One of the things people have been clamoring for in SecondLife for as long as I can remember (back to about July 2005, when I first rezzed into that world) is “Web on a Prim”. A prim is a primitive object, like a representation of a 3D cube or sphere or cylinder. These are the building blocks out of which all the incredible representations of physical objects are made in 3D virtual worlds. By combining them, twisting and resizing them, “painting” them with textures, linking them together and embedding little scripts in them, all the wonders of the grid are made manifest.

All, that is, except for a functioning Web browser that an avatar can share with others in the world. The latest version of the SecondLife viewer, the client software that enables one to enter these virtual worlds, offers at last a rudimentary Web viewer, but it can only display a single page with no live links. Hypertext without hyperlinks is almost useless, but of course it is a step in the right direction, and better than anything that preceeded it.

In one of the derivative VWs I’ve joined recently, though, they have taken LSL a step further. As well as implementing most of the commands from that scripting language, a few home-grown functions are added. One specifically enlarges the ability to display Web pages on primative objects, chosen by anyone in the world, not just someone who has control of the media on the land parcel where the object exists as is presently the case in SecondLife. For the geeks among us (you know who you are), this function is called osSetDynamicTextureURL() and it allows a “voice” command to be used to surf to any given URL. Where native Linden LSL commands follow the convention of having their names preceeded by “ll” (two lower-case letter Ls), as in llSetText(), the OpenSim scripters have used os[Function name] to identify those that are not from Linden Lab. I’ve tried out an object that uses a script with this function, and it works quite well. However, when I tried to make my own Web display object using a copy of the script I found in the user’s forum on the OSGrid.org website, it did not work; I don’t know why. Perhaps the copy has a typo I’m not proficient enough to spot, or maybe the grid was just being a bit unstable at that moment. It is still alpha software, after all.

Still, even if I couldn’t make my own Web display (yet!), the fact that LSL is being extended in OpenSim grids is very encouraging.

Also encouraging is the fact that I heard from a friend tonight that a mutual acquaintance is also planning to install Sun Microsystem’s open source Darkstar server to run a Project Wonderland region on his own computer, as I hope to do soon. This is becoming the favorite indoor sport of the really extreme VW addicts on the block! I’m one step closer now, since I finally located the package I need to install Java6 SDK on Debian Linux, a requirement for running Darkstar.

I naturally immediately signed up for an account (katlemieux) and briefly explored this Web-based world, which only opened to the public this Monday. So far, they have two types of “rooms” available which one can rent on a daily basis and invite people to join you for free, and two generic avatars, “Joe” and “Jane”, which can be customized to a limited degree. With a Pro account, one can upload textures to create a better looking avatar and wardrobe, etc., but so far I haven’t found any specifications for those.

In general it looks promising. The idea of a low-cost, Web-accessible virtual meeting space has some real possibilities, even if it’s not visually rich yet. Already one can link to a folder of images to display as a slideshow, or a video file, and a voice chat tool is available. Adding voice to a meeting room rental (US$5.99) costs an additional fee (US$4.99), but that’s not horrible considering that people you invite to your room don’t have to pay a cent.

So far I’ve only tried browsing this site with Firefox on Mac OS X.5, but (after adding a line to my computer’s Java settings, according to Transmutable’s very clear instructions, and restarting Firefox), it worked very well. Later I’ll fire up my virtual machines with WindowsXP® and Debian GNU/Linux, and see how it works on them.

The Etch release was the first one to provide Sun’s JDK environment without the need to download it from third-party repositories

Hooray! If the version is the one I need (JDK 6), I’m ready to download and install Wonderland. If not, it should be easier to update it than to try to do and entirely new install.

Yep, the Java 6 binary packages are available, so even if they didn’t get onto this virtual machine during initial installation, it should be an easy matter to get them and install. In fact, there are step-by-step instructions in the Debian Java FAQ for doing just that. I’m good to go!

So now I’m setting up Debian Linux on yet another virtual machine. Yesterday I tried OpenSuSE Linux, but wasn’t very favorably impressed with it. Maybe I’ll look at it again sometime, since there are lots of people who swear by it, but at least my installation left something to be desired. I guess appearances do matter to me, because the fonts they use on their desktop were difficult to read on my screen, and I couldn’t get it to use any display definition but VESA 800×600, which is pretty skimpy for someone used to a 20″ diagonal high-resolution LED display. I’m hoping Debian will let me use a bigger window — Ubuntu did. Thank goodness Linux distros only cost the time and bandwidth it takes to download them.