
In my little world we’re not looking to make money. Financially it is our goal to take a PBS type of approach where the whole setup is user supported thereby allowing our own contribution to be put toward expanding and further building the grid itself. So of course, in that regard we will be offering land however there will be no purchase price and that is not the driving purpose in our grid’s existence nor will there be any sort of markup. All transactions will be paid for using real world currency, and not laundered using spacebucks (to borrow Pixeleen’s term). And yes, this means that when we’re ready to start offering land, unlike most SL land barons and prim peddlers we will need to declare ourselves as a real world business, most likely as a not for profit.
Anywho Prokofy thanks for ruffling my feathers. I always enjoy the chance to let loose with a rather long rant. But in all seriousness, regardless of whatever strange little attachment you have to those decaying old servers and horribly inefficient software over at Linden keep an eye out for OpenSim. For over six months now I’ve been using their software, actively within the past three months since I started my grid. Each week they release a whole new set of fixes, updates, and features. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. That’s just the nature of software development for ya! But regardless each week they’re getting closer and closer to matching if not surpassing the level of stability and features offered by Linden’s software. Sooner or later you’re going to have to face the fact that whether you like it or not the closed source, mystic silos approach that Linden has taken will fail and right now OpenSim is there to step up to the plate as a replacement.
Now, back to Pixeleen – I’d like to offer you the chance to see a heavily built out OpenSim setup. Its still under some pretty heavy construction but we already have two full sims built with two others that are about 85% complete. As well, most grid services (search, economy, etc.) are operational. If you like, please contact me either via the email in my post info or via SL as Orion Shamroy and I’ll give you the login information.
Thanks!
Stalins rather enormous penis
Dec 29th, 2008
Prokofy I salute you
Baba
Dec 29th, 2008
The first time I log in to Second Life in over a month and Pixeleen is there within 30 seconds. It was more of an ambush than an interview but, I do look pretty damn good in print.
Pixeleen, try to catch the glint of the sun off of my grill a little better next time. It lights up my mouth like time square!
Sable Richards
Dec 31st, 2008
“OSGrid isn’t an open society whatsoever. Opensource = closed society. Those grids and sims are fierce, tribal, horridly insular and insolent little freak sideshows”
The troll who will never go away. Trolling Second Thoughts just isn’t enough for her.
General Drama
Dec 31st, 2008
Sable,
Haven’t you figured out by now that Prokofy is SL’s number one griefer?
Owen Oyen
Dec 31st, 2008
A few comments perhaps of some value here:
1) The SL Sailing community is at this point very much aware of OSGrid and a number of yacht clubs for virtual sailing are migrating across. Sailboat technology there is advancing. As of today, a minimum requirements boat exists and informal sailing races (with wind shadowing) have taken place.
2) OSGrid is not operating at the same overall level of performance from a sailing perspective as SL has under Havok 4, but its performance as of now seems to be acceptable and is advancing each day/week.
3) Tutorials for hosting one’s own sim are available at the OSGrid Baya sailing sim, as is a free copy of the sailboat.
4) There does not seem to be any apparent business model for OSGrid as of now, but it seems likely that models, plural, are going to evolve there.
5) The SL sailing community is somewhat wide and people hosting sailing sims on OSG are all well known to each other and not particularly insular. New sailors are always welcome.