The virtual world Second Life has always been interesting for brands and marketers but recently, the hype has died down and everyone seems to have realised that we aren’t all going to become virtual people living out our lives on screen. As a result, the service has been keeping a low profile.
But now Second Life parent company Linden Lab and IBM have apparently demonstrated ‘virtual world interoperability’ by teleporting avatars between the Second Life Preview Grid and an OpenSim virtual world server. That might not sound very exciting to non-geeks but it’s interesting because it is a step towards overcoming an issue that has held back virtual world development.
While it is all very well and good to have a Second Life avatar, if that personality can’t move into different areas and worlds, then it is pretty isolated. This is particularly a problem for companies, who could potentially be some of the biggest users of virtual environments; the business-to-business and training potential is massive. If this new development means that one person could take their Second Life avatar onto their employer’s virtual world system, their university’s virtual world system and so on, maybe this starts to look like the future. Again.
“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.”
What do you think?
July 17, 2008 at 1:40 pm |
[...] Second Life and IBM OpenSim: virtual world interoperability – the future? [...]
September 9, 2008 at 10:31 pm |
It will get really interesting when the characters from WoW come storming through the portals into SL. I want front row seats for that.
Cheers.