the other day i mentioned how i thought SL peeps are a different breed from pure OpenSim ones

Peyote, Breen, Maria, DreamWalker, Euro, and Bristle all offered up excellent perspectives on this (thank you)

none of it is Earth shattering but it helps frame what virtual worlds are (many things to many people which is many awesome!) =)

OpenSim is a totally different thing for me than Second Life was. i have a very specific outward-facing task i am doing for a use that frames OpenSim as an illustrative tool first – it very much is like using Illustrator to create graphics with the exception that these graphics are 3D and can be experienced by groups

the Reaction Grid team created a concise survey last month and had 96 responses to this exact question of what are people doing in OpenSim

96 is a very small sample size but it does represent some sector of the OpenSim community (they will be mainly Reaction Grid customers since the survey was on their site and a large part of those people are teachers and educators)

their results, and their take on them,  support what many people know/think and may point to the need for a more detailed look at this (well, “need” is a bit strong eh? but it could be interesting)

i think i’ll pull together a Google Doc to look into this issue a bit more deeply (and maybe even with some research methodology applied to the questions!)

i’ll compile questions and place them on the blog for your comments because all of you tend to balance me out and help me shift my pair of dimes (paradigms!) =)

                          

as promised last night, here are my experiences with four OpenSim deployments. with OpenSim, you can be hosted or host it yourself. with a hosted option, you can have your own private grid or be part of a community

no one answer is right for everybody and that is a wonderful reason for moving from Second Life to OpenSim – options

when we first went to OpenSim, subQuark decided on Reaction Grid. Jokay had just been served her Take Down Notice from Linden Lab and went with a grid that has a reputation for being PG with an education and business-focus

our first foray into Reaction Grid was as a private 4 sim grid. subQuark had been a huge moral support to me for my estate in Second Life and often used parcels for his eLearning conferences. now the roles were reversed, i was burned out from the SL land business and wanted nothing more to do with paying for virtual worlds. subQuark continued to believe in the education possibilities of virtual worlds and that he would find a good outlet for his teaching passion. it took a few months but the current vision we are working towards took shape

during this time we moved from being a private grid in Reaction Grid to being a part of their main grid and expanded from 4 sims to 16 sims. being part of their main grid exposed us to more educators

1) with Reaction Grid we tried out the 4 region private grid package called the Mars Mission

• $75 per month (this is the ed discount)
• $220 setup fee (also the ed discount)
• 1 cpu core
• 1 gig RAM (i think)
• 10 megs disk space

2) when we moved to their grid and 16 regions, we added the Nitro-Pack plan:

• $175 a month
• additional one time $150 setup fee
• 2 cpu cores
• 1.5 gig RAM
• 25 megs disk space

due to building issues (lots of building), we then moved on to SimHost. i had suggested SimHost to subQuark initially a year ago (because i am soooo smart). SimHost is run by Adam Frisby and James Stallings II. Adam is one of the core OpenSim developers and James is an administrator on the OSGrid. SimHost donates the server that runs the welcome sim on OSGrid. SimHost has an easy-to-use and no nonsense website. it lays out what you get in a similar fashion to a website hosting company and it gives you more hardware for the money

coming from paying $2,920 a month in tiers to Linden Lab meant that i understood that you get what you pay for (generally speaking). and subQuark’s freelance experience and eLearning work (MOODLE too) also had him in the frame of mind that you pay for quality hosting

so looking at hosted OpenSim at under $200 a month seemed like a bargain, and also very fair, to both of us. subQuark is not looking for a cheap solution, he is looking for a solid and dependable solution

3) with SimHost, we have a private 16 region grid called their Standard Dedicated package

• $189.95 per month (talk to James if you are an educator *wink*)
• $50 setup fee
• 4 cpu cores
• 8 gig RAM
• 500 meg disk space

these are the hosted options we have used, but with OpenSim, you can install your own too

if you are savvy, you could get your own dedicated server from someone like Cari.net and install it yourself (or hire someone to install it). we looked at this option, but could not come close to the price offered by SimHost (it would have cost an extra $100 a month and we would have no support and no James! ener <3 james)

4) installing OpenSim yourself – my experience with this is limited to installing OpenSim on a USB drive. but i must say that it was much easier to install than i thought (using Roger’s awesome instructions for the Diva Distribution). and performance wise, well it is a USB stick! but i could certainly build on it without frustration. in fact, all the builds i have done for subQuark over the last 9 months could have been done on this stick! i have imported the four most heavily built-up regions from our SimHost grid and all the scripts work and i get 50-64 frames per second using the viewer i also installed on the stick! (viewer set to max graphics with 512 metre draw distance and 4x antialias)

if you are a school, university, or not-for-profit that has their own servers, i would highly recommend going this route. the cost would be that incurred by your IT department. from what i see of my two week daily usage of the stick, it needs no maintenance. Crista Lopes has created her Diva Distribution in such a manner that she makes it easy to apply OpenSim version updates (also her 6 easy step install instructions). she is a fantastic, talented, and passionate person about OpenSim and also a core developer

so there you have a snapshot into my experience

my additional perspective (lol, my two cents) – as an educator (i do eLearning stuff part of the time now and taught secondary and college for a few years) and former Second Life person (non-educational use inSL) i heartily recommend SimHost for a hosted solution. if you are looking for other educators to hang out with, then Reaction Grid’s main grid may work for you. but they no longer offer individual sims. in my experience, don’t expect their $75 a month package to act like a Second Life sim. our $175 a month setup was more on par to one Second Life sim and would have been better if left at 4 regions and not 16. i rebooted the server every single time i built and crashed if 4 or 5 people were on with me

learning that a sim in OpenSim is really a region and not the same as an SL sim was major for my happiness in OpenSim

our SimHost package is a dedicated server with 16 instances of OpenSim running on it. roughly speaking, one core and one gig of RAM is about what one Second Life sim is (but remember that inventory, users,  grid, asset, and messaging is not on your RAM inSL, it’s spread out over dedicated servers so it does not impact your sim so much). understanding this then helps me to understand why i had poor performance in Reaction Grid. we had 14,180 prims and 311 scripts running – something an SL sim could easily do. but . . . we also had 4 instances of OpenSim running and 16 regions, all using up that 1.5 gig of RAM. knowing that will help your initial experience

our SimHost settup is double the cores and 5 times the RAM, so of course it runs better (derr) and is roughly the same as 4 SL sims. it runs incredibly well and what you don’t see in looking only at hardware is the support you get. Reaction Grid is very good and Chris Hart knows her stuff and is an OpenSim expert (i do miss her, she was wonderful)

James (SimHost) not only built our server but went beyond with installing Apache for us, and setting up the server to be on our own domain. this is a subtle difference that won’t affect much for most people. it means that the server can also be our website. James also has created custom tools for us, like a nifty in-world OAR generator. James and Adam are 100% into OpenSim and it shows. Reaction Grid seems to be more focused on Jibe now

i know this comes across as a SimHost lovefest and when i was in Reaction Grid i sung their praises (it is the number two most used search term for hits to this blog) but OpenSim, to me, is about community and shared goals to an extent. with James, i know that my glowing reviews of him are well appreciated because he takes the time to mention that in emails – it is a true partnership and it is hard to place a price on that =)

whatever you decide – hosted or self-hosted – it is incumbent upon you to research and evaluate the options that are best for you

my heart goes out to the educators and not-for-profits that had the rug pulled out from under them. you are among a small group of people that are reaching out to others with a wonderfully immersive tool to help teach kids, help people deal with mobility issues, do therapy, and genuinely make the world a better place *crud, here go the water works*

i wish there was an easy path for you and i hope you continue your noble and valiant endeavors – namas te

                          

to those i met in Reaction Grid – thank you for enriching my life

to Phoebe – you are the only person i have ever given my parasol to – thank you for reminding me of the joy of being a kid =)

good luck to the teachers i have met and who have inspired me to look beyond science in my builds

we may be gone from Reaction Grid but we are very much in-world

once everyone gets on the same version of hypergrid, please come visit the ever growing Enclave Harbour and the start of I live in Science Land

namas te

*wipes tears and needs a kleenex!* =)

                          

call me silly, but i have been cleaning up our regions in Reaction Grid this week. it will just all be wiped out on the fourth with probably one command and anyone would see my time as wasted

maybe it’s a spiritual thing (do avatars have spirits?) or an ener-getic thing or just a bonkers thing?

to me it is about treating my things with respect. i can’t just leave my work behind, it is important to me. even though i have an identical copy of all 16 sims on our new private SimHost grid

even the terrain! i had to return it to a more neutral state just to pay homage to my past effort (see, i am bonkers)

fortunately, it does not matter very much if anyone else thinks this is crazy

it’s part of who i am and in a weird way a part of my creativity and persistence. sure, in the few hours i have spent doing this, i could have spent adding to its identical copy on our new grid

or could i?

see, for me it’s part of the same story, the same narrative - my story. if i did not do this, it would affect my new builds. crazy as that sounds

Reaction Grid has been very good to me. i learned so much about OpenSim and am thankful to the Reaction Grid Team. especially Chris and Felix. their caring and attention was evident even as avatars. i am not sure i even met Chris as an avatar, although i did make her a strawberry daiquiri in a coconut shell (ener’s version of a Linden bear). i met Felix and he is a really neat person (good luck in your studies Felix!) =)

cleaning up the sims is like the last paragraph in this chapter. there is still a sentence or two (hint: Dream Walker, get your stuff or it’ll be poofed and same for the Learning Path Nikki – you don’t need to grab it if you don’t want to, just giving you another day or two in case you do)

so as our Reaction Grid estate disappears into the virtual ethers i look forward to it’s continued growth with SimHost

namas te Reaction Grid =)

                          

With Second Life’s Teen Grid closing in December, where does that leave the educational use of virtual worlds?

Adult education can carry on but K-12 may need to change. Certainly those working with students under 16 will need an alternative. Those working with students 16 and older may also want an alternative rather than be tossed into the main grid.

Over the last year, the trend seems to be social use for Second Life and education/business use for OpenSim-based virtual worlds.

Closing the Teen Grid is a clear indicator that education is not a priority for Linden Lab.

One alternative is to abandon virtual worlds entirely. Some educators will do this from lack of time, resources, and/or out of frustration.

Creating a good inworld presence takes a very real commitment. It can also require access to good content.

Not everyone is like our Ener Hax and just makes the commitment to create anything needed. Ener has also developed deep relationships with talented people who contribute to our work in Enclave Harbour*.

Many educators have relied on content available within Second Life which may not be available in OpenSim. Even with equivalent material, such as teaching tools available outside of Second Life, some of these may require reconfiguration and, taken as a whole, moving may simply be too daunting. Some educators will inevitably step away from virtual worlds.

However, many educators will stick with what virtual worlds can do and put in the effort to move. Ener Hax has written many articles on how to move plus the trials and tribulations of moving from Second Life to an OpenSim-based environment.

OpenSim alternatives include (1) installing OpenSim on your own server, (2) contracting a third party to install it for you, (3) having an OpenSim hosting provider create a private grid as a stand alone or hypergrid-enabled grid, or (4) joining an existing grid.

1) Installing OpenSim on your own server gives you the greatest control and the least expense. This assumes that you can do the install or have the IT support to get this done.

Installing OpenSim is within the reach of many and numerous articles are out there on doing this (Hypergrid Business has a current guide which may help you decide if this is a viable option).

Your own installation means you can completely secure your world behind your firewalls. For school districts this seems like a great option.

2) A third party can install OpenSim on your server or on website hosting servers that are suited to running OpenSim. Cari.net is a website hosting company that is heavily used by the OpenSim community. They have dedicated servers allowing root access that run OpenSim very well.

We looked into this and contacted Justin Clark-Casey about installing OpenSim for us on our own box. Justin is one of the core OpenSim developers and is available for hire as are others in the OpenSim community.

3) Another alternative is to use an OpenSim hosting provider. Hypergrid Business maintains an up-to-date hosting directory. Compare not only costs but hardware specs as well.

It turned out to be $100 a month less expensive for us to go with a hosting company than running our own box.

How is that possible? SimHost‘s owners include one of the core developers of OpenSim and an admin of OSGrid and they work closely with Cari.net who helps support the OpenSim initiative.

Going with a hosted solution frees you up to do education. You don’t need to know any of the technical aspects and this is similar to being in Second Life.

While I would like to have the technical know how, I would rather focus on our endeavors. For us, virtual worlds are simply a means to deliver science education content, much like a photograph in a textbook. I do appreciate the expertise that our host has because it allows both of us to concentrate on creating immersive 3D educational activities.

Being hosted offers additional options to consider. Similar to a self-installed version, you can be a private grid with your own registration page, you can be firewalled, or you can be part of an existing grid such as OSGrid or ScienceSim. As a private grid you also have the option to be hypergrid-enabled which would allow you and/or visitors to travel to other hypergrid-enabled regions.

4) Joining an existing grid has benefits and some hosting providers run their own grids, such as Reaction Grid. Reaction Grid has a business and education specific grid which is safe for use by students and allows teachers to network. We were with Reaction Grid for 10 months and they are an excellent option.

It seems that private grids, where you can turn hypergridding on and off, are becoming the preferred choice by both educators and business. OSGrid is somewhat analogous to the internet. You can hop around regions (about 5,000) and hypergrid to private grids. The advantage with OSGrid and a private grid is that you could use OSGrid for your avatar account rather than create accounts for each private grid you visit.

There are many things to consider but there are also many choices. Those choices are growing rapidly.

If you have been thinking of trying OpenSim or are being forced to find an alternative, do your homework, study the offerings, and take the plunge. It certainly can be rough but once done, it is well worth it.

*- Enclave Harbour is a joint venture enjoying the talents of Dream Walker, Nickola Martynov, Micheil Merlin, Ener Hax, and David Miller. Its goal is to serve as a virtual field trip “world” to explore environmental science for middle school students from public, virtual, private, and home schools. To date there are 50 workbook activities developed with additional ones in the works. Expected launch is summer of 2011.

serious builder

Enclave Harbour is hosted by SimHost and runs on a dedicated 64-bit server with 8 gigabytes of RAM, 4 CPU cores, 500 megabyte hard drive, 100 Mbps dedicated port, and 32.4 terrabytes of monthly bandwidth. Our server has been heavily customised beyond the standard install to give us options such as the ability to have 4 GB RAM per sim and additional web interfaces.

This is reposted from David’s blog at subQuark.com.

                          

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

                          

I apologize in advance if anyone’s posted the links below already.

Hate some (or all) of Viewer 2.x?  You’re not alone.

But…  there are some fixes/tweaks available, none of which are difficult!

Here are some links,  should you want more info. Use at your own risk! I’ve done the “StarLight” tweak and find it improves things a bit for me. I’ve not tried the others listed on the wiki page.

• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_2_Tweaks
• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Skins/StarLight_for_2.1_Beta (works fine for me)
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/felineslade/4393320025/

If you LIKE 2.x, or don’t want to hear what I dislike about it… stop reading now.

Like Ener, I’m not a fan of Viewer 2.0 or 2.1.  It’s too dark (even for my Goth blood), and most of the changes and re-wording of old terms (“Local Chat” is now “Nearby”, for example) seem nutso. The pop-up sliding menu dance… awful. The whole sidebar/slide left thing drives me nuts. And the non-transparent widows and changes to chat/IM windows suck. There’s a lot more that I hate. So do many, many others. Granted, some peeps (esp. some noobs I’ve talked to) seem to think that 2.x is just fine. Hmmmm.

Don’t get me wrong. I like NEW. I like EXCITING.  Take me to the mall or an amusement park if you don’t believe me!

I do not, however, like waking up one day to find out that the names of everyday things have been changed, or that my usual direct route to the local S&M shop requires 3 detours, or that someone has posted flyers all over my car’s windshield, obscuring half my view.  It’s like waking up in an alternate universe… one with poorer design than the previous one.  Oh, I was kidding up there… I meant Krispy Kreme shop, not S&M shop ;p

I’ve tried 2.0 and 2.1 for extended periods of time.  It really sucks that so much screen “real estate” gets obscured by the (non-transparent) sidebar and huge menus. It sucks that some of my old keyboard shortcuts are gone, or that I have to go through 3 levels of menus to do what I used to do in 2 clicks. It sucks that basic communication is more difficult (to me), unless I rearrange the default options.

Don’t rename things and make me have to stop and re-learn keystrokes and shortcuts and menus I’ve used hundreds (or thousands) of times. Is that a violation of good rule of design?  “Don’t alienate your existing user base by making changes… unless the change is either necessary, useful, or both.”

In other words, change what needs to change; do not change things that worked quite nicely. Gee, you could at least offer an option to revert to the older menus, like new versions of word-processing apps often do.

Okay, okay, some of those annoyances can be fixed. Kind of.  And the “notification” area in the bottom right is welcome (and long overdue), replacing tons of dialog popups when you first login.  The teleport history is nice as well. And thank goodness I can set the top bar to actually show my (Sim & vector) location… seems pretty dumb to me to not have it there as the default. There is more than one way to accomplish some of the old tasks (hmmm, I’m neutral on that one).

I know, I know, it’s all been said before.  I don’t DESPISE 2.x, but I am not feeling any ♥.  I’ll use it. Someday.  IF I have to.  But so far, it just gives me a headache. One day, after a few more versions, I may actually like it. But for now, it kinda does less.. with more.  *Giggle*

Feel free to post your loves and hates of 2.x. Or just google it and read what others say. Hmmm, you’re probably wishing I’d taken that route!

*sigh*  I miss the pie wheel already. I have a feeling his time in the virtual universe is limited.

By the way… I mostly use Snowglobe. It has some unique stuff not in the old 1.2x viewers. And it doesn’t make me learn to brush my teeth with my non-dominant hand (I can do it.. but I dribble a bit). Oh… and I can also use SnowGlobe as an OpenSim viewer (for Reaction Grid and so forth).

                          

a neat thing about OpenSim is that anyone can use it. many people setup their own grid (like Breen who has encouraged me to try again) and there are many grids from all sorts of groups, companies, and universities

all this variety leads to some lighthearted and fun events. Second Life used to have this “fun” vibe four years ago before it became so corporate. by that i don’t mean corporations but the success that Linden Lab has had and all the money that changes hands everyday has forced them to become more corporate as a business

have you ever worked at a place where people tell you “a few years ago we used to have barbecues every friday and a keg of beer” but now they have dress codes, sexual harassment training, and a general corporate vibe?

when companies are small they can get away with that. but as they grow they get scared of lawsuits, offending people, and no longer trust their employees as friends. that’s the case for some companies anyway and i think that happened to LL a little bit. i mean when you get big enough that the FCC investigates you and congress wonders how they can tax user transactions, then you are in a way different league than a handful of friends sharing a dream to make some money (and sharing some beer!)

but there are many OpenSim grids out there that are very small and can still have some silly fun. Reaction Grid does that by having movie nights and showing some really awful science fiction movies. the type of movies that MST3K used to do and that are so bad you just have to watch them (as you can tell, i love those)

when i fired up Hippo tonight, this was the login screen (below). any knock-off Godzilla movies are for sure great ones to watch! i have never even heard of this movie and how the RG Team found it, who knows!

but it looks like fun and is just an example of some of the open nature that many OpenSim grids have =)

                          

often i get all laggy when anyone visits us in Enclave harbour. i chalked it up to OpenSim being alpha. who knows, it could be a number of factors – me, my broadband connection, the moon and the stars. i often crash and then have a hard time getting back to the sim i was in

but not tonite! i was on working on my diner and Micheil was doing his thing on his sim (it’s best to let the uber creative ones have lots of space) =)

anyway, Micheil IMs me and says we have visitors! first thing i do is get nervous and figure i’ll be crashing soon

but not this time! \o/

my new library scientist friend had brought two colleagues! there were 5 of us in Enclave Harbour and all was going well (i did lose my parasol somehow, but hey! it was great)

i showed them around a bit and they were very gracious

it was a neat experience because they were talking about all the activities they could do!  like writing stories and doing math!

i tend to look at everything from a earth science perspective. i never thought of incorporating math into anything at Enclave Harbour! that just shows how innovative these teachers are, they had me excited about math! that says a lot about them!

the math comments came at the rocket graveyard at a pile of 55 gallon drums – how cool that one avatar could excite me, a zillion miles away irl, about math! that has nothing to do with virtual worlds, that is 100% from a very gifted teacher! how awesome it must be to be a little kid in her class! (yes, i am a geek) =)

virtual worlds, in this case, were just a communication channel. thanks for getting me fired up about making stuff!

i did poop out and have to relog and then could not get to my target sim, but a quick second relog solved it

i was very pleased to have such great performance from our sims

maybe i build alone too often and the universe is trying to tell me something! =)

thank you visiting teachers for inspiring me to do more for science education in virtual worlds and maybe even getting subQuark to toss in some math – why not?

getting geeky about math in the junkyard!

                          

one thing i have learned from being in OpenSim for 8 months now – patience

i reboot the server and restart the sims many times per week and clear my cache, but OpenSim is still alpha software and that’s what alpha means – not stable

while OpenSim is a great alternative to Second Life, it is not there yet and if you are patient, then it can be a rewarding experience. but don’t expect Second Life stability – not yet anyway

waiting for our server to come back online - the zen of ener (zener)

see this diner below? i have been working on it for a few days and yesterday the roof over the car parking was blue. it was still blue this afternoon when i came home for lunch and it was blue until 30 minutes ago

why isn’t it blue anymore? (ener gets blue sometimes though . . .)

i have no idea. i restarted the sims (several times), rebooted the server (a couple of times), cleared my cache, and even used two different viewers

so what’s the dealio?

i chalk it up to OpenSim being alpha. it does not seem that there is an answer for this, it’s just something i have come to accept. it’s no big deal, but it does take lots of patience

there was an entire ring of booths - someone must have needed them more than me =)

                          

ever have lots of “stuff” that you are moving but is a pain to set back up? like all your furnishings in your home? artwork, landscaping, and so on?

not sure if viewer 2.h0 does this

in Second Life, you can group things together and take them into your inventory as a coalesced object. select all your items and “Take”. unfortunately, this does not work in OpenSim, they come in as separate objects (boo)

the resulting object will have an icon like the image (i am not sure what that is in the viewer 2.bl0w). if you need to place them precisely, like paintings on walls, consider rezzing a new prim first and placing it somewhere easy to line up (like in a doorway). then select all the items and select the placement prim last so that it is the root. if you name that placement prim, it will be easier to find in your inventory

for some things, it may make sense to just link them all together. i had a group of trees i needed to move and i rezzed out a placement prim and set it on easy to remember coordinates (like 20, 20, 20). because this was in OpenSim, it did not matter how far apart the trees were as long as they were all on the same sim. i linked them, drug them over into the adjoining sim, did my work, drug them back into the sim, and then simply used the edit panel and entered in the coordinates and presto! the trees went back to where they were originally

i like tips that make life, both virtual and real, a bit easier and i hope this is helpful =)

such a moving experience

artwork linked - exported from SL & imported into Reaction Grid

                          

as you may know, my move from Second Life to OpenSim was more than just going to another world. it was also a shift in what i am doing in virtual worlds

that’s an important consideration if you are also looking for additional worlds, or an alternative, to Second Life. with the ability to export your creations, it makes sense to get a foothold in up-and-coming virtual worlds, especially if you enjoy selling your creations. content in OpenSim worlds tripled in the last year and growth is increasing. several factors at work include OpenSim getting less buggy, it can be much less expensive, more freedom in terms of service, less wacky policies, more hosted options available, et cetera

in Second Life, i started out doing projects for a few companies, schools, and small groups. soon it seemed that owning a sim made sense with what i was paying out in tiers to a private estate owner. then my OCD self kicked in and the iliveisl estate was born and grandiose plans of having 52 sims in “phase 1″.  so i was firmly in the estate biz and loved it. i loved all the people i met, seeing what they did with their land (i am so weird that i would never set foot on anyone’s land unless i was invited). in second life, it was all about selling land and being of service to my residents

but now in Reaction Grid‘s OpenSim world i am strictly a builder. my best friends from sl came over with me and i am really fortunate to have a few really great friends that are like rl family to me. maybe better than family because i can trust them so much o_O

it’s quite different doing just building than doing land sales. most of the time i am all alone which i like for building. Dream Walker is awesome to work with because we can work for hours and never say anything to each other. it may sound weird, but there is a lot of respect between us, and i draw a certain amount of confidence from her, even in silence (ener <– low self-esteem, blah, blah, blah)

that is one reason OpenSim works so well for me, i am not expecting a very social experience and i am not doing any shopping. there are many sims in the OSGrid that do have substantial shopping (119 listings) and you can see those listed at Hyperica if so inclined

if you can match your expectations and needs closely, then you will find the right virtual world supplement or alternative

for me, making environmental science builds is really rewarding. and so is the ability for kids to come see them

we have had a brother and siater building in our sandbox over the last week. he is 14 and she is close to him in age. i met their father last week who teaches hebrew and who was looking for an alternative to Second Life to teach in-world in an outreach capacity. he felt comfortable enough with Reaction Grid’s PG stance and in what i said (and in me) to allow his kids to come build

it is really awesome to see kids in OpenSim – they learn soooo quickly. i was trying to explain how to edit the position of a parrot to the girl and approaching it like i did in Second Life as a Mentor. pffft! by the time i rezzed an attached a box prim to my shoulder to explain it, she had already done it! i was expecting a few minutes!

i was so impressed with her that i gave her a copy of my prized parasol! (the one big thing that i cherish as a part of my virtual identity)

back to environmental science. it’s a great match for me because i have education in that and taught it at both secondary school and college levels. now i don’t have the experience that subQuark has with years at middle and high school level and then seven years at the college level, but we are on the same wavelength. so we feed off each other with ideas. i’ll come up with something that he may not have thought of and he will do the same (like his post on solar powered zeppelins) =)

so what are “we” building?

here is a list with mostly finished stuff in normal font and stuff yet to be built in italics. all these items are for virtual field trips that will go along with a workbook full of science trivia and exercises

Solar Energy

• solar farm – solar panels that update every five minutes to the sun’s position scripted by Dream Walker
• solar panels on the almost done cargo zeppelin
• home solar panels in Enerville
• solar cells on the city streetlights

Wind Energy

• offshore stationary wind turbines
• offshore floating wind turbines (in real life, this is only prototyped so far)
• mini home wind turbines in Enerville

Water Energy

• hydroelectric dam
• tidal power
• instream current turbines (submersed turbines harnessing river flow)
• potential energy versus kinetic energy

Geothermal Energy

• geothermal well in Enerville
• geothermal wells for city of Enclave Harbour

Conservation (these address the balance of human activity with conservation areas)

• coastal conservation areas
• forest conservation areas
• open water conservation areas
• enforcement (even discusses the origin of the paint gun)

Clean Water Awareness program

• municipal responsibilities with drinking water
• bottled water issues (bioplastic alternatives)
• bulk water (as in water coolers and pitchered water & real glasses for hotels & meetings, rather than individual bottles or paper cups)
• wastewater treatment facility
• ground water (city wells, personal wells, aquifers, artesian wells, desalination)

Hydrocarbon Energy

• oil platform (hot topic & also pointing out that we need oil for much more than petrol & diesel)

Nuclear Energy

• small nuclear plant (even has OSHA violations as a discussion point)

Transportation

• cars
• boats
• planes (trivia like contrails – condensation trails and their effect on climate because they increase albedo)
• light rail
• zeppelin =)

Architecture

• energy efficient homes (like capturing lower winter sun into masonry materials & shading in summer with deciduous plants)
• city skylines (how winds are generated by buildings plus affect of wind on tall buildings – our twin twoer is only one metre taller than the current world’s tallest building)
• noise pollution
• light pollution
• public spaces
• open architecture (embracing your climate with harmonious designs – working with nature, not in opposition)

Weather

• weather station with monitoring equipment
• land & sea breezes (how they transport airborne particulates)
• acid rain
• paleoclimatic studies (ice coring of a glacier to measure trapped gases via mass spectroscopy)
• ozone layer & greenhouse gases
• the water cycle (my fave thing)

lol, that’s all i can remember at the moment! i know i am missing some topics and this very different than being an estate manager

if you take your time and define what you like to do in virtual worlds, then explore the options (like in the OpenSim hosting directory) then you will find something that works great for you

heck, you might even install your own OpenSim and start your own world! in any case, have fun and live your virtual life to the fullest! namaste  =)

                          

just a build for a classroom space to seat 18. easy access by flying or have fun with the uber tight, nearly-impossible-to-cam spiral ramp (mouselook works well)

since Enclave Harbour is all about environmental science (with plenty of earth, physical, and life science sprinkled in) why not have an  ”Organic” classroom?

six neutrons, six protons, and 6 electrons (1s2, 2s2, and 2p2*) with an atomic mass of 12 make the base for all that we know of as organic. so what could be more fitting?

a very simple and organic (derr) build! =p

open to anyone teaching or holding a meeting (water coolers to be installed soon) =)

hope a giant golfer doesn't walk by

and hope the orbiting electrons aren't too much a distraction

ener <— bs in physical science, ma in geoscience – hook ‘em horns! (bs is about the truth of it too!) =D

                          

A few months ago, I began work on a LSL script to assist in building a path that a scripted object could follow. I already had a script that could move a physical object around a path but didn’t have a way to assist in generating the actual path for OpenSim. I quickly determined that physical movement was going to be a problem, so adapted my path follower script to do non-physical movement. Go see Adventures in OpenSim: The Submarine for a recap of the little physical adventure.

Both scripts progressed fairly easily, but as I continued to test, I encountered occasions where the rotations generated by llRotBetween, just weren’t right. They’d be 180 degrees off. The object would end up facing the wrong direction. I had other occasions where objects rotated upside down or turned 90 degrees in the wrong direction. These last two cases turned out to be slight positioning errors due to some rounding anomalies in the movement calculations. I encountered all of these issues together and it took a bit to untangle them.

That's just wrong

Things were further complicated in that I’d take the movement script to Second Life and it would work just fine. At least it did after I took care of a divide by zero error that I wasn’t aware was happening in OpenSim. I’d still been assuming that the problem was in my script up to that point.

So, back to OpenSim.

Having decided that the OpenSim code wasn’t doing something correctly, I began to look around at algorithms for calculating the angle between two vectors, thinking that I would just make my own adaptation of llRotBetween. All of the algorithms were basically derivations of each other. They just went about the calculations in different ways. Using a dot product, cross product, arccosine, sine, cosine or some of all of these. In some I found information regarding degenerate cases when the angle approached 0 or 180 degrees.

hmmm

I believe the degenerate cases applied to all of the algorithms, but surprisingly few of them mentioned these issues directly.

The degenerate cases occur when the dot product of the two normalized vectors is -1 (meaning an angle of 180 degrees) or when the dot product is 1 (meaning an angle of 0 degrees). What this means in simpler terms is that when the angle approaches 0 or 180 degrees, the simple algorithm does not produce correct results and some additional steps have to be added that check for these conditions.

Since OpenSim is open source, you can go look at the code. Figuring out where to look is a different story. I downloaded the entire source code distribution and searched for llRotBetween. By this time I’m thinking that it might be possible to submit a patch to OpenSim for this issue.

The OpenSim website contains links to information to assist in compiling the code and standards to follow for submitting patches.

Did you know that Windows 7 search is mostly broken? At least it seems to be mostly broken for me and Google finds many other people that think it’s broken. I had often used the search function in Windows XP to find files that contained certain text strings. Slow, but it worked. Windows 7 tries to speed that up by building search indexes. They just don’t see to be reliable. But that’s another story.

Anyway, luckily, the code that supports llRotBetween is actually called llRotBetween. And on one of those rare occasions that Windows 7 search worked for me, I found it in one of the modules that contains many of the implemented LSL functions. Windows 7 search couldn’t find it the next day after I forgot which directory it was in, so I went poking around for the module manually.

I found that there was no special handling of these 180 and 0 degree rotations in the code. This is likely because the original author first found those algorithms that did not make note of these special cases, so the original author didn’t know about these special cases.

Satisfied that I wasn’t way off in left field, I next decided to create the subroutine using LSL. This would allow me to work out the code easier and also produce a work around that I could use in the meantime.

I also encountered a problem with llVecNorm. The existing OpenSim implementation will return NaN values (Not A Number) while LSL in Second Life returns a ZERO_VECTOR. The NaN values occur because of division by zero. The calculation in the code is actually correct, but sort of messy to deal with if you want to know the NaN values were returned. And you will only get the NaN values if the vector is a ZERO_VECTOR to begin with. So, if you try to normalize a ZERO_VECTOR, it seems to me like you should just get a ZERO_VECTOR back, just like you get with LSL in Second Life.

So, I submitted that simple llVecNorm patch (OpenSim Mantis 4752) first just to learn the process. But, I guess it wasn’t interesting enough to anyone to pick up and apply as no-one has touched it yet.

Moving on to llRotBetween. The llRotBetween patch (OpenSim Mantis 4784) has also been submitted and was just recently picked up by a core developer, so hopefully is on the way to making it into your local OpenSim. Don’t get too excited though (as I’m sure you are…lol) as being in the development version of OpenSim, it may take a long time before it shows up in your local OpenSim.

The current release of OpenSim is 0.6.9 and I assume this patch will be in 0.7.x.

To find the OpenSim release for your region, go to the “Help” drop down menu on your viewer, then select the “About” option. The information box that opens, should give you the release information for the viewer you are using followed by the release information for the server version of your region, then some information about your own PC.

So, What you gonna do?

Well, you can use the RotBetween function I wrote in LSL.

If you’re worried about performance of an LSL script compared to a fucntion provided by LSL, you don’t really have to. I tested the script version against several OpenSim levels (including one I patched) and Second Life itself. The script function does run 1.5 to 2 times the elapsed time of the built-in function. But it takes thousands of executions in any environment to accumulate a second of elapsed time. So, the impact on efficiency can likely be ignored.

I’m providing the RotBetween function along with some example code that can be inserted into your script. In short, this example code will test for the bug and set a flag that will cause RotBetween function to be called if the bug exists, instead of the built-in llRotBetween function.

All of the example script should be copied into your code with the exception of the default state. The only section of code in the default state that you really need is the contents of state_entry.

Also as noted in the comments, change all occurrences of llRotBetween to XXRotBetween, in your original code. Of course you don’t want to inadvertently change the llRotBetween in the supplied XXRotBetween function or you could cause a loop if the bug is not detected.  XXRotBetween would endlessly call itself and what good would that do?

The example code will check for the llRotBetween bug once when it is reset and then use either the built-in llRotBetween function or the substitute RotBetween function as necessary. The supplied XXRotBetween function is where this decision is made based on the flag set by the test that is conducted in state_entry.

Since the test for the bug only occurs when the script is reset, you could be using the substitute code even after the bug was gone. But you can reset the script at any time and it will check for the bug again. I didn’t want to perform this bug check every time because it just seems so redundant, but that’s up to you and what you want your code to do.

The example works in both Second Life or OpenSim. The bug does not exist in Second Life so the example script will not use the substitute RotBetween function in Second Life (unless you force it to). This structure allows you to use the same script between Second Life and OpenSim without change, even though the substitute function should not actually get called in Second Life.

And now, here is the code…

// llRotBetween Override Example
//
// Example of how to override the llRotBetween code to bypass an OpenSim bug.
//
// The bug has been opened under OpenSim Mantis 4784.
//
// Change all occurances of llRotBetween in your original script to XXRotBetween, so the
// llRotBetween call can be intercepted if necessary.
//
// Copy the appropriate portions of this code into your script. Basically, you need the global
// definition for the gRotBetweenBug flag, the XXRotBetween subroutine, the RotBetween subroutine
// and the bug detection code in state_entry.  The touch event is just for testing so may not be
/// appropriate.
//
// The one llRotBetween call you don't want to change is the one inside the XXRotBetween
// subroutine.  That llRotBetween call will be used by the script if the bug is not detected. so
// this code can be left inside your original script and will use the llRotBetween call or the
// internal subroutine, whichever is appropriate.
//
// This example only detects the bug at default state_entry so the script would need to be reset
// to check for the bug again.
//
// Micheil Merlin - 04/29/2010
// Updated - 07/02/2010

// Copy all of this section to your script.
// Copy from here   |
//                  |
//                  \/
integer gRotBetweenBug = FALSE;                     // llRotBetween bug.

// Intercept to handle potential llRotBetween bug.
rotation XXRotBetween(vector a, vector b)
{
    rotation between;                               // Rotation between vectors.
    // Handle opensim llRotBetween bug.
    if (!gRotBetweenBug)
    {
        between = llRotBetween(a, b);               // Call standard lsl llRotBetween function.
    }
    else
    {
        between = RotBetween(a, b);                 // Call internal RotBetween fucntion.
    }
    return between;
}

// Replacement internal subroutine to perform the llRotBetween function.
// Micheil Merlin - 4/29/2010
rotation RotBetween(vector a, vector b)
{
    float dot;                                      // Dot product.
    vector axis;                                    // Cross product.
    vector orthogonal;                              // Orthogonal vector for degenerate case.
    float qs;                                       // Quaternion s value.
    rotation between;                               // Calculated rotation.
    float mag;                                      // Magnitude for quaternion normalization.
    // Check for zero vectors. If either is zero, vector normalization will create undefined
    // values so just set the answer to zero rotation.
    if (a == ZERO_VECTOR || b == ZERO_VECTOR)
    {
        between = ZERO_ROTATION;
    }
    // Otherwise continue with rotation calculation.
    else
    {
        a = llVecNorm(a);                           // Normalize vector a.
        b = llVecNorm(b);                           // Normalize vector b.
        dot = a * b;                                // Get the dot product between vectors.
        // There are two degenerate cases possible.  These are for vectors 180 or
        // 0 degrees apart. These have to be detected and handled individually.
        //
        // Check for vectors 180 degrees apart.
        // A dot product of -1 would mean the angle between vectors is 180 degrees.
        if (dot < -0.9999999)
        {
            // First assume X axis is orthogonal to the vectors.
            orthogonal = <1.0, 0.0, 0.0>;
            orthogonal = orthogonal - (a * (a.x / (a * a)));
            mag = llVecMag(orthogonal);             // Get orthogonal magnitude.
            // Validate vector is not near 0. Near 0 vectors can create unanticipated
            // rotations.
            if (mag > 0.0001)                       // Validate vector is not near 0.
            {
                // Create normalized rotation from orthogonal.
                between = <orthogonal.x/mag, orthogonal.y/mag, orthogonal.z/mag, 0.0>;
            }
            // If not X, then use Z axis.
            else
            {
                between = <0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0>;     // Set 180 z rotation.
            }
        }
        // Check for parallel vectors.
        // A dot product of 1 would mean the angle between vectors is 0 degrees.
        else if (dot > 0.9999999)
        {
            between = ZERO_ROTATION;
        }
        else
        {
            axis = a % b;                           // Get the axis of rotation.
            qs = 1.0 + dot;                         // Quat S value = length unit vec + dot product.
            // Calcuate the magnitude of the rotation.
            mag = llSqrt((axis.x * axis.x) + (axis.y * axis.y) + (axis.z * axis.z) + (qs * qs));
            between = <axis.x/mag, axis.y/mag, axis.z/mag, qs/mag>; // Normalize rotation.
        }
    }
    return between;                                 // Return the rotation.
}
//              /\
//              |
// To here _____|

default
{
    // Copy the contents of this state_entry to the appropriate location in your script. This
    // is the detection of the bug and the setting of the flag that XXRotBetween will look
    // at to decide whether or not to call the RotBetween function.
    state_entry()
    {
        // Check for llRotBetween bug related to 180 and 0 degree rotations.
        if (llRotBetween(<1.0, 0.0, 0.0>, <-1.0, 0.0, 0.0>) == <0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0>)
        {
            // This message is just an indictor to the owner regarding the dectection of
            // the bug. Modify or remove as desired.
            llOwnerSay("Detected llRotBetween bug. Compensating.");
            gRotBetweenBug = TRUE;                  // Indicate bug present.
        }
    }

    on_rez(integer num)
    {
        llResetScript();                            // Reset script on rez.
    }

    // The touch event is for testing. This event would not be copied into the script.
    touch_start(integer num)
    {
        rotation rot;
        rot = XXRotBetween(<1.0, 0.0, 0.0>, <-6.0, 0.0, 0.0>);
        llOwnerSay("Rotation =" + (string)rot);
    }
}

The Tools I Used to Create the Patches

OpenSim can be compiled on Linux or Windows.

Justin Clark-Casey points out that there are a couple of conditions under which you will have to use the 32-bit launcher to run OpenSim on a 64-bit system. If you are using a 64-bit OS and the supplied ODE physics engine or the SQLite database, you will need to use the OpenSim.32bitLaunch.exe executable instead of the OpenSim.exe executable.

If you don’t use ODE or SQLite, then OpenSim should run in 64-bit mode and you can use the OpenSim.exe executable on either a 64-bit or 32-bit OS.

I use Windows 7 64-bit with Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express and TortoiseSVN.

TortoiseSVN is developed under the GPL so it is completely free to download and use. TortoiseSVN is the tool that can be used with Windows to interface with the OpenSim source code repository. It will enable you to download the most recent development level of the source code and generate patches from changes you make to the code

The Express version of Visual C# is also free although you have to register for a key. Be sure to use C# as opposed to C++.

I set the solution platform to x86 in Visual C# 2010 Express. For me it was defaulting to Itanium.

Yuck on Itanium

And to start OpenSim, I have to use the OpenSim.32bitLaunch.exe executable as opposed to the OpenSim.exe executable, because I’m also using the ODE physics engine.

The OpenSim Dev Home page has a great deal of documentation to assist in building OpenSim from source with information on selecting different database options, using Windows or Linux, etc.

If you want a quick and easy start to just running OpenSim standalone on your own system and aren’t ready to compile from source yet, go check out the Diva Distribution from Diva Castro.

                          

hmm, we have always used blip.tv but youtube seems fine too (both are pretty compressed looking)

it’s the same video, but now you have a choice! =) have fun in-world!

                          

it’s like christmas! only it’s june and i am jewish, but . . .  =p

today Reaction Grid installed the latest OpenSim build (0.6.9) and where i was having issues with my inventory, now as soon as i open it, all my stuff is already loaded. i don’t need to open the folders to force a load or TP to another sim. yeah, yeah, yeah, i know you don’t have that issue in second life. but this is not second life! (it’s better, imo, but i’ll resist my urge to ramble on) =)

frame rates seem a tad higher too. yesterday on the old OpenSim i was getting 32 fps and standing in the same spot tonight, i get 37 fps. yeah, yeah, yeah, this for sure is not second life! did i mention that i have antialias set to 4x and all sliders maxed and renderfarclip to 2048 metres? this for sure is not second life! =)

this OpenSim version gives us the ability to backup and save out your inventory! no need for second inventory (now some other name)

being able to save out complete sims plus your inventory means true 100% control over anything you create. that’s freedom we really love (gee, it’s like the OpenSim people love freedom? cool) ;)

i also then updated to the latest Imprudence viewer (not on the SL list – but will be re-listed once a Linden can manually test it and with the drastic staff reduction, that is taking longer than normal – go figure) =p

and it works really well, especially the advanced building options. talk about granular controls! you can set the number of decimal places and go to a hollow of 0.99 and on the torus you can set a hole size of 0.1!

in second life, the smallest torus hole size of 0.5 seems fine because you can only build to 10 metres compared to the 256 metres with OpenSim – then it makes a huge difference on the torus hole size (ener <– loves to build and have more freedom and has a hollow head) =D

and it has shadows! they hardly impact my performance (it does take more video card for sure)

thank you OpenSim coders for nice improvements and increased functionality, thank you Ninja Chris for making sure nothing was compromised in the update, and thank you Imprudence peeps for making an outstanding viewer

it’s amazing what happens when quality and users are your central tenet and not money, money, money =)

advanced build options in Imprudence

Imprudence loved by builders =)

i have never seen my shadow before! neato burrito!

                          

i grabbed everything i made in Second Life and exported it all with Meerkat (no longer an approved SL viewer) back in march. i used both Meerkat and Imprudence to import the builds into Reaction Grid’s opensim. Imprudence was more stable and it looks like the meerkat peeps stopped work on theirs. Imprudence just released a new version today (and it is also not supported by SL, but who cares, it works great for Enclave Harbour) =)

some builds i imported were made up of 100′s of prims and sometimes the complex ones (like 50 art photos in their frames arranged for the Enaxia Art Gallery) would blow apart as i drug them around. i am so retentive and things have to be placed on exact numbers or i lose sleep! =p

seeing as it is so easy to import builds and textures, i would just delete the mess i made and re-import. BUT . . . when you do that, textures get re-imported into your inventory as well! =/

i was so obsessed with making sure i had everything that i never bothered to look at my inventory until i was called out last week by a certain smarty pants. this person, let’s call them “hai berry” (doh!), implied that having an inventory of 2300 hundred things seemed small for a supposed seasoned builder!

thankfully, my ego kicked in and said “oh yeah“? X)

MacGiver could build an nuclear sub out of a pencil, an empty kleenex box, and the glow in the dark stuff from an old watch!

so i looked at all these zillion textures i had and started to check them out. first off, when you import a build and its textures, they just come in with UUID numbers so that means nada to me (i thought UUIDs were some old school birth control, what do i know?) =D

not only did i have the same UUIDs several times, but also some that were sequenced with an extra number. as i went through them, i renamed them so they would make sense to me (anything using dupped and deleted textures will need to have the new named one applied if you ever decide to edit/add on to that particular build). you don’t lose the textures from any builds, but the textures won’t be in your inventory if you deleted them. opensim has no way of matching them up (as far as i know)

so just in mainly cleaning up the textures (there were some other things just named “primitive” that i just deleted without looking at), my inventory went from 2300 to 862! o_O

                          

i hope i come across as just an avatar plodding through virtual worlds trying to find a place to be creative and happy. if i come across snobby or ever as better-than-you, well, i am french canadian =p

in the pretty crappy movie Vertical Limit, Izabella Scorupco plays a french-canadian climber with an attitude. in one scene someone says about her:

Don’t mind her. She’s French-Canadian. Some days she’s Canadian. Can be quite pleasant. Today she’s obviously French.

maybe that applies to me too (and probably all poutine-luvin’  frogs) but, Prim Perfect did an interview with me and tada! =)

thank you Prim Perfect, and Saffia for taking the time personally to do this, it was an honour to speak with you (your online magazine is extremely well done!)

clickie to go read it =)

                          

10,800 word Ener

they say a picture paints a thousand words and if you want to paint that picture with a second life snapshot, you have to read 10,800 words

that’s how long the current TOS is and that does not include the 2,500 word XStreetSOL TOS

10,800 words – who says size does not matter?

did you read them all? i have not for sure but we all agreed to them when we set up accounts. sure, second life is very complicated, deals with money, is international, blah, blah, blah

so what? i dunno =p

all i know is that, to me, the wordier something is, the more ways “they” are likely to be able to mess with me

ever buy a house? holy cow, talk about fine print! all of it geared to protect “them” and leave you with the minimal rights mandated by law

with all the talk about those last second life TOS changes i decided to look at other immersive community type things where you can create content

blogging is immersive and communal, you typically can have conversations via commenting, flickr is collaborative and has groups and all its content is user generated, facebook is way larger than second life, and world of warcraft is a far bigger cash cow than sl

how do they stack up? certainly facepoo with all it’s latest scrutiny must have beefed up their TOS, right?

• facebook – 3,700
• world of warcraft – 4,700
• Flickr – 5,600
• worspress.com – 2,900
• second life – 10,800

269 word Ener

dang! second life wins the prize for wordsmithing!

oh by the way, here is another thing that i love about being in Reaction Grid, their TOS is actually written in normal English and to the point

reaction grid – 269

i think i will submit Reaction Grid’s TOS to the award nominations at the Center for Plain English!

ps – if any reaction grid big shots read this, what does the upcoming “economy system” mentioned in your TOS  look like? that’s the kind of thing that will attract second life refugees at this very moment

                          

subQuark hooked up with Reaction Grid in November and i was done with the iliveisl estate at the end of february. so while i started exploring OpenSim, i was still deeply entrenched in Second Life. in some ways, i think it may have been easier to stop one then start the other. either way, making the change was tough

the only frame of reference i had for virtual worlds was Second Life. so not having groups screwed with me (it still does, they are extremely useful in collaborative builds) and one of the huge stumbling blocks was virtual currency. there is no virtual currency in Reaction Grid or many other OpenSim deployments. i thought this was truly hampering explosive growth in second life alternatives. and for many people, this keeps them from jumping in

but . . . a few days ago, i was looking at Inworldz and saw that they have in-world money. “cool” i thought

until i came to my senses, put down the second life yardstick and stepped back and looked at what virtual worlds can be, not what Linden Lab defined them to be

i do several freelance web things a year – maybe setting up a blog for someone, making a website, creating some custom eLearning, making logos and paper collateral (like stationary, business cards, envelopes), and so on

and for those projects – 90% of them are done using PayPal. that has worked for me from before PayPal was owned by eBay. i even did work in Second Life for eBay and they paid me via PayPal!

so why would i think virtual worlds need virtual currency? and the big suck on Linden dollars is that for some reason, all common sense flies out the window when it comes to selling stuff in-world. in the real world, as a freelancer, you would never do work for like a dollar an hour! so why do we do that in Second Life?

and why would we pay a company to exchange real money into a fake money and pay them to exchange that back into real money? when i owned sims, Linden not only made money off of my tiers, but off of converting money. so a sim is not really $295. especially if you factor the exchange for the resident paying me in Lindens when they bought their Lindens

if i went to Best Buy and could only buy stuff with Best Buy Bucks AND had to pay 3.5% to convert my real money into Best Buy Bucks, then if i had an excess of Best Buy Bucks had to pay again to convert them out and they controlled the value of those Best Buy Bucks – well Best Buy would not last long in my books (bye bye Best Buy) =)

i buy stuff online, pay my bills online, get paid online, so why wouldn’t i just do the same for an online dealio like a virtual world? it doesn’t matter if i am buying USD stuff with canadian dollars, the credit card company and PayPal take care of that stuff and the exchange rates. heck, i bought a pair 6 gauge pinchers in australian dollars the other day (the PayPal bill had the amount printed upside down – i kid!) =D

PaylPal micropayments are perfect for online use (and there is an OpenSim module that does something via PayPal in-world) and it would be as convenient as in-world money (more so, no going and buying Lindens) AND it might also make people value their work more

so what i thought was a negative in Reaction Grid turns out to just be the brainwashing i had from Linden Lab – i’m going back to valuing real money and holding on to what’s mine, i don’t need some virtual “bank” doing me any favours  =)

just my canadian beaver nickel’s worth

hands off the Royal beaver =p