That effort eventually transformed into the better known, user-centered Second Life.
That vision changed into the software application Linden World, in which people participated in task-based games and socializing in a three-dimensional online environment. In its earliest form, the company struggled to produce a commercial version of the hardware, known as "The Rig", which in prototype form was seen as a clunky steel contraption with computer monitors worn on shoulders. In 1999, Philip Rosedale formed Linden Lab with the intention of developing computer hardware to allow people to become immersed in a virtual world.
If you plan on using your modified viewer in Second Life, it is recommended to use the Singularity master-branch patch because it is recent enough to cope with the Server-Side Baking ( SSB) "feature" (that did not really make a difference) of Linden servers. This is going further than Rake since Rake only deals with assets in the avatar's inventory, while these patches make it possible to grab most in-world assets. The patch below will slightly alter Singularity and Avination viewer so it can export assets to the hard-drive without leaking any trace of tampering. Furthermore, there is an avid market for "copybot" protections (the sums go up to the L$10 000), when in fact, the "copybots" may very well be modified viewers that are impossible, under any circumstance, to detect - most certainly not by using pure LSL code. In truth however, animations can be exported as any other item, completely bypassing any "vendor" systems. For example, several animation creators have had all their items "stolen" and the blame was shoved onto broken vendors. Similarly, it is remarkable that Linden does not care and that the whole grid is pretty much a welcoming target of copyright infringement.
Even if the simulator disallows flying, the server relies on the client to honor the restriction. For example, Singularity includes (without source-code modifications) an option to toggle an option which allows an agent to always fly - regardless of the simulator permissions. Many protections are embedded into the client, without any server-side checks. It is remarkable how broken the whole system Linden came up with is. The patch modifies the Singularity viewer so that the built-in, client-side, shallow "security" is disabled. The patch below is meant for the Singularity viewer and turns the viewer into a God-like client with the ability to export most assets from either Second Life or OpenSim.