depending on your machine, when you install a viewer, your graphics are set to somewhat match what your hardware can handle. a key part of that is Draw Distance and a distance of 256 metres is common for decent hardware
however, you can’t assume everyone can see that far and “good building” practices include taking Draw Distance into consideration. building in a way that helps people accomplish their reason for being in-world is important. noob business peeps coming in-world for a meeting probably should have something analogous to real world meeting spaces with considerations for viewer camera angles and other avatar-specific constraints, such as Draw Distance
but . . . it can also be too vanilla if you build in that manner and to prove how vanilla that is, IBM claimed to develop the best virtual world building practices and alluded to patenting them! (see subQuark’s rant). you certainly can’t get much more vanilla than IBM (although hats off to them for including virtual worlds in their employee guidelines!) 
i’m a proponent of good building practices but maybe being too practical also loses some of what makes virtual worlds so wonderful for you and me
being able to fly is one of the cool things about virtual worlds and one of the first things a noob discovers
teaching someone how to fly up and down is very easy with a simple graphic
this thought became my inspiration for the Cool Ice Campus – a freebie that will be more complete than other OAR freebies i’ve made. my OARs tend to be shells or stages for others to build upon, to add their own seating and social spaces
this one is geared to group use and i thought about organisations like The eLearning Guild, for whom subQuark has done conference talks and even hosted a Second Life sand box for his talks. when SL was all hot and heavy in the media, the eLearning Guild had a small presence inSL and even hosted a summer seminar series on my estate
now with so many OpenSim options out there, a group like The eLearning Guild could more easily budget for a virtual world presence. why pay $1000 up front and $295 a month for 15,000 prims and maybe 60 concurrent visitors when you could have 100K prims and 100 visitors for $40 a month on Kitely?!?
the Cool Ice Campus could be an easily reconfigured space for the Guild and host several types of functions. if they used Kitely, they could save each custom configuration for later use – the ability to save and load OARs is such a plus over Second Life
the Cool Ice Campus has a welcome space at sea level with a reception desk, a few spots to sit while waiting for others, two screens for media, and “take off” zones to go up to the next level
the second level is a work in progress and might have a few classrooms and meeting rooms plus a central cafe for one-on-one and socialising. there will also be some blank info kiosks ready for whatever media you want
the third level is a 196 seat amphitheatre with a stage set for a panel discussion. of course, you’ll be able to make it anything you like. the thought for this is for something like a keynote speech
above that is a slowly circling zeppelin and i suppose a small group of 4 or 5 could sit in it to talk! =) nothing above that has been built yet, although there will be some other levels and maybe even parceled off sandboxes (making sure not to overlap with anything below to allow for autoreturn to be used)
this build is certainly going to be taller than most Draw Distances and “best building” practices but it is also easy to explore with distinct levels – nothing is hidden or intended to be mysterious (the opposite of Hax Nuit!) =D
it’s being built on Sim-on-a-Stick but you can visit it, under development, in Kitely here
Thank you Ener.
I think it is worth noting that people can have multiple versions of their worlds stored on Kitely at the same time. You can easily clone a world inside Kitely using the Copy function in your My Worlds page, you don’t have to save and load OAR files to achieve this.
Once cloned, each copy is an independent world that can be changed without effecting the other copies. On Kitely each world gets its own sim so you can have people inside all your worlds at the same time.
Ilan Tochner
15 Jan 13 at 9:25 am
thanks Ilan, now when you say “stored” you mean as a listed world right?
like we have Enclave Harbour set to be only visible to me, thus not public, but is does use 16 of our 20 regions in our plan right?
with a 20 region plan, i could have versions 1 through 10 of a certain OAR and only make whichever one public as needed (so say i had a 9 AM class and they were working on myMorningClass.oar, i could then change access and hide it from my 1 PM class and turn on myAfternoonClass.oar). that would only show one world at a time but take two of the 20 “slots”?
ps – the 10KC to export a backup is worth a lot of peace of mind =)
Ener Hax
15 Jan 13 at 9:35 am
Hi Ener,
Kitely charges a world storage fee of 10 KC per region per day for worlds stored in your account regardless of whether they are public or private. Each of our plans (including the Free Plan) includes a certain number of free regions for which this world storage fee is waived. The Gold Plan ($35/month) provides you with unlimited personal time inworld and 20 such free regions.
If you have multiple classes that you want to host in their own worlds then start by creating a world for each of those classes. This can, for example, be achieved by creating a single world and using the Copy function to clone it the required number of times.
Then set the access restrictions for each world to allow only the students you wish to be able to attend that class to enter it. This way each class will have its own World Page (with its own URL) and you won’t have to configure world access every time a new lesson begins.
One small note, the 10 KC export fee (like our other world service fees) is per region so, for example, exporting a 1-region world will cost you 10 KC and exporting a 16-region world will cost you 160 KC.
For additional details about our services please see: http://www.kitely.com/#!services
Ilan Tochner
15 Jan 13 at 10:14 am
ah, i see – so above the number in your plan, 20 in these examples, then you simply pay storage
and 160 KC!!! lol, my yardstick is forever set to the $2,920 USD i was paying per month inSL!
let’s see . . . $2920 converted into KC would mean that i could build and host a scale model of the entire universe in Kitely and still have money left over to get a burrito for lunch . . . everyday!!! =D
Ener Hax
15 Jan 13 at 10:20 am
:-D
When buying KC at the best discount rate you get 300 KC to the dollar. So 160 KC is equal to about $0.53.
In other words, its $1/month per region in storage fees for regions that exceed your plans free regions quota.
Ilan Tochner
15 Jan 13 at 11:13 am
so what i paid SL in terms of tiers (tears!) is about
881,500 KC per month! =)
Ener Hax
16 Jan 13 at 3:47 pm