Solipsis
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| Solipsis | |
|---|---|
| Developed by | France Télécom - R&D Division |
| Latest release | 0.10 / November 30, 2005 |
| OS | Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS |
| Genre | Peer-to-Peer, MMORPG |
| License | LGPL |
| Website | solipsis.netofpeers.net |
Solipsis is a free and open source system for a massively multi-participant shared virtual world designed by Joaquin Keller and Gwendal Simon at France Télécom Research and Development Labs. It aims to provide the infrastructure for a Metaverse-like public virtual territory. Relying on a peer-to-peer architecture, the virtual world may potentially be inhabited by an unlimited number of participants.
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[edit] Motivations
(from P2P Foundations)
Strolling through a magnificent virtual world can now be casually experienced in massively multi-player games. It somehow corroborates the concept of a massively shared public virtual world depicted by Neal Stephenson in his science fiction novel Snow Crash. In these worlds, users' interactions are not only allowed but empowered, so, in some ways, they outperform the current Web and appear as a possible evolution of our networking experience. However, some issues still need to be addressed.
In a virtual world, every object — avatar of a player or a virtual object — should be aware of all objects within its virtual surroundings. Yet, objects are dynamic: their virtual position can change. Therefore the system should ensure that an entity is aware of all events occurring nearby. The simplest way to implement such a system is to centralize the management of the virtual world. If a "god" knows, at any time, the positions of all entities, it can easily alert entities about important events happening nearby.
However, this architecture relies on costly server(s), mostly owned by some private companies. These virtual worlds are not public at all! They just are some private worlds having some rules that are unilaterally decided by a company. The behaviours of inhabitants are strictly monitored and some non-expected tendencies could result in banishments [1]
Moreover, a centralized virtual world adopts a common graphical appearance that is initially designed by owners. Even the most customizable systems where users can build their home will impose limits on the creativity of users. There is no clear consensus on the graphical shape of a virtual world and there will probably never be.
Furthermore, these systems fail in creating a complete ecosystem for the virtual world. The presence of an unsustainable owner prevents the raise of business opportunities.
Some recent initiatives attempt to implement a peer-to-peer virtual world. Algorithms based on collaboration between participants ensure the consistency of the virtual world that is a public place because nobody owns it, except its inhabitants.
The Open Source Metaverse Project builds a world seen as the union of several separate worlds, each one being managed by one user which could be potentially anybody. This edonkey-like architecture supports some 3d graphical routines. Solipsis is a one-layer peer-to-peer system in which there is definitely no manager, nor a precise implementation yet. Briefly speaking, Solipsis seems to have a greater potential because of its pretty open design, but it is far less enjoyable by now. Both approaches suffer from a bootstrapping issue. A world becomes attractive when it is crowded although they currently are quite empty.
By the way, using these fully decentralized systems used for gaming seems difficult as long as the lack of referee could be employed by cheaters.
To conclude, most experts claim that the material is now available to build a public virtual place where everybody is welcome. Unfortunately, no initiative has yet prevailed. Although the raise of a common shared public territory may occur at any time, the probability that the web could be replaced by such convivial environment decreases as the web enhancements provide richer and easier interaction tools.
- ^ Peter Ludlow, Mark Wallace (2006). Only A Game: Online Worlds and the Virtual Journalist Who Knew Too Much. O'Reilly Press.
[edit] Main Principles
A Solipsis entity is a basic element of the virtual world. To exist, an entity should run a Node that may be controlled by a Navigator. Nodes are self-organized in a pure peer-to-peer network in which relationships depend on virtual proximity. A Navigator is mainly devoted to act as a graphical user interface. Some communication services may be plugged into the Navigator for interaction between entities.
The virtual world is initially empty and is only filled by entities run by end users' computers. All Solipsis Nodes are functionally equal and no preordained infrastructure is required. Therefore, there is no limit on the freedom of the virtual world inhabitants except the imagination of the world-builders and developers.
[edit] Current status
Solipsis currently consists of:
- a peer-to-peer protocol over UDP which is used by Nodes. The Solipsis Protocol gives a Node the ability to ensure the presence of its entity within the virtual world. Moreover, this protocol aims to guarantee the maintenance of some suitable global properties.
- a Node-Navigator Interface: an API between the Node and the Navigator. Currently in XML-RPC, this interface allows a Navigator to control a Node and to retrieve information on its virtual surroundings.
- a basic implementation of a Solipsis Node and a Solipsis Navigator under license LGPL. The Navigator features a 2D representation of the virtual world. The design of current interface resembles YackPack, an interactive system developed at Stanford University. Interactions between entities can be chat communications.
- existing known services give the opportunity to manage a Weblog and some identity fields for social networking. File sharing is another nice available extent. Finally, a graphically glorified comic-like chat has been released.
