Open Grid Public Beta

This program is structured for resident developers who will be bringing up OpenSim regions. Please follow the instructions in How to Participate carefully.

Open Grid Beta viewers have been updated as of 23 September 2008. Please read the release notes.

The Open Grid Public Beta program is a Linden Lab sponsored opportunity for developers to make their virtual worlds interoperate with Second Life. Virtual world interoperability is enabled through the Open Grid Protocol, under development by the Architecture Working Group of Second Life residents.

On June 30th, 2008, a group of Linden Lab and IBM "gridnauts" successfully launched from a Second Life developer grid and teleported over to an OpenSim grid running IBM's modified code. They arrived without any of their attachments or inventory, since the protocol does not transfer assets between grids. Zero Linden of Linden Lab and Zha Ewry of IBM recently gave an interview on the Metanomics Second Life TV show to introduce the project.

30-Sept-2008 Update

This has been a successful couple of months:

• Working OGP teleports between Linden Lab's regions and OpenSim regions running in both grid and standalone mode
• Over 100 residents teleporting between OGP-enabled OpenSims and Linden Lab regions.
• Resolved 36 OGP-related JIRAs
• Released and implemented a new draft of the OGP teleport specification

Many thanks to the OpenSim developers for their help.

So next steps:

• We are no longer accepting requests to add residents to the Open Grid Public Beta at this time
• We will continue resolving JIRAs opened against the Beta Agent and Region domains
• We will continue running our agent domain and OGP-enabled regions
• The gridnauts list and inworld group will continue to be available

As the Open Protocol team prepares for the next steps in Grid Interoperability, I would like to get your input.

I've opened a new meta-issue, JIRA https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3156, for recommending next steps. Read the related JIRAs and vote for the ones you would like to see implemented in a future beta. If you don't see the idea you want to see implemented, then create a JIRA for it and link it as a child of the meta-issue. Use JIRA comments to discuss or detail proposals.

Key Points

1. Testing the ability to log in to Second Life and teleport between Second Life and other virtual worlds.
2. Intended for developers, not residents at large.
3. Demonstrates login and teleport only, no assets are transferred from Second Life to other virtual worlds.

Participation

Participation in the Open Grid Public Beta program is intended for the developers of virtual world viewer and simulator software.

Developers in the program implement the Open Grid Protocol in their software. The protocol provides a communication path between clients (Second Life Viewer), an Agent Domain (Second Life preview grid), and a simulator (Second Life, OpenSim). In particular, they implement the teleport protocol.

Beta participants will have access to the Open Grid Protocol version of the Second Life viewer, which logs you into an agent domain running on the Second Life preview grid, and allows you to rez, without inventory, on a destination grid that understands the Open Grid Protocol.

In the first phase of the program Linden Lab will work with the developers of OpenSim and OpenSim operators to login to our preview grid and teleport between the Second Life preview grid, and regions in OpenSim.

In the second phase of the beta, Linden Lab will open participation to other grid and virtual world operators and developers.

This beta is for adult residents of Second Life. We are currently exploring options for participation by TSL residents. TSL residents may now sign up to the email list (adult moderated, see below). Teens will be invited to join a TSL Gridnauts group which will be used to communicate details on the forthcoming teen beta.

How To Participate

1. To participate as a developer, please send a request to ogpb-info@lindenlab.com with the following information:
   • The name of your Second Life resident.
   • Please subscribe using an email address associated with your SL account.
   • If you an OpenSim developer, or grid operator.
   • We may discard subscription requests that we can not confirm belong to Second Life residents.
2. Once you're subscribed, you'll be invited to join the inworld group for participants.
   • You will receive two invitations, one from the main grid, and one from the Preview Grid (aditi). We recommend joining the group on both grids, however only Preview Grid membership is required for intergrid teleporting.
   • To accept the preview grid invitation you will need to log onto the preview grid normally; you cannot use the OGP beta viewer until after you have accepted that invite. Thus you will need to use a different viewer to accept the invite. Rather than download the preview grid viewer, you can use your main SL viewer to connect. To use the main viewer, hit shift-ctrl-g from the login screen and then select "aditi" from the pulldown menu that appears.
   • If you have more than one avatar associated with the same email address, we will invite one of them. If our guess wasn't the av you wanted to participate, email us at ogpb-info@lindenlab.com
3. Claim a space on the map for your OpenSim region.
4. Download the Open Grid Beta Viewer.
5. Build an OpenSim region with OGP enabled.
6. Use the Open Grid Client to Teleport between Region Domains

Because the Beta will allow any external regions to connect to the grid, which may or may not provide adult content, the beta is limited to main grid users. We are looking into ways for safely involving Teen Grid residents later in the beta. Meanwhile we have obtained the go ahead to allow teens to subscribe to the email list. Please use an email address associated with your avatar. You will be admitted to the list, and invited to a TSL Gridnauts group on the teen grid. Group notices will communicate the status of the Teen effort.

If you have questions about the program, please contact ogpb-info@lindenlab.com.

There is a list of public OpenSim regions participating in the beta.

In World Meetings

• Wednesday, 1:30PM SLT, Whump Linden office hours @ ambleside office

Transcripts

• All relevant transcripts
• July:
  • Office Hours: 23 30
  • Huddle transcripts
• August:
  • Office Hours: 06 13 20
  • Huddle transcripts: 05 06 08 12 15 18 29
• September
  • Office Hours: 10 17
  • Huddle Transcripts: 12 15

IRC

irc://irc.freenode.net/#gridnauts

Issue Tracking During the Beta Program

Linden Lab has created new components in PJIRA to track OGPB issues, please read the instructions on how to create OGPB issues in PJIRA.

Status of OGPB issues will be reviewed during daily huddles.

A complete list of beta issues is in the umbrella issue SVC-2632.

Beta Timeline

• Beta launch -- July 31, 2008
• Interop testing with OpenSim (Phase 1) -- July 31, 2008
• Viewer, AD and RD Update 1 --- August 22, 2008
• OGP Draft 3 --- September 10, 2008
• Open to other virtual world platforms (Phase 2) -- TBD
• Beta period ends -- TBD

FAQ

See Open Grid Public Beta FAQ

Resources

• Wiki pages
  • Open Grid Protocol
    • Open Grid Protocol -- introduction
    • Agent Domain
    • Login Protocol
    • Teleport Protcol
  • Architecture Working Group
    • In-world discussion group -- for programmers and technically minded citizens
    • Relevant in-world discussion and office hours transcripts
    • Pyogp -- Python-based OGP test harness and client library
      • Pyogp discussion transcripts

• OpenSim
  • OpenSim transcripts