Halcyon | Living In Worlds

This post is probably not what you’ve come to expect from this blog. It is, however, big news for InWorldz and the OpenSim community.

Beyond InWorldz, there is the Military Open Simulator Enterprise Strategy project (MOSES) which has been transitioning from OpenSim software to the same Halcyon server software that InWorldz runs and was developed independently from OpenSim for the last six years.

MOSES is a virtual world research project managed by Dr. Douglas Maxwell of the US Army. It is safety training used to prepare soldiers for emergencies in dangerous environments in a flexible simulation.

The MOSES project originated as research under the Second Life® Enterprise programme (SLE) but moved to OpenSim when SLE was cancelled by Linden Lab. However, recently the MOSES team started to run into limitations with the OpenSim software. When InWorldz open-sourced its Halcyon server software, the MOSES team discovered it as a compelling alternative. This is, in fact, one of the primary reasons for open-sourcing the InWorldz Halcyon software.

MOSES Halcyon Test Grid

Why is this interesting to InWorldz residents?
One of the main reasons for open-sourcing the InWorldz Halcyon software was to make it accessible to others – a mutually beneficial arrangement where others get access to the software and at the same time can contribute to the development and improvement of the Halcyon software. This will directly benefit InWorldz users. A win-win situation!

Today, Dr. Maxwell’s team had its first Office Hours meeting on a new Halcyon-based MOSES grid. Its purpose was to demonstrate a smooth transition, improved performance, and especially avatar region crossings.

One of the differences noted by one of the participants was the lack of support for variable sized regions (var regions). The MOSES team commented that larger regions were actually sometimes creating problems due to users filling those larger regions with content that was all part of a single region server process. It was later explained that var regions are really just a workaround to the problem of region crossings rather than an actual solution. The test users today commented on the smoothness of the avatar region crossings under the Halcyon software.

We’re looking forward to hearing more on the MOSES – Halcyon collaboration.

If you want to know more about MOSES, visit the website here https://militarymetaverse.org/ and https://halcyon.militarymetaverse.org/ (Halcyon MOSES).

For news and updates follow MOSES on Twitter https://twitter.com/Project_MOSES and of course InWorldz at https://twitter.com/InWorldz