So, I have a small announcement to make.

OpenSim has had the capability to run multiple different clients connected to the same world since version 0.3. We translate a large number of our internal programming into a somewhat vendor neutral interface; the big catch has been – in the 21 releases since 0.3, we’ve never actually implemented a true second protocol. As of today that has changed, OpenSim now supports two client protocols that can be used simultaneously at the same time to display the same world with the same updates, avatars and interactivity. This means right now you can use either the LLUDP transport used by Second Life™, OpenSim and realXtend, or the new MXP transport developed by the Tommi over at Bubblecloud.org.

We also have some good news from the guys over at VastPark – over the next few days, I will be working with their team to try write another client transport which allows you to use the VastPark viewer to connect to OpenSim. Watch this space for some information about that.

MX Deck and Second Life connected to the same region (Click to Enlarge)

Why MXP?

The simple answer here is the protocol is reasonably well thought out (it’s very refreshing compared to LLUDP), it’s also pretty simple and easy to understand. There’s a good reference implementation on their website which we were able to utilize extensively. To users, there’s potentially some big advantages in how you can route packets from a region simulator to viewers – possibly eliminating some of the issues people see when trying to host from behind firewalls and routers. This is however conceptual – a decent client will still need to be written to utilize the MXP protocol (right now the only clients using it are for demonstration purposes).

The big reasons were however that it’s appropriately licensed, there’s good reference code out there and the protocol is straight forward. It was also in the right place at the right time — while it gets the crown for first additional protocol, we’re hoping to have quite a few more now the infrastructure is in place and tested to properly support alternate client libraries.

How complete is this implementation?

Not very – we implement at the moment about 5 of 250 “functions” the Second Life viewer can present to us, ontop of the basic connection management. Mostly these are relating to display of primitives, updating their positions and chat. We still need to do a good deal towards displaying avatars correctly (and assigning a ‘ruth’ for each clients display of the other). Given the adapter is however less than 48 hours old – I expect to see some rapid progress here in adding features and capabilities to it. To give some idea of what’s working however below is some screenshots of the same region connected to in each client.

How do I connect a MXP client to OpenSim?

Grab a copy of the Demo Client from Bubblecloud.org (see Downloads -> MXP Demo Client.zip) and a copy of the latest release of OpenSim from the OpenSim Trunk SVN.

In your OpenSim.ini, add the following settings to the end

[MXP]
Enabled = true
Port = 1253

Start up your OpenSim and create a region if you havent already – now go into your OpenSim Region’s directory and open your default.xml – cut and paste the sim UUID (looks like this: b18ddeb1-f3d4-4c05-aa55-f1ca55532220 )

Install the MXP Client and edit the MX Deck.exe.config file – you need to paste your region UUID into the “BubbleID” field, and edit the “ServerAddress” to read “127.0.0.1″

Start MX Deck.exe and you should be connected to your OpenSim region.

Voila!