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1SledjHamrs killer feature, or one of them.
2
3A major reason for SledjHamr is to break down the garden walls. We do
4this by allowing free travel between peoples virtual worlds. In OpenSim
5this is done by HyperGrid, which is clunky and hard to use. Second Life
6deliberately has no such system. Even worse, it's hard convincing people
7in SL to visit your grid, coz it's all very hard, again due to
8deliberate policy decisions by LL. LL knows their content is the key to
9their business, even though almost all of it was created by the users,
10LL locks it up tight. So people visiting OpenSim grids from SL have to
11create a new avatar from scratch, which is such a major pain that most
12people baulk at that and don't bother. And they can't bring their
13inventory with them, inventory they paid for and spent years collecting.
14
15In SledjHamr, as well as allowing completely unrestricted and easy
16access to lots of content, we should make it easy to travel between
17virtual worlds. Part of this is to include compatibility layers in
18separate modules to be compatible with what ever virtual world systems
19are around. You would still need to create accounts and log onto those
20worlds though. How can we mix them up? I imagine easy to use portal
21objects. Let's start with the basics, and work out some more complex
22examples.
23
24As mentioned in the no_accounts.txt document, every SledjHamr user has
25their own little world running on their computer by default when they
26start up the extantz client. There is a star gate on this default
27world, an already setup portal that can connect to a bunch of default
28external worlds. The user can use this star gate, and other peoples
29portals to travel around other peoples worlds. Initially this could be
30using OpenSim and its HyperGrid system. Later it would be SledjHamr
31style worlds as well.
32
33A portal would be like Cobalt style portals, you can see the destination
34in real time, and step through it to go there. They can be permanent,
35or temporary. You can carry them in your inventory, they could just be
36normal scripted in world objects.
37
38So you travel around the virtual worlds, meeting people, and you want to
39invite some one to your home, or a group of people. You right click on
40them and select "Invite them home" from the menu. Extantz knows your
41home world, that's where you started and it's running on the same
42computer. Extantz communicates to that home server, or starts it up
43first. The home server adds this new person to it's access list.
44Extant creates a portal object and offers it to the person, so they can
45rez it anywhere. Or you could rez this portal object in the world you
46are in. Either way, once the portal is in a world, it connects to your
47home world, showing a view of your front gate, maybe including your
48lovely garden in your front yard. The portal connects to the "front
49gate" of your home world.
50
51Any one on your home worlds access list can step through this portal to
52get to your home world. Simple to use, no figuring out HyperGate URLs
53and copy pasting them, no manual messing with hard to use access systems.
54Though it would still be possible to create URLs to in world places, to
55store as landmarks, to email to someone, or to copy'n'paste into
56farcebook.
57
58Portals rezzed in world could be temporary, and vanish after who ever
59you invited to come stepped through it. Or time out several minutes
60later so as not to clutter the universe with left over portals. Or
61deleted by the owner / managers of the world you left them, or deleted
62yourself from your own world. Portals could be permanent. Say you
63found a larger world that you and the owner decide you wish to be a part
64of. Portals could be left on both worlds linking them. The "portal"
65could just be reconfiguring each world to locate the other world near
66them, like neighbouring sims. Still, that should be done via the portal
67interface, just a simple click.
68
69Portals can be fully open if you want to run a public world. People can
70be banned. Or private worlds with specific groups and people allowed.
71Similar to many web sites, you could have your own account system on
72your world, people with accounts are allowed to build, or allowed to
73with certain limits, or are the only ones allowed to visit. Privacy can
74be applied to the portal, only those that can step through can see
75through, or semi private, you can see a limited area, but not step
76through. A portal could include a "door bell", people that want to
77visit ring the door bell, someone might answer and let them in, but can
78chat with them across the portal first. Perhaps getting dressed first.
79
80For those hard to reach places, I'm looking at you SL, a portal could be
81coded as an LSL script in a SL prim object that you keep in your SL
82inventory. It can operate in two modes, depending on who is looking.
83If someone using a SledjHamr aware client looks, they see the usual
84portal view mentioned above, and can easily step through it as usual.
85Others would see a still photo of the view through the portal, or
86perhaps a live video stream if the other world server has enough
87bandwidth to support that. Or they could see just a logo if the world
88owner hasn't bothered to pay LL to upload a suitable photo. If the user
89of the viewer that is not SledjHamr aware clicks on or tries to step
90through the portal, they are sent to a web page that lets them download
91SledjHamr aware clients, with instructions on what to do to actually get
92to that world.
93
94Once a user of that closed world steps through the portal using a
95SledjHamr aware client, their client knows what that person looks like,
96and has access to that persons inventory in that closed world, so they
97can bring it all with them with no need to do anything other than step
98through. The user remains logged on to the closed world, coz SledjHamr
99needs no actual accounts. What their avatar is left doing in the closed
100world for others to see is an open question. Perhaps sitting on some
101chair on the portal prims, snoozing. Just had a better idea, the user
102gets a new tab, in their original world they can wander off again and do
103stuff, and in the new world they can do new stuff. Likely LL will ban
104this in their TOS, and ban SLedjHamr aware viewers, they are anal like
105that, and want to own your content to keep people locked in their walled
106garden. Here's a SledjHamr for you all, break those walls open. B-)