Development

Welcome to the Virtual-Universe Development News

July 17, 2018

Development of Virtual Universe Version 2 series has begun

The Core Developers on the Second Galaxy Development Team have begun the development of the next generation of Virtual Universe. While the full development process for the new version could take more then a year, the benefits of VIrtual Universe 2 are well worth the wait. Here is what is coming in Virtual Universe Version 2

• New Physics Engine

With Virtual Universe Version 2, there will only be one physics engine going forward. That will be PhysX physics. While we know there are people who like Bulletsim and OpenDynamicsEngine (ODE), we have found that these two physics engines are not fully stable, fast, accurate, or secure. With PhysX the physics engine will handle physics properly and allow the core developers the ability of not having to worry about whether a fix to one physics engine will break another engine.

• Upgraded Scripting Engine

With Virtual Universe Version 2, the VirtualScript Engine will receive a complete overhaul and upgrade to ensure it's stability, scalability, speed, and security. The scripting engine will match exactly what Second Galaxy has on the Second Galaxy Development Team's proprietary grid architecture GalaxyGrid. With this upgrade support for OSSL (OpenSimulator Scripting Language) will be depreciated and removed from Virtual Universe. This means that you will not be able to use OSSL functions such as osSay() after you upgrade to Virtual Universe Version 2. NOTE: Please see the rationale relating to the removal of OpenSim support for more information on why this decision has been made.

• Brand new Web Interface

Virtual Universe Version 2 will come with a carefully designed fast, secure, stable, scalable, and fully functional website designed in ASP and Visual Basic. The website will handle the configuration of all grid and region services going forward. Making life easier on grid owners and operators in ensuring configurations that allow their grid to be fast, secure, and scalable. This will also depreciate the need for xml or ini configuration files. THe website will include the following features:

• Registration of accounts
• Ability to reset passwords
• Choosing default avatar during registration
• Ability for users who choose to leave your grid to delete their accounts (This will comply with the requirements of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• Integrated economy system. This will allow users to purchase in-world currency on your grid.
• User Account Updates System. This will allow users to update their password and email address associated with their account.
• Region and Estate Management System. This will allow region owners on your grid to manage their regions and estates including but not limited to adding estate managers per region or entire estate, restarting regions, Ordering regions, Etc.
• Website Administration System - The Website Administration System will allow grid owners and staff to manage various things relating to the grid, including but not limited to, the provisioning of regions, providing customer support, managing configurations of the various grid and region services on the grid, managing users such as banning for TOS violations, Managing in-world currency and region purchase transactions, and much more.

• Variable Region Sizes and Infinite Regions

The variable region sizes and infinite region technology will be retained in Virtual Universe Version 2. In Version 2 the variable region sizes and infinite region technologies will however be enhanced and upgraded to be even faster and more secure then before.

• Rolling Restart capability

The Rolling Restart Technology used in Second Galaxy will be added fully to Virtual Universe Version 2. THe Rolling Restart Technology will allow grid owners and operators to do rolling restarts and server deploys while users are in their regions, without the need of the user leaving the region or logging out during the few moments the region goes down. With this technology a user can remain in the region while the region goes down. During the time the region is down the user's viewer will go grey until the region comes back online. Upon the region being back online and within 10 to 30 seconds after the viewer regains communication capability with the region the user is in, the viewer will go back to normal and the user can continue on with what they are doing.

• New Asset Storage System

Virtual Universe Version 2 will have a new Asset Storage system that allows for the asset service to be more scalable while ensuring that unnecessry calls are not being made by other grid services and the region servers. OpenSim and its offshoot derivatives have their own way of handling assets from having an independent Asset Server to FileBasedAssetStorage which is stored on the region server. These ways are not very secure and will not allow for proper stability that grids need. With the new Asset Storage System in Virtual Universe Version 2, you will be able to have multiple levels of asset storage including in the local asset server and cloud backup storage for assets through a backup system that backs up the asset storage locally and stores it in the cloud for you. This will ensure that no assets will get lost from your server.

• Point To Cloud Data Storage System (PTCDSS)

Virtual Universe Version 2 will provide a Point To Cloud Data Rendering System which will not only improve the speed of rendering assets, but will help cut down on copybotting by those who enjoy infringing on the intellectual property rights of content creators. This new system will also help to support virtual reality devices in rendering scene objects smoothly, which will provide for a better VR experience.

• Persistence System

Virtual Universe Version 2 will provide a new persistence system that will ensure updates are being sent correctly to viewers. Generally a persistence update is sent to the viewers approximately every five minutes. This update tells the viewers what it should be seeing and rendering for the user when they are logged in. The persistence system also provides updates to the grid and region services to ensure the services are all communicating and sending and receiving accurate information which ensures that no information is incorrect which would cause all kinds of problems for users of your grid.

• Space Gate

Space Gate is the technology being developed by the Second Galaxy Development Team that will allow users to teleport from one grid to another in a similar way as the hypergrid technology of OpenSimulator. However with Space Gate the technology will be far more secure and stable, and will allow users to teleport between two grids that are running the modern day regions or between one grid running the modern day regions to a grid that will eventually be running the brand new planetary grid architecture being worked on by the Second Galaxy Development Team.

• New Universe Viewer

One of the many problems being run into by most open source virtual world grid architectures is the lack of creativity and refusal to create a viewer that is indepenent of the rest of the viewers out there (i.e. Firestorm, Alchemy, Singularity, Kokua, Official Secondlife Viewer, etc.). THe Second Galaxy Development Team's Viewer Development Work Group is in fact working on a brand new viewer that will be fast, secure, stable, scalable, and modular while providing the ability for virtual worlds to break away from the dictated norms that current viewers are stuck with in order to work on the Secondlife grid.

• And much more.....

Our Rationales

• Why we are depreciating and removing support for OpenSim functionality

Over the years OpenSimulator has been a great resource with its developers doing alot of great work in helping people get started with their own virtual world projects whether it be running a standalone region to create content before importing that content into a grid of their choice or running their own grid for educational, social, or commercial purposes. However over time Opensimulator has become insecure and not very stable. While there are many reports out there including an infamous report from Douglas Maxwell from the MOSES project which claimed OpenSimulator was not secure, The Second Galaxy Development Team does not nor cannot act on what one report says. This is because there often are additional hidden motives, such as a member of the immediate family of the individual making the reports being a developer or owner of another grid architecture or grid. Hidden motives often drive the public motives which in most cases are genuine, to making reports or statements that are either inaccurate, inappropriate, unethical, unprofessional, or all of these.

Because the Second Galaxy Development Team does have very high standards, we do our own internal testing to determine if code we allow in our projects or even on Second Galaxy is secure, stable, and fast. This includes code contributions you provide to us through Virtual Universe. In our own internal testing, we have found that OpenSimulator is not very secure and has alot of back doors that could potentially create potential exploits which would compromise a grid. Therefore we will be removing support for OpenSimulator based grids in Virtual Universe Version 2. This does not mean however we will not provide tools and support for grids running on the OpenSimulator Architecture to connect to grids running Virtual Universe through our Space Gate technology. Additionally we will provide tools for those who wish to migrate from OpenSimulator to Virtual Universe to ensure their content that they created or that they have obtained through genuine open source means will work properly on the new Virtual Universe.