OpenSim Needs a Viewer of Its Own

Lawrence Pierce | Hypergrid Business | October 27, 2011

Even as OpenSim implementation continues to grow, a constant remains: there is no viewer tailored specifically for OpenSim as it comes direct from OpenSimulator.org. It’s discouraging, and it’s easy to cite the nearly million lines of code that are simply too complex to unravel as the culprit, yet the reasons behind the absence of a universally compatible viewer are as related to community as to technology.

The technology aspect is convoluted, but fairly well known. Third party stand-alone viewers are adapted from Linden Lab viewers. However, Linden Lab viewers are not designed to work with OpenSim. That they and their third party progeny work at all with OpenSim is because OpenSim supports the core of Second Life’s messaging protocol.

However, the developers of OpenSim do not aim to make OpenSim a clone of Second Life, and Linden Lab has no reason to make OpenSim compatibility a feature of their viewers. This results in a complex interrelationship between the various products and often leaves the user with a dilemma...