Open Cobalt: open-source virtual world browser and toolkit

https://web.archive.org/web/20200530215533/http://www.opencobalt.net/home

by chriswarbo • 5 years ago

40 20 5 years ago

web.archive.org

chriswarbo3• 5 years ago

Their Web site seems to have disappeared last year, but seems very relevant to the current "metaverse" hype. In particular, OpenCobalt is easily programmable, supports a bunch of standards like XMPP (chat) and VNC (virtual desktop). It's also decentralised: users can navigate from one server to another by moving through portals (hyperlinks).

mindcrime2• 5 years ago

Archive.org really are "doing god's work" (so to speak). How many sites and how much knowledge would be lost from the 'net forever without them?

m4rtink2• 5 years ago

Exactly! And its not just we pages - a lot of digital heritage is being lost, even though we now have the technology to digitally preserve about anything.

Flash games that one can't play without a flash player, online games that can no longer be played without company run servers, modern arcade machines that will no longer run without a backend server, etc.

I would really welcome if more people though about how to preserve out current digital culture for the long run...

appleflaxen• 5 years ago

Knowledge lost and prior art put under patent.

jdougan2• 5 years ago

I've been busy and hadn't paid attention to google sites' "upgrade". It is on my to do list now.

pacifika• 5 years ago

SecondLife cracked this 15 years ago.

ofrzeta• 5 years ago

Before that (in the 90s): Blaxxun Interactive.

chriswarbo3• 5 years ago

OpenCobalt has been around even longer than SecondLife, if we count the various forks/renames (Croquet/OpenCroquet/Qwak/etc.)

Edit: It seems SecondLife is slightly older than I though (2003, versus Croquet's 2005)

PinkMilkshake3• 5 years ago

Not really. SecondLife is a closed, centralized platform. I know the client is open source and that Open Simulator exists, but it's not quite the same thing. The Croquet Project[1] (what Open Cobalt is built on) allowed P2P virtual worlds that users could travel between.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project

kaetemi• 5 years ago

A lot of these projects seem to emit a depressing virtual office building aura. Where's the fun in that?

PinkMilkshake3• 5 years ago

I think there is a trend of virtual world projects pivoting to virtual office meeting/collaboration software when it doesn't do well.

jdougan2• 5 years ago

Because that is where the grant money was. Also, the start space was a giant room so it had plenty of "space" to demo.

hedgewitch• 5 years ago

Just a note, since a lot of people will probably miss it: this was made in the Squeak dialect of Smalltalk.

justin66• 5 years ago

The only evolution of this software that anyone is currently working on is at

https://croquet.io/

chriswarbo3• 5 years ago

I came across that, but it seems to have lost the open/p2p/distributed/no-permission-necessary nature that I find appealing.

maxmalkav• 5 years ago

I’m only missing OpenWonderland on HN front page now to have the complete Networked Virtual Environment nightmare combo from my PhD days.

mindcrime2• 5 years ago

Ya know, I had thought about submitting that link yesterday or so, but got distracted and never did. Submitted just now, since you brought it up!

Open Cobalt: open-source virtual world browser and toolkit

Related Stories