as mentioned the other day, i’m putting my money (regions) where my mouth is by trying to see how viable a 16 region sim-on-a-stick grid will work. you can certainly make sim-on-a-stick have 16 regions but whether that is practical or not is what i want to test
why test that since you have a server already running Enclave Harbour?
good question – i want to see if Sim-on-a-Stick can handle this for me and thus, maybe for someone else too =)
why would anyone do something like this with SoaS?
it can take considerable time to develop a meaningful virtual world presence. this is true for educational and business use and also true for role playing and heavily themed grids
if you were interested in starting a themed role-playing grid, there may be a certain “ramp up” time while you build in which you don’t want to be open to the masses. it could be a project you are building mainly on your own (like Sarge’s massive and detailed work) or projects on which a handful of people are working (like our Enclave Harbour)
in those cases, why pay for commercial server time while you are developing? SoaS might be a good development tool for you
a big plus for OpenSim is the ability to export and import OARs, you don’t have to be stuck in the Second Life paradigm of paying $1000 up front and then $295 just to start developing one region
Enclave Harbour has been over two years in the making and if it had been done inSL, it would have a project cost of $129,280.00 just in land! o_O
with our awesome Simhost hosting (i have yet to have any bad experience with it), it’s cost us just over $3,500 so far (or 2.7% the cost of SL). large scale SoaS would have been free but would change the ease with which we collaborate (i build stuff, subQuark looks at it, and i wait for the great Caeser’s thumb’s up or down) =p
so what’s the verdict for large scale SoaS development?
i had been able to load 15 of the 16 Enclave Harbour OARs without issue and i created a new “build” of SoaS on my solid-state drive to see if that would alleviate the one OAR failure i was having. the same OAR, number 6 (Enercity),was still causing OpenSim to crash. oddly, i could see the region load if i was in-world, but the crash would wipe it out. however, the new terrain stayed. i thought it might be a media player on a parcel but that was not it. this was puzzling because clearly that OAR loads fine on our SimHost server
i tried other backups of that OAR and stopping all the scripts but it still crashed on every load OAR attempt
then after a morning cup of coffee, it hit me . . .
try starting OpenSim with OpenSim.32BitLaunch.exe instead of OpenSim.exe! i have no clue why there would be any difference, but now my problematic OAR loaded quickly! and i am very happy =)
so the verdict is: yes it works!
however, now i’m going to put it through its paces. i am going to use the stick version of Enclave Harbour to see if i can rearrange activities and create a more dense municipality. moving around big builds with 100s of prims is asking for trouble and isn’t something i want to do on the server version until i am certain it will work. moving builds around also means changing the terrain – two things much less stressful to do in a test environment. my goal is too see if this would work on 12 regions and maybe even 9 (that’s really pushing it)
apart from that, this 16 region OpenSim takes about 2 minutes to fully load and about 45 seconds to shut down. also the file size of it all – a clean install of SoaS 0.7.4 is about 297 MBs and the 16 region Enclave Harbour version is 397 MBs!
stay tuned and if you have experience using SoaS with anything larger than a 2×2 grid (or using Diva’s D2 Distro), drop a comment with your thoughts =)
Very interesting. I would love to be able to create a real forest with varied terrain etc. but have never been able to do that, yet, simply because I couldn’t afford 8 or so sims. 4 sims is too small for what I would like to do, so I’ll follow this SoaS with a lot of interest.
soror Nishi
18 Sep 12 at 4:43 pm
give it a shot soror, grab that text file for the config and maybe look into The Fern Seed a little. The Fern Seed is a project that uses programatically growing ferns. if you could script trees to grow, that would make for an awesome forest
in my single region island home, i wanted the feel of a dense palm grove but it’s hard to get that feel with placing trees by hand
http://fernseed.usu.edu/
Ener Hax
18 Sep 12 at 6:39 pm
I used the latest version of SoaS to set up a 3×3 grid of regions for later import into Kitely. I tweaked Ener’s helpful RegionConfig.ini file so that it had just 9 regions, renaming them to (xy) 11, 21, 31; 12, 22, 32; 31, 32, 33 to make it easier to switch regions in the console and to keep track of where I was.
Out the box, it seemed that megaregion mode was enabled, so I had to change that line to false in the Diva config file — I knew I could wipe it all and start again if it went wrong ;)
All went well: OpenSim.exe fired up, the regions loaded, OARs imported one by one. Started up Imp, and things looked as they should. (I use SoaS on a MacBookPro, running it in Parallels/Win7 off the hard disk, so things were a little laggy. However, I didn’t tweak the Parallels settings beforehand to give Win7 more resources, so that might be one reason.)
I quit Imp, then OpenSim on the console, so that I could change back to megaregion mode. This time when I fired up OpenSim.exe, it crashed halfway through. Tried again. And again — and this time it worked (don’t ask me why).
Next tasks: type “fix-phantoms” in console, wait a bit; type “backup”, wait a bit longer; switch to root region 11; type “save oar megaregion.oar”, wait a lot longer; and quit.
Off to Kitely now. Create new 3×3 world, upload oar…
http://www.kitely.com/virtualworld/Dot-Macchi/Devokan
Dot Macchi
19 Sep 12 at 4:27 am
wow Dot, i am going to reprint your comment as a post – there are so few articles out there about Mac users with SoaS (or even OpenSim)
so by making it a megaregion and saving out the root region’s OAR – you get all regions?
that’s pretty cool and, if anyone is wondering, the phantom thing is mentioned in Diva’s blog post:
http://metaverseink.com/blog/?p=444
Ener Hax
19 Sep 12 at 7:19 am
There are a few more steps involved, but I focused in the comment on how SoaS helped.
In fact, in megaregion mode, by saving the root region’s OAR you get all the prims saved in place on the other regions but not the terrain. When this OAR is first loaded into Kitely, the prims are embedded in flat land in all regions other than the root. The missing steps explain how to sort out the terrains.
This how-to details all the steps needed to prepare and export a megaregion from OSgrid to Kitely: http://forum.devokan.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=287
I followed much the same procedure for the SoaS regions. (I could write up another post for that if it will help.)
The procedure works whether you are using Mac or PC.
Dot Macchi
19 Sep 12 at 9:17 am
thanks Dot! i’ll simply place your links and this newest comment on that article – people can take additional initiative and explore your forum (and join your online community)
i still get about 24% of web traffic to simonastick.com from Macs (it used to be 47% and i am excluding iPads from those numbers)
as with most OpenSim endeavors, it takes some work but people like you help blaze a path for others and even though i don’t have a Mac, i very much appreciate you sharing your experiences with the community =)
Ener Hax
19 Sep 12 at 12:42 pm
I am so glad to hear that is working. i am slowly but surely making myself a 49 region microgrid. My 9 region RP sim in the center surrounded by various relaiation sims and a sim set aside for all Indie Artists. Having a blast!
Crystal Brewton
25 Sep 12 at 7:00 pm
that sounds pretty amazing Crystal! and HUGE! i would be so overwhelmed but you seem to have a solid plan and i hope to read more about your innovative work! =)
Ener Hax
26 Sep 12 at 6:01 pm
Well, so far i jave reinstalled opensim three times. Thos last time, i havebeen ablr to load the 8 regions i wanted, but to make sure i have to shutdown ‘right’ using quit. An hour and a half later ….. but i’ll leave it open all night if i have to. Thank gppdness i can access your blog bia my Nexus7 lol If Openaim crashes, you’ll hear y scream lol
Crystal Brewton
26 Sep 12 at 8:34 pm
OY! OK, I’m back on my laptop. I’ve been waiting hours so far from “Persisting changed objects” until now. Then again, I suppose that is to be expected, considering I uploaded 8 OAR’s this afternoon. Experience tells me it could be hours before shutdown. But I haven’t crashed, so .. I’ll try that patience thing yet again.
That being said …. Do you have any advice for moving the build into SOAS? I am all about the portable. I’d need to move certain databases, wouldn’t I?
Crystal Brewton
26 Sep 12 at 10:36 pm
dang Crystal? so long??? how old is your laptop? i sue one that is 5 years old for testing that doesn’t even have dedicated graphics and it is only a matter of a minute or two for any operations
something isn’t right
even my full 30,000 prim 16 region SoaS only takes a few minutes to shut down (it takes several minutes to start though)
what are your machine’s specs? i like using Speccy to see what i have
http://www.piriform.com/speccy
Ener Hax
27 Sep 12 at 8:12 am
OK specs to follow … Nothing loaded right, so I am going to switch to SOAS and at least load it onto my 6TB external. Maybe the extra memory will help LOL.
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Starter 32-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Atom @ 1.60GHz 50 °C
Cedarview 32nm Technology
RAM
1.00 GB
Motherboard
Gateway SJE01_CT (CPU) 50 °C
Graphics
Digital Flat Panel (640×480 60Hz) (1024×600@60Hz)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 Series
Hard Drives
298GB Western Digital WDC WD3200BPVT-22JJ5T0 (SATA) 38 °C
Optical Drives
No optical disk drives detected
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio
OK time to make some coffee *nods*
Crystal Brewton
27 Sep 12 at 11:06 am
this sounds like a Netbook? i am surprised you can get anything to run. i have a Dell Netbook and it won’t do anything
are you able to get a viewer to work? the last time i tried it failed because the resolution is not enough (i think the minimum is supposed to be 1024 x 768)
the 1 gig of RAM will be an issue for trying to do so many regions (more than 4 seems like to many, imo)
lol, sorry – i am kind of shocked to realise you are on a netbook! =D
dang, you have gotten way farther than i have!
apart from the RAM, the on-board graphics are really going to work hard
do you have all the XP updates? particularly .NET 3.5?
i’m going to put a shout out as a post to see what people are doing with netbooks – this is way over my head! =)
Ener Hax
27 Sep 12 at 2:49 pm
LOL Yes, it’s a netbook. I’ve been running on one for over 2 years now. about 18 months on Second Life (did a lot of immerseive paraposting role play there) and now OpenSim.
That being said, it SEEMS I have some of the problems solved. I’ve used various viewers and, as a matter of fact have dual logged using Imprudence, V2/3, Firestorm and Phoenix. Usually Imprudence on one account and Firestorm on another. Once I got brave and triple logged, but that wasn’t any fun at all LOL.
Now .. my birthday is in a couple of weeks and I am thinking of going back to a full sized laptop. Big and clunky, but …. can’t have everything, right?
I am checking out my sims one at a time on Phoenix. Granted, I am laggin like its fashionable, but …. such is my life … does that mean I am still detoxing from SL? *winks*
Any help is much appreciated!
Crystal Brewton
27 Sep 12 at 4:19 pm
hi Crystal, I’m going to copy your comment over to that latest post since others are reading it =)
Ener Hax
28 Sep 12 at 7:44 am