Outback Online = Second Life + P2P?
Australia’s Sydney Morning herald is reporting That Outback online is Second Life but Peer-to-Peer.
“Outback Online is a virtual world system that will be on your computer 24/7, and we don’t yet know what changes that’s going to bring, but we’ve got an inkling that will be pretty profound,” Mr Leeb-du Toit says.
In the new world, an ‘outback’ is equivalent to Second Life’s islands – a hub for users.
It’s an environment in which one can talk, build and play. Yoick’s Phil Morle calls it “a huge box of Lego”. You can develop private outbacks for friends or a concert for 5000 visitors.
Sounding like the “walled city” from Gibsons Idoru where the members have their private world distributed among their computers.
Of note, (from the SMH article)
The P2P architecture overcomes some obstacles that prevent such a gathering in Second Life but Mr Morle, a consultant who worked on Outback’s development, says the visual quality is greatly improved.
….
Mr Morle, the former Kazaa CTO, has assembled an expert team experienced in P2P applications that includes development director Marty Poulin, formerly online technology director at Disney’s Buena Vista Games.
“While I was at Kazaa it was a common conversation to dream up ways of using peer-to-peer in 3-D worlds,” Mr Morle says.
P2P has worked for Skype, having the free basic model and the paid enhanced services. I have used Skype for work and home with great success. Conference calls, transferring files, and chat. How much is the application versus the network I don’t know. But, this give some hope that the Virtual World may be more responsive than my experience in Second Life.
I wasn’t that impressed with Second Life, I still need to try it out again (now I have a much better video card) .. but I didn’t really find it that enthralling.
It will be interesting to try “Outback Online” .. it seems as though VR worlds are back in fashion, even if older technologies have faded.
If you want to jump on the mailing list for when Outback online opens, visit their website Outbackonline.com.