Kitely’s new pricing plus multi-region grids in the near future at i live in science land

Kitely’s new pricing plus multi-region grids in the near future

only one thing stands between Enclave Harbour being on Kitely – multi-region grids

that may change soon and when it does, we will be trying it out as a viable option for Enclave Harbour

that does not mean we would not continue to host our own grid – there are many advantages to that, including no one else’s terms of service and 100% control of our uptime and reputation

Kitely has a great reputation and i don’t see that getting sullied, but when it comes to a service that is geared toward middle school kids, we have to accept full responsibility for what goes on or what is perceived to go on (perception is just as important as reality)

however . . . with Kitely’s new pricing of a dollar per region per month, our base cost with Kitely would be only 10% of what it costs us to have our own server

plus Kitely would then take care of account and inventory overhead for visiting avatars – a very attractive option. Kitely also allows you to set up lists in Twitter for who is allowed to reach your regions – a very nice account control feature

Kitely’s new pricing also allows for visitors to pay to access your world

written by Ener Hax

July 17th, 2012 at 3:23 pm

posted in OpenSim

tagged with kitely

Thank you Ener :-)

We look forward to having Enclave Harbour be made available on Kitely.

We already begun working on adding the option to host multi-region worlds for our next site update. If everything goes smoothly it won’t be too long before we can enable you to upload your entire 16-region build into the Kitely grid.

Ilan Tochner

17 Jul 12 at 3:38 pm

Tiny correction — not multi-region grids, but multi-region islands.

All Kitely “worlds” as they call them are just islands on the same grid. People can teleport between them (if they have access permissions).

I do wish they’d change that name. “World” is typically used synonymously with “grid”. Changing this to “island” would make a little bit more sense.

The only potential security issue for kids is that they can teleport off your island to some other Kitely island. There are maturity ratings in place, but some schools don’t want their kids to be able to travel around and talk to strangers.

This is where a privately-hosted OpenSim grid makes a lot of sense. Yes, kids can still create new accounts on other grids, but the process isn’t simple or obvious (and, hopefully, teachers or parents are monitoring what kids are doing online, anyway). With Kitely, however, the list of public worlds is right there on the Kitely site, just a click away, and kids can easily trade landmarks, etc…

With OpenSim and kids, you just have hypergrid turned off (or, per the latest version of OpenSim, have hypergrid access limited to just the teachers), and the kids can’t go anywhere and potentially see dirty stuff or talk to strangers.

On the other hand, have you been following their performance testing? I was on a 100,000-prim region recently with Ilan and the region creator, and it was fine. Lawrence Pierce put up another 100,000-prim regions for visitors to check out, too: http://www.kitely.com/virtualworld/Lawrence-Pierce/Serenity-Island-Prim-Capability-Test-2

I loved reading the description of everything Pierce has packed in there. (Baloon ride! Undersea observatory! Mars simulation! Museums! Freebies! Spaceship!)

Maria Korolov

17 Jul 12 at 3:48 pm

multi-region grid is meaningful to me and means multiple regions making up a grid with a grid being a standalone silo – it can be connected via hypergrid but there would be no connecting regions to it (so not like Second Life – i don’t want people to be able to see in from a neighbouring sim of vice versa)

i don’t know if my definition jives with Kitely’s

in other words, i need to duplicate what i have now – 16 regions allowing for movement between regions and visibility from one to another BUT no connection with other grids unless enabled via hypergrid or remote TP (no open TP)

if Twitter lists can control access then, that would work for me

i don’t care if the world map shows other regions as long as students can’t TP out of mine. that may be a challenge and i have not yet defined this in terms of Kitely

thanks for the insight Ilan and thanks for bringing up access Maria, i have a lot to think about and discuss with subQ

lol, when i get my requirements squared away, i’ll do it as a blog post! =)

Ener Hax

17 Jul 12 at 4:09 pm

Hi Maria,

The reason we call them worlds and not islands is because they will eventually provide you with the same type of access controls you can get with having your own grid. Think of it like having a virtual private grid where you can control not only who can enter your worlds but also which of “your users” can teleport to worlds outside that virtual grid.

The fact that all Kitely worlds are located on the same OpenSim grid makes it technically easier to move between all Kitely worlds but doesn’t really prevent us from eventually offering people the main benefits they’d get with having their own grid as well.

All in due time… :-)

17 Jul 12 at 4:15 pm

that sounds exactly like what we need! thanks Ilan! =)

17 Jul 12 at 5:19 pm

The Kitely terminology is fine with me.
I find referring to regions as islands a bit confusing.