our move is complete from SimHost to Kitely and from recent posts you can see how and why we moved (how – copied our 16 regions to SoaS, converted to megaregion, exported OAR and terrain RAWs, imported to Kitely, and why – budget and project timeline delays)
Enclave Harbour had been counted as its own grid in Maria’s monthly stats and i asked her via Twitter what it would be considered now
Enclave Harbor on Kitely would just be a set of regions on the Kitely grid. Until Kitely starts offering private-label grids.
not so fast! *screeching tires, crash, hubcap rolling away* o_O
i think Kitely is something other than “just” a community grid (no more than HypergridBusiness.com is just another DreamHost site)
as far as my overall experience, Kitely is almost identical to SimHost – an OpenSim hosting company
i can save and upload OARs, but i can’t work with IARs. the IAR issue isn’t a biggie because i would only have only used it once to rebuild my avatar – so that’s no big deal for me
i no longer think about doing server updates or asking for the latest version of OpenSim – it’s also nice not thinking about restarting the server to clear out memory leaks eating into server RAM
currently, Enclave Harbour on Kitely is set to “me only” and is the same privacy i had with SimHost
as far as “just being a set of regions on the Kitely grid” (“just?!?” good thing i’m not an overly sensitive French Canadian with tremendous pride in building 100% of everything in those regions from scratch), since the Amazon cloud servers spin up as needed, there isn’t the same kind of dedicated, always-on server network like Second Life. to me, it “feels” like our SimHost server – i log in and build in privacy. no one pops in unless i set up access and i don’t feel like i’m part of a grid like Second Life (dang, i am fully hermitised!) =D
access control is tight and flexible on Kitely – i can set up a Facebook or Twitter lists. for SimHost, we had no account interface (although James can install one) so there was no easy way to allow visitors. Kitely lets me turn that on and off with the flexibility that meets our needs (i do look forward to getting feedback from all of you . . . soon) =)
Kitely also allows me to establish my own Terms of Service, just like SimHost did. of course, our TOS encompass Kitely’s and Amazon’s but our SimHost grid encompassed Simhost, Limestone Networks, ICANN and Hostgator TOSs (last two for domain name URI)
overall, i see Kitely as a hybrid and a flexible OpenSim hosting provider. to me so far, it’s been an OpenSim host like SimHost and not a community grid like Second Life
for Enclave Harbour’s immediate needs, and our initial offering, Kitely is fully suiting us as an OpenSim host. once hypergrid is laid in, then it might, to us, feel more like a private grid connected to OSgrid than a community grid
that’s my two cents and based on my experience inSL, Reaction Grid as a private grid and part of their community grid, SimHost, and now Kitely
thanks Maria for making me take an look at this, it’s something i was thinking about but did not know how to frame =)
update: Maria tweeted a good point about access to other places once visitors arrive. on our SimHost grid, visitors would need to log out in order to go somewhere else. we were a walled garden in that respect. for an educational grid i can see that as a concern, however as an educational resource it becomes the same issue as visiting wikipedia or the web – it comes down to what fits your needs. i like the idea that Kitely will be more like the web once hypergrid is implemented
Hybrid is a good word to use, Ener. Kitely is definitely something of both grid and host.
Sarge Misfit
1 Nov 12 at 8:58 am
Oh, looks like a trick question, correct answer is YES or BOTH.
I have been pondering that myself, as Kitely seems to be developing as a new concept with elements of both. So far as I know, all Kitely worlds are on the same grid, but of course they are managed as separate Worlds. So that is rather like web hosting, where each site has it’s own identity and is quite separate from any others at the same hosting service. The big difference I see is that my website name is registered by a separate organization from the hosting service. But at the same time as Worlds are separate, they are in some ways limited to the Kitely system, potentially using KC for trade for example, and having limited export to protect content.
However those parts of closed grid community aspect may not be essential in the long run.
Is it a grid, is it a host ? No it’s Kitely!
faster than a speeding bullet as well …
keith selmes
1 Nov 12 at 10:21 am
Ener –
Kitely is a grid for a number of reasons:
* Avatar identities, inventories, groups, etc… are shared across all Kitely regions. You can take your avatar from Enclave Harbor and visit any of Kitely’s other regions and have full access to that avatar, including access to all “local grid” content (that’s once hypergrid is enabled).
* Kitely owns the user database, their access credentials, controls their money and their content, and can do anything to any of them at any time.
* Kitely itself determines the upgrade cycle, feature roll outs, prices, hosting services (Amazon, right now), voice platform (Vivox), etc… Users may provide their opinions, but Kitely makes all final decisions.
Compare this to a private grid — I’ll use Dreamland as an example, since that’s where I have Hyperica and I know their management panel:
* You decide who gets a user account, can upload bulk users, can remove users (say, when they’ve left the school), and have full control over their user names, screen names, avatars, etc…
* You have full control over access permissions and other rights. You can decide which groups of users can hypergrid and which can’t (some Dreamland customers, for example, allow teachers to hypergrid but not students). You can decide which groups of users can upload content (to, say, keep kids from uploading dirty pictures).
* You have full control over update cycles, feature releases, etc… You decide when the grid goes down for maintenance.
* You can take the entire grid database — regions, users, inventories, etc… — and move it to another hosting provider. Well, to any other hosting provider who uses MySQL — I understand that the use of MSSQL, like ReactionGrid did, may have caused some migration problems.
* You are responsible for 100% of the content on the grid. You decide what stuff is in world, what users are allowed to bring in and aren’t, you can delete stuff from the database, you set the rules for users and can kick them out if they violate them.
* You decide whether there’s a currency or not, which one it is, and if it’s a local currency, you get to keep the money from the sales.
* If you rent out regions, you decide the prices to charge — and you are responsible for the tech support. (Though you can pass on grid-related tech issues to the hosting provider.)
Basically, the main difference is, on your own grid, you set — and enforce — the rules.
If you’re happy with Kitely’s rules then using Kitely will save you a lot of time and grief.
If you need different rules, then you can either find a grid that matches your needs, or you can set up your own grid with those rules.
For schools that need to have very tight controls on content and access, having a private grid is the way to go.
Of course, that doesn’t actually provide any real security, just the illusion of security. Sure, your kid can’t teleport out from your school grid to OSgrid when nobody is watching. But if nobody’s watching, then he can also create a free user account on OSgrid and login directly. And this is especially true if he’s logging in from home, where the parents probably can’t tell the difference between one grid or another.
Maria Korolov
1 Nov 12 at 11:16 am
it all boils down to use case scenario and, for our use, there are very few differences between Kitely and SimHost
there are some advantages for us – avatar accounts and inventory is a huge one – we no longer need to worry about that as our overhead, nor do we deal with lost password issues
also, it’s nice that one account will be able to do so much once HG is installed
for me, i don’t worry about the update schedule because Kitely contributes code and rolls in the updates quickly (lol, i still have an SoaS build from 0.7.2 that i use weekly!)
i agree that maximum control is your own physical server under your own roof (home, school, university, or business). the next is a leased server and having SimHost was awesome because it came with James’ expertise and was less than we could lease a server for!
for our needs, especially in closed development – the economics make Kitely very attractive. had i figured out how to do 16 regions when i started hosting SoaS then that would have probably been our choice!
a top banana mark for Kitely is that i can get my OARs, as long as that is possible, then there are no limitations for us =)
Ener Hax
1 Nov 12 at 1:11 pm
Ilan Tochner: Please try to fix the “internal” error of the Kitely’s webpage, I can’t register, nor using Twitter neither my e-mail. Thanks. And sorry, Ener, I don’t whish to convert your nice blog in a IRC channel: perhaps #EnerHax :D
Kind regards!
Montnegre
1 Nov 12 at 1:13 pm
no problem Montnegre and you may want to use their forum to get their attention
http://kiteflying.vanillaforums.com/
https://getsatisfaction.com/kitely
and their twitter
http://twitter.com/kitely
Ener Hax
1 Nov 12 at 1:19 pm
Hi Montnegre,
The site is up and people are opening new accounts so if you are still experiencing problems registering then please contact us: http://www.kitely.com/#!contact
Ilan Tochner
1 Nov 12 at 1:39 pm
Thank you guys and sorry for not responding earlier. We are having a very busy day here at Kitely following it being mentioned in a mainstream news site in Portugal: http://expresso.sapo.pt/visite-lisboa-antes-do-terramoto-de-1755=f763402
I suggest you use Google translate if you don’t speak Portuguese… that’s what we’re doing :-)
Ilan Tochner
1 Nov 12 at 1:46 pm
that’s awesome Ilan! i am going through your video presentation and it is an excellent resource
Ener Hax
1 Nov 12 at 4:28 pm
Thank you Ener,
We recorded my first presentation to the ISTE SIGVE (International Society for Technology in Education’s Special Interest Group Virtual Environments – what a mouthful :-)) in SL but the voice quality wasn’t good enough for publishing.
So this is actually the second take we made, this time in my home office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDvJp9vZlno
Ilan Tochner
1 Nov 12 at 4:36 pm
the biggest omission in all the viewers that they dont have iar import/export. i would consider that over even hypergrid.
i know you can layer oar but mostly people dont know how to do it. i even had a hard time to remember. but iar you can do for your stuff — small or large. even putting all your stuff in a box and iar to you own computer is something we could do.
now with holodeck is would be easier to do. put in it the holodeck container and export it.
bristle
1 Nov 12 at 5:14 pm
Bristle, I have noticed for some time that the newer viewers no longer export, with a couple of exceptions. Mostly, its the V3 based viewers. Nicky responded on the Kokua blog about this;
“The original export/import code was licensed GPL. Imprudence team members agreed that any original code or code fragments from Imprudence would be considered as LGPL and be freely used as such. The code for import/export was taken from other viewer projects. Unless we have releases or re-licencing from the original authors we can’t use the Imprudence import/export code in Kokua. …”
http://blog.kokuaviewer.org/2012/10/24/kokua-beta-update/#comments
So, I’m guessing its that sort of licensing issue that is preventing the inclusion of the feature in other viewers. In the meantime, use something like Cool VL Viewer or other V1 based viewer to export/import XMLs or use Angstrom to export/your builds in the HPA format.
And of course I’ll plug the MIV http://excelsior-station.wikidot.com/misfit-s-index-of-viewers-miv
As to the actual topic, why do we insist on ‘categorizing’? Kitely is Kitely. Its has the features of both a grid and a host, so its both. Its Kitely. From the very beginning Kitely has been different with its sim-on-demand model.
But, since people insist on labeling, naming and categorizing, then lets combine the two, grid and simhost, just as Kitely has done with their features.
How does ‘grost’ sound to you?
Sarge Misfit
1 Nov 12 at 8:25 pm
Sim + G(rid) + host = SimGhost … Which makes Kitely the perfect solution for your Halloween parties… ;-)
Ilan Tochner
1 Nov 12 at 9:54 pm
Kitely strikes me as a mini Metaverse not dissimilar to SpotON3D or Cloud Party. It has features similar to the standard walled garden OperSim grids but also stuff that is exclusive like Advanced Mega Regions which sets it apart. This does bother me somewhat being a firm believer in an open “connected” Metaverse and until Kitely make it possible to enable Hypergrid I am reluctant to use their service.
This doesn’t mean I think Kitely is bad of course. Far from it. They have kept to their promises to date and continue to contribute to core unlike others I could name that take full advantage of the OpenSim code. I notice also that they don’t have a welcome web page with stats that can show up on a search and be checked any time. The osgrid.kitely.com:8002 address allows login but there is no page as such so my web crawler can’t scrape any numbers from it. I am always suspicious of grids that don’t show all the basic metrics of Total Registered User, Total Regions and Total Unique Logins (past 30 days). Even Hypergrid visitors would be useful to display. Many just show Registration and regions numbers and possibly total daily logins but anyway. Those that don’t reveal their metrics publicly or those that just send numbers to Maria of HB once a month leaves me wondering if the numbers are in fact true. At least with publicly accessible metrics they can be checked any time this makes them less likely to be fake. It also gives a strong indication that they are part of the broader community of the open Metaverse.
Bottom line is I will never use a walled garden service for my hosting when I can run a virtual server or engage a host like Dreamland Metaverse which is feature rich in operator controls that Kitely just can’t offer. I would always want to have my own web site connected to my grid as well and not just the Host’s web site. I have no problem with Kitely controlling registration if Hypergrid is possible so that can be taken care of in the future hopefully. I sure think Kitely’s pricing is a good deal at the moment. At the moment, yes. So until Hypergrid is enabled and I guess now that will have to wait until Diva Canto gives Content creators permissions control which, in turn, must wait for Armin or another developer to do the necessary work on a viewer like Firestorm we will have to wait. Wait for HG 2.5 now,,, if ever.
Gaga
2 Nov 12 at 5:51 am
We run all our regions on Simhost, and I totally agree James is awesome. He’s a giant help and I get him on weekends, holidays, late at night.. He really is a giant help keeping all our systems running right. If only the “grid” itself (OSGrid) was a little more stable we’d have a really smooth running environment.
Walter Balazic
2 Nov 12 at 6:24 am
I agree with Walter above, Osgrid has some rather difficult stability problems that need sorting out. Login’s can be difficult at times and inventory continues to give problems with slow rezzing and things like when you delete an object it may take a while before another can be deleted. I sometimes link a whole load of rubbish together just to make a single delete when time is short. Hey, but generally, I remain a big fan of OSgrid – the HUB of the Hypergrid, imo.
Gaga
2 Nov 12 at 6:47 am
hi Gaga, i have a big distinction, in my head, for Kitely and SpotON3D. Kitely contributes a lot of code to OpenSim – by supporting Kitely ($35 gold plan) I am supporting OpenSim development
Also, my definition of walled garden includes the inability to export your OARs. because i can export all of my work, i don’t feel walled in. if Kitely no longer fits my needs i can immediately move on without skipping a beat
but that’s me and our use is specific and more like sharing an illustration than most people’s use of VWs. we don’t sell anything virtual and don’t sell land and don’t allow anyone to build
as to Kitely keeping some megaregion functionality to themselves, i have no issue with that because they are not a split from OpenSim. they do have added functionality but so does their website with its automated viewer sniffing, installation, and login – features that set them as desirable. if they did not have these things, they would not be successful and they would no longer contribute to OpenSim. i gladly support them as a fair and flexible service
if they get to the point that our megaregion OAR no longer imports into SoaS, then it will be time to move on
but . . . your perspective is totally valid and one that i agree with you, just a small caveat for my perspective =)
i also hope OSgrid remains the hub and becomes the centre of the “internet” version of OpenSim and i also hope that Kitely becomes hypergridded with OSgrid when HG 2.0 is completed =)
Ener Hax
2 Nov 12 at 8:15 am
hi Walter! James is so wonderful and when we made this decision, i cried (but i am incredibly sentimental and even cry at some TV ads!)
James does such an incredible job on server setup. i simply can’t say it enough – the performance we had with him was stellar. if it would not have been for one of DreamWalker’s looping scripts, we would never ever have had a single crash in 26 months!
that’s pretty frigging awesome and a heck of a bar for Kitely to be compared with!
good luck Walter! =)
Ener Hax
2 Nov 12 at 8:22 am
Oh yes, Ener. I didn’t mean to compare Kitely with SpotON3D other than the similarity in gird structure which reminded me of a mini Metaverse. I agree Kitely donate code back to core too which other walled gardens don’t. My point really was that if a grid forks their code too radically then they become incompatible with core and the notion of a an open and connected Metaverse becomes more remote. Now, that is what would bother me for it means those grids are following the Second Life business model which I have no time for.
For me it has to end up a connected Metaverse or I will not put any time, effort or money into it. I really would like to use Kitely services but I can afford to wait.
Gaga
2 Nov 12 at 8:56 am
i know you weren’t doing a direct comparison BUT you bring up something to always keep in mind – ownership of your work and portability
us old timers from SL know the pain of realising you can’t move all your work
VW work is no diff than say writing a novel. you’d expect your word processor files to work under a number of programmes and certainly expect that you could always get the words out!
Ener Hax
2 Nov 12 at 9:12 am
Hi Gaga and Ener,
The ability to easily import and export standard OAR files any time you want using our web-based control panel is one of our main selling points. We have no intention to break that compatibility.
We’ve even contributed code to extended the OAR format several times to support additional functionality that we added to Kitely so that people who use regular OpenSim will be able to benefit from these new archive capabilities as well. When these improvements required significant format changes we collaborated with other OpenSim developers to define them.
The ability to hypergrid teleport to other grids requires us to complete some infrastructure improvements we’re currently working on, e.g. Kitely Transfer Stations. We also believe that Hypergrid teleports should respect asset permissions, which is unfortunately still missing in the existing Hypergrid protocol. Once Hypergrid 2.0 comes out we’ll be able to evaluate whether to spend time adding automatic permission-based asset filtering logic ourselves, like we did for OAR exports, or wait for an official future Hypergrid update to add such functionality.
Lastly, Kitely doesn’t fork OpenSim, it uses standard OpenSim releases and adds hooks to them to integrate our proprietary modules. Had we forked our code we wouldn’t be able to easily upgrade to new OpenSim releases (which we just recently done with OpenSim 0.7.4).
Ilan Tochner
2 Nov 12 at 9:40 am
Gaga, Ener –
There are only two “OpenSim forks” out there right now, as far as I know. (I’m not sure what 3Dmee — formerly OpenLife — is running.)
The question is, when a new version of OpenSim comes out, can a grid or hosting provider immediately update to it? Kitely can — their proprietary stuff is separate from the main OpenSim code, and has to do with their cloud infrastructure and website.
The main fork out there right now is AuroraSim, which I look at as an interesting testing ground for some new concepts, like infinite regions. Which I think are great! Personally, I think every region should be an infinite region, which would allow people to travel over-land (or over water) between any regions in a grid, no matter how widely separated.
The other fork is InWorldz. And I’ve said this before a few times — they’re using paid developers to do work that is being done by volunteers elsewhere. So they’re doing their own physics, at the same time that the Intel guys are working on Bullet. They’re doing their own mesh, when OpenSim has had the code for ages. Even if they’re able to achieve improvements in performance or stability, will their users even notice it? Or will they only notice the fact that InWorldz is behind the rest of the universe when it comes to technology?
They’re not hurting OpenSim any by doing this, of course. But the time and money they’re spending on trying to maintain proprietary code — when all the other grids are getting the code for free — is time and money that could be used to improve the web interface, improve support and community building, outreach, marketing — or reintegrating back with mainline OpenSim.
Maria Korolov
2 Nov 12 at 10:54 am
*Ilan and Oren’s #1 fangrrl!* <– Ener =)
Ener Hax
2 Nov 12 at 11:00 am
Thanks for that, Ilan and Yes Maria, the current forked Opensim versions are Inworldz, 3DMEE (OpenLife) and Aurora but with Aurora there is a module to enable Hypergrid travel at least while they have IWC otherwise. Inworldz may still remain compatible for objects but the scripting will probably be much different now and with them adapting PhysiX I would have to say I think they are becoming more and more incompatible with core. Tranq said once that if their residents want it then implementing Hypergrid should still be possible. However, I am skeptical because, no matter what they say, if fundamental changes are being made in physics and scripting engine.
Anyway, not withstanding all that, I am still convinced that open, connected and semi-secure grids are possible even if it means all grids become semi-walled gardens. So long as travel is possible and the free movement of content where creators allow it then we will have the nearest thing to a truly open Metaverse like the 2D web.
If we can get that then it will be a hell of a market for everyone and walled gardens like Second Life will simply collapse and disappear.Perhaps Linden Lab knows it too and that is why they are investing in video games!
Gaga
2 Nov 12 at 11:30 am
Of course, and this is very wild speculation based on something Rod Humble said recently and I mentioned it on my blog. He said LL would be “investing in virtual worlds” so what could that mean?
Could it mean employing cloud technology like Kitely in order to make low cost sims available with possibly variable sized regions?
Think of it as selling land by the acre *laughs* Maria will then be able to walk a long way in Second Life! Hell I might just get interested again myself – especially, if Rod turns the table and promises to bring SL back to the heart of the Metaverse!
Maybe he will even allow content to flow freely by offering some form of cloud asset service to the rest of the open Metaverse to bring them back on board in some kind of franchising or partnering scheme.
Watch this space. The Humble Bundle may have hidden treasures yet!
Gaga
2 Nov 12 at 11:45 am
Thank you Ener, we appreciate your cheerleading :-)
Ilan Tochner
2 Nov 12 at 11:55 am
Maria,
What you always gloss right over when you speak about our services and platform is that our customers are expecting production quality services in return for the money they pay us every month. Some grids may not mind regions not loading, or inventory not working, or regions crashing from script overload, and may be completely satisfied by simply saying “this is an opensim problem with this release”. But on InWorldz, our customers want us to take charge and meet those issues head on. We average about 4 region restarts/crashes a day out of 1250 regions. Our work has paid off.
The perception you seem to have is that opensim out of the box is a perfect product for any use case, for a grid of any size, with any amount of activity, and no one should ever have to reach outside the box.
Our core mission relies on us being in control of our own destiny. Being able to thoroughly QA releases and know exactly what changed and by who so that bugs can be quickly squashed.
Even Kitely (the subject of this article) has had to reach outside the box for asset storage, and I see them eventually having to do the same thing with their inventory services over time, just like we did. Kitely has had to improve the functionality of mega regions to make them work better for their grid. They put a lot of time and effort into this, and so, to keep someone else from simply throwing that up on EC2 and creating 100 copycats, he has for now kept this work to himself.
I don’t see anything wrong with that. It is exactly what we’ve done, and had to do to survive and scale.
I’m happy he hasn’t had to change core data structures yet to achieve what he’s doing. But the time will come when a module may not be enough, or optimal.
You speak against us working on physics like there is a production ready physics implementation that we could just use. Well, you’re wrong. We had ODE physics enabled, and it was a mess on a busy grid causing countless lockups and crashes in seemingly innocent situations. We turned it off, but guess what our number one cause for region downtime and unrecoverable errors still is? ODE, as it is still used for character movement and collisions. But that will be gone soon enough.
I’m going to work with my staff (current and future) to produce something I can be proud of. It is no threat to opensim, SL, or anyone else. It is simply another way of thinking, and another way of doing. And after 7 months of development, we’re nearly ready for a physics RC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d12IODJrNw
And it’s going to be awesome, regardless if I have to read another “InWorldz at 4: They still suck” article, I will press on and serve my customers the best that I can.
(This is not a post against OpenSim, this is a post against the “follow my way or be ridiculed” mentality. OpenSim developers deserve a ton of respect for what they do, and I hope to be able to show my appreciation in a more direct way when this climate has changed)
Tranquillity
2 Nov 12 at 5:36 pm
I agree with GaGa on the hypergrid stuff, I get a kick out of hypergrid, so I want it!
Plus, I enjoy playing with some of the server stuff as well.
So I’m sticking with either my own grid, or OsGrid for my main stuff for now.
But It is just a toy to me still, not a business in anyway.
I do think the cloud has great potential, and I have some fun stuff I’m playing with on the cloud as well, (testing npcs spawning regions if script parameters are met and such, so those extra regions don’t eat my memory (and play dough) unless an AI or scripted NPC tells them too),
but I’m a Linode cloud fella though not amazon.
(Plus, I’ve been out of the swing of things for a few months of downtime as I partake in RL adventures, but opensim fun will be back soon).
Araxie
2 Nov 12 at 7:06 pm
@Sarge Misfit
i like it. sounds like the old agrument all over again. we dont need any IP — people will fight anyway over nothing.
bristle
2 Nov 12 at 8:05 pm
[...] by the concept that forking off was a bad bad idea, even so recently as in Maria’s comment on Ener’s blog: The other fork is InWorldz. And I’ve said this before a few times — they’re using paid [...]
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