Linden Lab and IBM said this morning that they have successfully demonstrated virtual world interoperability by teleporting avatars between the Second Life Preview Grid and an OpenSim virtual world server. The joint development project represents an industry first of a quantifiable milestone for virtual world interconnectivity.

If this technique is perfected, there are a myriad of possibilities that it could make available to world makers. Basically, it would allow users to cross freely from one world to another in a seamless transfer, just as they can go from one Web site to another.

For games owned by the same company like SOE's EverQuest and EverQuest II this seems like an easy way a company could transfer character avatars and possibly the data tied to them because the systems are at least rooted in the same gameplay systems.

The interoperability protocol was tested and deployed on a separated test environment involving the Second Life Preview Grid and an OpenSim server. The companies have not announced plans or a schedule for when it might be made available on the main Second Life Grid.

To see a video of this little experiment, check out torley.s3.amazonaws.com.