Comments on: Opensim/Second Life Vs Unity3d

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By: epredator

epredator — Fri, 21 May 2010 07:27:02 +0000

@maria I certainly expect we will have more than one way to look at any content and to build and edit. as that is very much what happens today. The tootlchain workflow for creation and use tends to need certain things for certain roles. I am sure that web standards will start to help with viewing, though given we still have a lot of cross browser issues with the basics of CSS today I wonder how this will ever get sorted @Kevin is correct in that much of unity’s power is the fact it is a development enviornment that also pulls together other content creation tools like the photoshop and maya’s of this world. In many ways though the client plugin effectively becomes defacto standad. And just the other day it was show running natively by google, not as a plugin. So just as flash became a “standard” these highly focused game style clients may trump the standards bodies.
Smartfox server is indeed very impressive and scalable and built for the job, club penguin uses it so we know it works. Though it is extensible with modules it is not opensource as such. That is the benefit and curse of opensim. With people like intel using opensim a degree of hardening and the development increases. This can of course lead to a services eco system around a core opensource offering, but with lots of experimental drives forward.
I like unity because is low cost for a single person company like myself, smartfox lets me run a 20 concurrent user server for free too. Though at the same time opensim lets me do what ever I want to host. The profile then of a project that a customer or partner needs does have to depend on their budget expectations and the amount of development time they are prepared to put in.
One of my projects is using both unity/smartfox and separately opensim and a few other things for a variety of experiences and also spreading of risk.

By: Kevin Twedy

Kevin Twedy — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:59:43 +0000

You are confusing what Unity3D is. Unity3D is a multplatform game development environemnt that currenty supports browser, windows, Mac, iPhone and WII. They are adding Android, XBox360 and Playstation. I am sure if HTML5 and WebGL get the performance of a game engine Unity will be able to deply to HTML5 and WebGL too. What we have to remember HTML5 and WebGL is not an authoring environemnt and does not provide all the services that the Unity development environment provide.

As for server-side services the game serves are provided by real companies, with real support teams and have more robust services than OpenSim has. The SmartFoxServer has sound and video stream, chat, can manage identity. It has guaranteed UDP, lots of things. clustering and redundacy. IMHO OpenSim will not get approved by any large companies due diligence compare so servers that are running 75,000 million users like SmartFoxServer or some ofthe other game servers.

By: Maria Korolov

Maria Korolov — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:29:19 +0000

Kevin –

I can see Unity being a temporary fix for Web-based OpenSim until a WebGL or HTML 5 viewer comes along.

The benefits of having a Unity front end available is that power users can enter a world with a full-featured client — like Hippo or Imprudence — and inhabit the same world as casual users. So, for example, a meeting moderator might enter the world via Hippo in order to set up a presentation and arrange chairs, while the meeting attendees would drop by via the Web and be able to attend the meeting quickly and easily — but without the ability to, say, change their appearance or create new objects. (Unless those actions are enabled via scripted objects.)

This might be similar to the way that Firefox lets me access a webpage in a read-only way, while an FTP client lets me access the same webpage and also edit what’s on it.

– Maria

By: epredator

epredator — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:09:14 +0000

Yes the games servers do provide a lot, clearly thats what they need to do normally. However the opensource nature of opensim as a server that understands types of content in a spatial environment, already deals with brokering chat and presence with the option to maybe run more than one client, i.e. have an SL experience where relevant and unity3d one talking to the same content is interesting.
Really though this combination is to help people understand there are some significant components to the architecture that they need. Showing a path of understanding from using SL to trying to run your own servers with opensim to building out a virtual world using other components including unity3d brings some awareness of the challenges.
As I said at my metameets pitch though I really want us to be able to take a leap forward from avatars and islands, new combinations of components start to get us to consider that. Once two things can be shown to talk to one another and maybe offer an improvement then people can consider the other options.
I am still amazed that the games companies and keepers of of this middleware have not started to combine it to solve the challenges of virtual worlds of the sort we are becoming accustomed to.

By: Kevin Twedy

Kevin Twedy — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:10:57 +0000

One thought I have is I don’t see a business case for Unity3D and OpenSim. With Unity I don’t need the two things OpenSim does which is access to the assets and server side physics. Once I remove those from the use case the other games servers seem alot more attractive as a server platform. Perhaps the perssistance of chnages to the avatar or things i may move or edit, but I feel the game servers provide a much simpliar solution to this.

By: epredator

epredator — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:45:08 +0000

Thanks yes even free or easy to access tech still requires a degree of human talent and resources to be applied to it. Whether thats great visual designers, organisers for events etc. Though it is interesting that the gap in the delivery technology is not really all that great between the free and the ultra expensive. Great designers, or great content tend to win I think. So middleware being very very expensive or restricted access may have a premium business model but it is missing the mass market micro transaction world and benefits of passionate individual users to chase the seat licence deals. I thin unity, and a few others are breaking the mould and letting anyone develop and see where that takes them.

By: G_Blackburn

G_Blackburn — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:33:00 +0000

Great information @epredator. Nice breakdown of features/benefits. When cost becomes a barrier it reminds us the playing field isn’t level. SL/OpenSim has been a great entry point for many folks. Moving on to Unity might well be the next phase for some. HeroEngine.. one can only dream this is in their future.

By: epredator

epredator — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:23:05 +0000

Of all the combined toolsets though the one I would really like to give a good look to right now is Hero Engine. http://www.heroengine.com/
However the size and scale of the product seems with “HeroEngine is designed for professional development teams. We cannot offer free licenses and we do not offer student pricing for individuals.” to not be something we are all going to quickly experiment with. Which is a pity. The reason opensim/SL/unity3d etc work is that many of us can just dive in with enough knowledge and experience we can figure out whats going on. Or maybe thats the generalist in me