G System 0.5.0 has been released. Here the announcement:

Finally, the 0.5 release of the G System is released to public. This release marks an important milestone in the history of this project: multi-user capability. It's the first release where many users can join in the same virtual universe.

To disspell a myth right at the beginning, you will only be able to travel around and talk to each other in this virtual universe yet, not much more happening yet. Still, the framework as such is rather complete and allows for additional development of functionality well.

And what is the G System? In Short, taken from the README:

The G System is a free and open source simulation framework and virtual reality.

The framework provides network distributed operation, which allows for huge simulations.

The virtual reality created with the G System, called G Universe, focuses on evolution, thus creating a virtual, multi-user, evolving universe with both adventurous and scientific aspects.

This combination of scientific research, into rather interesting areas by the way, and a virtual online reality is what makes the G System so exciting. Users are thus thrown into a world that's enjoyable as well as interesting from the aspect of evolution and life research, resulting in an evolving universe where the user is part of it as a whole. And... above all, the current client is even a Jabber IM client!

The aspect of evolution and life research is quite an important one as it tries to fill a gap in today's general knowledgebase. This process is not just about implementing all physical and mathematical 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.

This opens the project to a group of people not usually concerned with software development, namely philosophical people. These people 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 don't hesitate to give us constructive feedback.

The first universe:

With the 0.5 release of the G System we start our first virtual universe. It is obvious that it should 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 for complete noobs. If you encounter any problems don't hesitate to ask us on our mailing lists. If you encounter no problems, you can join the mailing lists as well of course.

As a 0.5 release is still a development release you are highly advised to subscribe at least to the users mailing list to get notifications about important changes, server downtimes and all this stuff - in case you try out the G System.

I (Raphael) have, finally, also set up my own blog which, of course, discusses design considerations and general development of the G System, among other things. You are highly welcome to give feedback and discuss further development and also philosophical considerations through comments.

Links:

Homepage and Download:
http://www.g-system.at

Documentation:
http://www.g-system.at/page_doc_api.php

Mailing Lists:
http://www.g-system.at/page_doc_maillist.php

G Universe server status:
http://www.g-system.at/page_doc_server.php

KDE-APPS entry:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14721

Raphael's blog:
http://raphael.g-system.at/blog