A Whole New World with The G System

The G System is a free and open source simulation framework and virtual reality, using Qt and KDE. The recent 0.5 release adds multi-user capability, an important milestone in the history of this project. Using the G System many users can now join in the same virtual universe.

The G System framework provides advanced network distributed operations, allowing for huge simulations. The virtual reality created with the G System, called G Universe, focuses on evolution. This creates a virtual, multi-user, evolving universe with both adventurous and scientific aspects.

This combination of interesting scientific research and a virtual online reality is what makes the G System so exciting. Users are thrown into a world that is enjoyable as well as interesting from the aspect of life research, resulting in an evolving universe where the user is plays an important part. Just as important, the current client is a Jabber IM client!

The evolution and life research aspect is an important one as it tries to fill a gap in todays knowledge base. The process is not just about implementing all the physics and maths equations, but about forming a complete world, where the aspects of life itself are implemented. This goal implies many philosophical considerations which are at least as important as actually coding the application.

It also opens the project to a group of people not usually concerned with software development, those interested in philosophy. People who study philosophy are invited to join the project, as well as coders, documentation writers, artists and translators. Financial contribution is also gratefully accepted since it allows us to spend more time on this project and to pay server hosting bills.

Apart from such contributions the most important contributors are the users themselves. Please do not hesitate to give us constructive feedback.

The First Universe

With the recent 0.5 release of the G System we have started our first virtual universe. Now it needs to be filled with users. If you want to give it a try, simply download the package and install the G System. This release features a graphical installer so everyone should be able to manage. If you encounter any problems do not hesitate to ask us on our mailing lists. If you encounter no problems you are still welcome to join the mailing lists as well of course.

To disspell a common mis-conception, currently you can only travel around and talk to each other in this virtual universe, not much else can happen yet. However, the framework is quite advanced and will allow for additional functionality.

As this 0.5 release is still a development release users are highly advised to subscribe to the users mailing list to get notifications about important changes, server downtimes and other information.

Team Coordinator Raphael has also set up his own blog which discusses design decisions and general development of the G System, among other things. You are welcome to add feedback, discuss further development and philosophical considerations through comments.

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Comments

by Duncan (not verified)

Hmm... Rather than the traditional version string after the package name, in this case, the obvious thing is to put it before! Thus...

0.5 G

Of course, things /really/ accelerate beyond 1.0 G...

by Gerard (not verified)

This thread reminds me of an old saying:

"The best way to accelerate any computer running Windows is at 9,81 m/s2"

Oh well, off topic I'm afraid.

;-)

Gerard

by ac (not verified)

There sure is allot of hocus pocus talk about this. I remember when this was first announced on the dot. Back then there was talk that this would one day simulate the entire universe or something of that nature by the main developer. All humans and interactions etc. etc. Sure. But it was a GL app showing spheres rotating around other spheres.

Is the app now anything beyond spheres rotating around spheres basically? Or is this more about those who project all kinds of things into it see all kinds of stuff in it, like a painting?

I dunno about the G-system universe, I prefer the G-spot universe myself.

by Apollo Creed (not verified)

It was a nice surprise to get a graphical installer (even if it did ask for confirmation a bit too many times). Any plans to make this a generic addition to kde software? Having both the configure-make-make install scripts and a graphical installer script in all kde software would be cool.

by Raphael Langerhorst (not verified)

Hello,

the demo in the 0.5.0 release has a bug that prevents normal operation, a patch is now available.

Look at http://www.g-system.at/index.php for the details.

Regards,
Raphael

by Anonymous Joe (not verified)

Keeping in line with the tradition of innovative programming frameworks the G project has defined their own datatypes for everything. One of the results is that whenever there is text processing involved, the developer is strongly encouraged to use GStrings.

by Raphael Langerhorst (not verified)

(Are you sure you know what you're talking about?)

The G System does not introduce any new data types for something that already exists in the framework stack it uses, I hope you don't mean the GElement and GObject or GEnergy classes (or whatever). Such things simply don't exist anywhere - after all this is what actually makes up the system.

If you refer to the QString classes(??), this is the Qt framework. We just use what's there.

Regards,
Raphael

by Anonymous Joe (not verified)

Just to be clear about the issue, I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. My post was utterly and entirely meant for humorous purposes. I just couldn't resist the temptation to use the obvious QString pun.

Sorry about the confusion. I blame Slashdot for everything.

by Raphael Langerhorst (not verified)

ah, I see. I guess I took it too seriously ;)

by macavity (not verified)

>the developer is strongly encouraged to use GStrings.

LOL!!! I'd love (not) to see a bunch of hackers, sitting on a stack of empty pizza boxes, programming like fanatics... in nothing but g-strings ;-D

~Macavity