Other Spaces: Virtual World Options Beyond Second Life

• Philadelphia Area New Media Association

Second Life has had the buzz, both positive and negative, among virtual worlds for the better part of the past five years. More and more options are starting to present themselves as viable alternatives, especially open source options. Many local academic and business entities have tried Second Life to varying degrees of success, and are now looking for ways to take it to the next level.

Featured panelists for the event are Rachel Harper Joseph and Paul Vigo of Rezzable, one of the most creative and well known virtual worlds development agencies, who have created some of the most famous virtual world regions, including Greenies, Black Swan, and Heritage Key’s Discover King Tut Virtual Experience.

Rezzable has recently been moving all of their content from Second Life to a private grid of virtual regions, hosted on OpenSimulator. OpenSimulator allows you to host your grid compatible with the Second Life viewer (and other viewers), offering a rich 3-D experience that is becoming comparable to Second Life. This offers several advantages: you can host the virtual world on your own servers, thereby saving the $295 per month per region cost, and additionally, you become the gatekeeper and control all the user names and passwords. It makes it possible, for example, for a University to have a private grid open to only their students and faculty, or a company to restrict access to their employees.

Rezzable will talk about the experience of the move, and share some of the “gotcha” moments they’ve had to overcome along the way. Tim Allen will be moderating the discussion, and Frank Taney will provide some brief legal analysis, focusing on intellectual property issues that having multiple grids raises.