just a small update – we have been promoting Reaction Grid for 10 months now and think of ourselves as pretty connected

well spank me and call me honey!

in reading Maria’s OpenSim stats, we (i) saw that Reaction Grid had gone down like 85 sims and no longer was selling individual sims =(

RG’s service is outstanding and fast! so it made me a bit sad to see them pull out of that offering. for many teachers, they can swing $25 a month to explore how OpenSim will work for them (last year in the US, an average of $363 was spent out-of-pocket by teachers on behalf of providing better education to their students)

then i found Maria’s article from last week about this: ReactionGrid discontinues $25 region hosting. it’s a shame because they certainly provided us with a great introduction to OpenSim. if it had not been for their gracious patience, my transition would have been much harder. if you remember some of my posts from 8 and 10 months ago, i was having a tough time adjusting to many things. overall, OpenSim works very closely to how Second Life does but still with enough differences that for someone like me with only Second Life experience, it was cause for tears (yes, i really did cry, but i cry at some TV commercials, i am really sappy) =)

but after reading her article, it makes more sense and she points out other options if you are looking for a single sim. Reaction Grid still provides a kick butt alternative to sl in the form of four sims for $75 which is way less than even the education discount in Second Life is for one sim. if you are a teacher seriously wondering if OpenSim is right for you, then splitting this with a teacher or two is well worth it

Reaction grid is focusing on their Jibe offering which allows for browser-based plugin access to incredibly rich virtual world settings (i blogged on this here with the pic below). this option should catch on in the business world more than OpenSim because it is more “serious” looking, plus the obvious ease-of-use from being browser-based

for us, OpenSim is still the answer because of the ease of building in-world. we’ve been teachers and we know that you teach out of love for getting through to kids and not out of love of money! grading papers and prepping lesson plans goes into many a night for teachers and it’s hard to fit in time to learn something new

Unity 3D (the browser dealio) requires modelling skills in a program such as Blender 3D.  i used to do blender a lot (i still dabble in it for presentations) and it is a hard program to learn. it takes months to become proficient at it and i would say that it is 100 times harder than building with prims in-world. before anyone feels the need to correct me on this, i have been doing blender since 2004, right after it became open source and i am very familiar with Suzanne and i have output work via render farms with as many as 24 computers (plus i can read Dutch) =p

teachers don’t have the time and energy to do this (there are exceptions of course). but OpenSim is quite accessible and in an hour, i can (and have as a former SL Mentor) have a n00b up and running building a house

screenshot from Unity 3D gallery