At nights or during the weekend, I have been testing OpenSim, which is a free, open source implementation of a multi-user virtual environment. This picture represents a grid containing four regions (currently, islands) that runs on my home computer. OpenSim leverages the open source Linden Labs client code, but the server side code is all home grown -- using either SQLite or MySQL. Having the database is nice since one can use different queries and views to see what is going on in the island--the regions, the prims, users. OpenSim is very much alpha software in that only about 2/3 of the LSL scripting API has been written, and there are frequent bug reports that are handled by the developers. The relationship between OpenSim and the goals of our project is that eventually, we may be able thost our own virtual worlds to foster cultural knowledge and sensitivity acquisition. With OpenSim, I feel that I am back in the early 90s when very few people had web servers and web content. Instead of web servers and web pages, we are now dealing with a plethora of OpenSim servers and 3D shared, immersive content.
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