The changes described here appear only in OpenSim’s cutting edge Git ‘master’ branch. Please do not attempt to use code taken directly from ‘master’ in any production environment. At particular points in time this in-development code may not work or may even cause data corruption. If you are not a developer or tester, please treat this summary instead as a preview of what will be coming up in the next release. The latest official release is OpenSim 0.6.8 (released on 23rd December 2009).

This week in OpenSim ( 19d486 - 4a092b ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• I fixed the internal EventManager.OnAttach event to actually fire when a scene object was attached to an avatar (4c1740).
• I moved the prim face colour setting code down into SceneObjectPart so that callers other than scripts can use it (3863cd).
• Robert Adams contributed a patch that allows terrain collision events to be detected after the regular collision checks (88d0fc).
• I changed the internal EventManager so that any exceptions generated by event subscribers are caught by OpenSim, logged but not propogated.  This helps prevents bugs in modules bringing down OpenSim or stopping other module code from executing (cd4651).
• Misterblue contributed a patch to fix ODE physics stickiness (8556a9).

Infrastructure

• Diva and Melanie continue to work on migrating the legacy user service into a number of separate ROBUST services (presence, user accounts, authentication, etc.).  This is currently being done on a separate presence-refactor branch.  This will take a while yet.

The changes described here appear only in OpenSim’s cutting edge Git ‘master’ branch. Please do not attempt to use code taken directly from ‘master’ in any production environment. At particular points in time this in-development code may not work or may even cause data corruption. If you are not a developer or tester, please treat this summary instead as a preview of what will be coming up in the next release. The latest official release is OpenSim 0.6.8 (released on 23rd December 2009).

This week in OpenSim ( 19d486 - 4c1365 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• I fixed a problem where llDie() was often leaving ‘dead’ prims behind - prims which had been deleted in OpenSim but which the client thought still existed (38cfc9).
• Melanie added a region_manager_is_god setting in OpenSim.ini.  If this option is set then estate managers entering god mode will have god powers (ee12b0).
• Revolution contributed a patch so that holding down the left mouse button on a prim with touch registered scripts will now send a stream of events when the mouse is moved.  This conforms with observed behaviour on the Linden Lab grid (05a3e3).

Infrastructure

• Diva and Melanie continue to work on migrating the legacy user service into a number of separate ROBUST services (presence, user accounts, authentication, etc.).  This is currently being done on a separate presence-refactor branch.  The latest info is that it probably won’t be merged for a few more weeks, possibly longer.

Here’s Sean Doherty, Digital Strategy Director of Maverick Media related his adventures with OpenSim on OSGrid.  He looks very pleased about having his photo taken

Olli Aro of Second Places came along and told us about the interesting stuff he’s doing with OpenSim and education at The Content Grid.

Chris Hart, CTO of Reaction Grid had some great feedback on the experience of running public OpenSim installations.

Here’s a real power discussion - core developers Darren Guard (OpenSim founder and consultant currently working for Rezzable) and Melanie Thielker of Careminster Limited and 3D Hosting finally meet face to face.

As usual I (on the left) look incredibly fat in photographs (not helped by the fact that I actually am too fat).  Bob Wellman of PMGrid (only just visible facing the camera) and Kevin Buckley of Immersv join in the discussion.

And thanks to Peter, Aron, Deepwire, Dr Olinkha Gustafson-Pearce, SlimWarrior, Mal Burns, Will Jeffery (MD of Maverick Media) and everybody else who came along (please, please e-mail me if I accidentally left you out or mislinked to you).  You guys really made it a successful event.  We should definitely have another one, quite possibly in the second half of this year, if not sooner.

The changes described here appear only in OpenSim’s cutting edge Git ‘master’ branch. Please do not attempt to use code taken directly from ‘master’ in any production environment. At particular points in time this in-development code may not work or may even cause data corruption. If you are not a developer or tester, please treat this summary instead as a preview of what will be coming up in the next release. The latest official release is OpenSim 0.6.8 (released on 23rd December 2009).

This week in OpenSim ( 3ff28e - 316503 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• CasperW contributed a patch that fixes a security problem with osSetDynamicTexture() (3ff28e).
• Mic Bowman contributed a patch that makes all console command output print directly to the screen rather than via the log.  This means that you no longer need to have a log level of INFO to see command output (c211a1).
• Revolution contributed a patch that fixes llSetDamage() (14e62c).

Infrastructure

• Revolution contributed a patch that changes all the region modules bundled with the OpenSim project from the old style to the new Mono.Addins style.  Documentation for the new style does not appear to be complete - I should think that the old style modules will continue to work for at least the next few releases, if not longer.
• Diva and Melanie continue to work on migrating the legacy user service into a number of separate ROBUST services (presence, user accounts, authentication, etc.).  This is currently being done on a separate presence-refactor branch.

As well as myself, Darren and Chris, folks such as Jon Himoff (CEO of Rezzable) and Olli Aro (CTO of Second Places, The Content Grid) have said that they hope to be there, in addition to other long time OpenSim community members such as Kevin Buckley and Bob Wellman (PMgrid).  A number of people have also responded via Twitter or in direct messages to myself, Darren or Chris to say that they’ll be along.

So I’m very much looking forward to seeing everybody who can make it on Sunday.  If nothing else, it’ll be a chance to see how well beer and OpenSim mix

The changes described here appear only in OpenSim’s cutting edge Git ‘master’ branch. Please do not attempt to use code taken directly from ‘master’ in any production environment. At particular points in time this in-development code may not work or may even cause data corruption. If you are not a developer or tester, please treat this summary instead as a preview of what will be coming up in the next release. The latest official release is OpenSim 0.6.8 (released on 23rd December 2009).

This week in OpenSim ( 70d5b1 - 74b3ce ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• Revolution contributed a patch that implements llRotTarget() and llRotTargetRemove() (a08597).
• I added an explanation of the AllowModFunctions setting in OpenSim.ini.example.  Turning this switch on allows scripts to pass messages directly to region modules via the modSendCommand() function.  Modules can then send messages back to scripts through the link_message LSL event.  See the explanation in OpenSim.ini.example for more details (b88bee).
• Melanie added an option called AllowDuplicateNames to the [GridService] section in OpenSim.ini.example.  This controls whether regions with duplicate names are allowed on a grid.  It is false by default, which may be a change from the existing behaviour (7467a4).
• Dan Lake fixed a bug where llGetNumberOfPrims() would always return 0 if no users were present in the region (a4a051).
• I documented a new ForwardOfflineGroupMessages switch in the [Messaging] section of OpenSim.ini.example.  This switch controls whether group IMs are stored for later delivery to users that are currently offline.  Default is true (4f2d2c).

Infrastructure

• Diva and Melanie continue to work on migrating the legacy user service into a number of separate ROBUST services (presence, user accounts, authentication, etc.).  This is currently being done on a separate presence-refactor branch.

1. OpenSim will remain in alpha for 2010. OpenSim has progressed pretty well over the past year.  There have been many new features and a large number of bugs have been cleared up, including some really difficult race-condition related failures. However, OpenSim is a beast of a project and many, many issues remain.  Moreover, early on in the year we’ll see some significant refactoring in OpenSim - the simulator service architecture will see its final transition to the ROBUST framework and the central scene object classes will be redesigned.  These changes are essential but in the short term they will introduce bugs of their own and force anybody already interfacing with those parts of OpenSim to adapt.
   
   For these reasons, I don’t think that OpenSim will emerge from alpha in 2010.  However, I do think that stability will continue to improve in the second half of 2010, leading to significant pressure to label ourselves as beta early on in 2011.




2. There will be a lot more experimentation with OpenSim in education and business contexts. Earlier in the year, I was very interested to read just how well known OpenSim was within the UK’s higher education system.  And I know that other countries are not too far behind and some (such as Australia) are probably a little bit ahead.  So I believe that education-related use of OpenSim will grow strongly in 2010, particularly in the second half as OpenSim’s stability and usability improve.  Business and innovators will also continue to experiment with OpenSim, but from what I’ve seen they require a level of platform stability that I don’t think that OpenSim will have in 2010.




3. Both general-purpose and specific use grids will grow. Specific use grids such as ReactionGrid, a grid oriented towards educators and collaborators, grew significantly in 2009.  I don’t see why this shouldn’t continue in 2010.  Sciencesim, another research and education oriented OpenSim installation, is also making some very interesting moves, particularly with their recent Settlement Land collaboration with the Fashion Research Institute.  This program will award educators, scientists, and researchers with a free 1/4 region of land in ScienceSim for 6 months.  Naturally, this will encourage expansion of the ScienceSim grid.
   
   When I assessed my 2009 guesses I wasn’t too sure whether we had seen any growth in general-purpose grids.  There hadn’t been any obvious upswing in related blogging and no data was available.  However, Maria Korolov has recently come out with some December 2009 region numbers.  Comparing these to the numbers she had back in September 2009, the largest social grids appear to show significant growth (OSGrid up by 812 regions / 30%, The New World Grid up by 106 regions / 40%), though others have shrunk or folded.  So I’m going to make the prediction that these will continue to grow in 2009, though I don’t see network effects kicking in to make that growth exponential - the platform and environment isn’t suitable for that this year.




4. Some form of OpenSim foundation will appear, maybe more than one. Various factors (slowly increasing popularity, historically high level of churn in the OpenSim code, development unpredictability) are beginning to produce calls for the establishment of formal organizations connected with OpenSim.  These don’t necessarily need to be directly connected with core code development - ScienceSim, for instance, is working on a proposal for a foundation to support a downstream distribution using OpenSim, among other services.  It’s quite possible for organizations like this to co-exist with an Apache-like organization that surrounds OpenSim itself.
   
   I think that at least one such foundation will come about this year.




5. There will be a few more OpenSim distributions. An OpenSim distribution is a project that uses OpenSim as it’s base virtual environment/virtual world platform.  At one extreme a distribution could stick closely to what is in the OpenSim core project.  At the other end of the range it could significantly alter OpenSim features and swap in its own communication protocols.
   
   The OSGrid distribution, for instance, is close to the core OpenSim extreme while modrex (which enables the Realxtend environment) is closer towards the other end.
   
   I think that we will see a few more distributions in 2010, though I predict that they will tend towards bundling code, tools or modules surrounding OpenSim rather than significantly changing OpenSim’s base functionality. I think that the economic and virtual environment sector isn’t at the right stage for the level of investment required to significantly adapt OpenSim, notwithstanding the existing Realxtend effort.




6. The vast majority of OpenSim access will continue to be through the Linden Lab viewer and its direct descendents. I said this last year but I still think that it holds true.  In fact, as I noted in my 2009 assessment, a lot of the non-Linden derived viewer projects have fallen inactive.  There are some promising new ones but a year is not long enough, in my opinion, to get them seriously underway.




7. Cross grid experimentation will continue but not go mainstream. Again, a prediction that carries over from last year.  Work is still being done on projects such as Hypergrid and Grider, but I don’t think that the environment is mature enough yet to bring these to more general notice.  Fundamental security issues remain with the current version of Hypergrid that, in my view, greatly hamper serious experimentation. However, I continue to think that in the long term, Hypergrid 2.0/Grider is a very promising architectural approach for a properly distributed network of virtual environments, one that overcomes the current security issues.




8. OpenSim will start to support mesh objects. There’s significant interest in mesh objects and with the upcoming scene object refactor it will be significantly easier to support these as a native object within OpenSim.  Of course, one has to have a suitable viewer to make use of this - Realxtend’s Naali and 3di’s Rei have support for meshes and the new ‘2.0′ Second Life viewer was reported to include them too, though apparantly this is an unfounded rumour. Nonetheless, I expect that the OpenSim server will natively support the storage of meshes in some form before 2010 is out.
   

The changes described here appear only in OpenSim’s cutting edge Git ‘master’ branch. Please do not attempt to use code taken directly from ‘master’ in any production environment. At particular points in time this in-development code may not work or may even cause data corruption. If you are not a developer or tester, please treat this summary instead as a preview of what will be coming up in the next release. The latest official release is OpenSim 0.6.8 (released on 23rd December 2009).

This week in OpenSim ( 70d5b1 - 49c09e ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• Melanie fixed an issue where attempting to rez a no-copy object on a no-rez parcel would cause the object to vanish from inventory until relog (374077).
• Melanie updated the SQLite library in OpenSim.  This may (or may not) have an effect on problems using SQLite with OpenSim with Mono 2.4.3 and greater (ab0dfb).
• Melanie made a change to allow estate owners to enter god mode is region_owner_is_god = true in OpenSim.ini (a54287).
• Revolution contributed patches that fix some prim to prim collision errors (49c09e).
• Revolution contributed a patch that means that llGetStatus() now returns rotation status information (7dd43b).
• Dahlia added a ForwardOfflineGroupMessages config option to the [Messaging] section of OpenSim.ini.example.  This allows forwarding of group messages to offline users to be turned off.  See Mantis 4457 for more details (1e8997).
• I fixed a problem where the local console would be become flooded with ArgumentOutOfRangeException messages if the window was resized under Mono (22b1ff).
• Melanie added the “Allowed Users” and “Allowed Groups” estate functionality.  Now one should be able to selectively allow users and groups on to an estate (bc5587).

Infrastructure

• Diva and Melanie continue to work on migrating the legacy user service into a number of separate ROBUST services (presence, user accounts, authentication, etc.).  This is currently being done on a separate presence-refactor branch.

Darren Guard (founder of OpenSim & TribalMedia, consultant for Rezzable), Chris Hart (CTO of ReactionGrid) and myself, Justin Clark-Casey (OpenSim core developer, consultant, ex-IBM and Black Dress developer, notorious killjoy) recently began to talk about having a face-to-face mini OpenSim meetup.

Since we’re all in the UK (at the moment) we’re going to meet in London at a pub called “The Jugged Hare” near Victoria station.

on Sunday 31st January 2010 between 12:30pm and 5:30pm.

Rather than just do this by ourselves, we thought it would be very cool to open the invitation up to everybody, especially as it’s more or less coincidental with OpenSim’s 3rd birthday!

This is going to be a very informal event - there won’t be any banners or formal presentations.  It’s really just a bunch of us sitting around talking about OpenSim and virtual worlds.  Oh, and we’ll be having a few beers too

So if you’re interested or involved with OpenSim (or even other virtual worlds/environments) in any way and want to come along we would be very pleased to see you!  Just show up any time between 12:30pm and 5:30pm or if you want us to look out for you, just tell us that you’re coming (by e-mail, blog post comment or any other way you like).  I’m sure we’ll be tweeting on the day too.

Until then, all the best!

The changes described here appear only in OpenSim’s cutting edge Git ‘master’ branch.  Please do not attempt to use code taken directly from ‘master’ in any production environment.  At particular points in time this in-development code may not work or may even cause data corruption.  If you are not a developer or tester, please treat this summary instead as a preview of what will be coming up in the next release.  The latest official release is OpenSim 0.6.8 (released on 23rd December 2009).

This week in OpenSim ( b7951d - 9f2737 ).

General news

• None this week

Features & bug fixes

• Melanie fixed an issue where passing an empty LSL list to the llDialog() function would crash the viewer (917fad).
• Teravus made changes that may resolve terrain editing problems with megaregions.  Testing would be appreciated (25544a).
• Teravus made avatar reaction to the forward and back keys faster (16a64c).
• Teravus fixed sitting on the ground (e6c71d).
• Revolution contributed a patch that implements osKickAvatar(), osCauseDamage(), osCauseHealing() and osSetSpeed().  osKickAvatar() kicks a client from the region, osCauseDamage() and osCauseHealing() change the avatar’s health (in regions where this applies).  osSetSpeed() changes the client’s movement multiple (e.g 2.0 would make the client move twice as fast as normal) (879594).
• Revolution contributed a patch that implements friend teleport offers (I think!) (8ca37d).
• Revolution contributed a patch that add llCollisionFilter() and llPassCollision() (61f63f).

Infrastructure

• Diva and Melanie have been migrating the legacy user service into a number of separate ROBUST services (presence, user accounts, authentication, etc.).  This is currently being done on a separate presence-refactor branch.  Testing by the extremely brave would be appreciated, according to her mailing list post.
• Adam implemented a stub Sirikata client stack.  This would allow a Sirikata viewer, such as one based upon their new browser engine Berkelium, to connect with OpenSim.
• Revolution contributed a patch that implements stubs and construction for various missing Second Life packets such as mute list updating and user parcel freeze and ejection.