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Virtual worlds like Second Life have a silo issue—they are virtual worlds unto themselves. Today, Linden Lab (which operates Second Life) and IBM announced that they have successfully bridged two virtual worlds, with avatars from Second Life successfully “teleporting” to an entirely different metaverse based on an OpenSim server.
The two companies have been working together on the Open Grid Protocol to allow for interoperability between virtual worlds. In a post on the Second Life blog, Hamilton Linden explains:
An open standard for interoperability based on the Open Grid Protocol would allow users to cross freely from one world to another, just as they can go from one Web site to another on the Internet today.
Here’s a video showing the avatars “teleporting” from one world (i.e. set of computer servers) to another:
Interoperability between virtual worlds is fine, and is definitely a step towards breaking down the walled gardens they are [...]