Metaverse Traveller

Second Life Residents Vote to Ban None-Mesh Viewers

2012-01-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

New World Notes Survey on Improving Second Life produces shock result in which 30.6% of the 245 respondents voted to Declare that all viewers must be Mesh capable within 3 months, or wont be able to log into Second Life any more. 18.4% also voted to Suspend/delist any market place listings of merchants that have not logged in for a month.

Far from improving Second Life this survey has given vent to those who would ban any one that refuses to conform to the dictates of a vocal minority which begs the question; How is this meant to improve Second Life if a whole bunch paying residents who don't readily share the enthusiasm for mesh are going to be thrown out?

Seems to me the people who want to impose Mesh viewers on the rest are putting profit before common sense. Fact is Mesh has kind of landed in SL like a damp squid and it has not exactly caught the imagination of the vast majority. Even content creators who would like to make mesh clothing have had to crowd fund a deformer so clothes move with the body. Mesh is incomplete but there are those in SL that want to impose it on the rest on pain of banning. Well, I know how I feel about that. If I am forced into something I don't want to do then be sure I will close my sims and take my money elsewhere. You see, I am not in SL for profit. For me it is just a role play hobby and the 3D world adds a little realism to the game but it's no substitute for a vivid imagination and well worded RP scene. Most people are not in SL for profit either. Most just want to escape, some to pursue their gaming ideas and dreams, and the rest just having a bit of fun. So okay, if I am forced out because I wont conform to this dictatorship then I can at least take over a $1000 a month out of SL with the click of a button. In addition there is the lost business from content sales that I generate from my market, out of which other merchants have been benefiting too. And that is not to mention the value of a popular role play game I run for free that will close.

I would, of course, regret pulling the plug on a game I know people enjoy and I would miss it too. Many long hours of work and thousands of dollars gone into it is not something to part will lightly, and this is it really. Linden Labs has got people over a barrel because we can't take what we own out of it unless we made it and have full perms. This is how we get held to ransom but, I for one, would not yield to it. Second Life is not essential. It's a past time and a luxury.

SL wont miss me but if a vocal bunch of dictators drive others out too then SL will decline even faster than it is already. Remember, the metrics show growth is flat and people are leaving as fast as they are joining. The NWN Survey is supposed to be about improving SL but is worded in such a way that it asks people to vote on blocking entry for a whole section of the community for one reason or another. If that's the way they want it then so be it. Opensim grids will benefit for sure.

NWN article here

Open Metaverse: Looking Back to the Future!

2012-01-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

So this is 2012 and, before I launch into looking back at what I got right and wrong with my 2011 predictions last January, I have to mention some good news for Mesh fanatics desperate to see their beautiful mesh clothing move with the same grace as their pixelated bodies. I wrote about a crowd funded project back in October which was my last post for several months due to heavy commitments elsewhere. Anyway, the project was organized by Second Life residents who where frustrated by Linden Labs tunnel vision and lack of action. They raised money to pay a bounty to Karl Stiefvater, better known as Qarl Linden from his days at the Lab, to develop a parametric deformer, which will cause mesh clothing to fit the avatar shape and move with it more realistically.

Well, Karl has finished some preliminary work and put up a video to demonstrate things. Karl emphasis this is a first look and far from complete. The "heavy lifting" part is done he says but "I’m giving it to you in this form now, so that you can give me feedback. There are decisions to be made which we should make together."

Here is the demo vid and the source code is here. Feedback can be given here.

THE PREDICTIONS OF 2011...

First blowout to mention was that Opensim would come out of alpha in the last quarter of 2011. Well, no one has said it is beta so there you go. Still Alpha but, to be fair. I did say "maybe" when I predicted it would. On the other hand, the developers finally made up their mind to do something about the six month rule for submitting patches which everyone agrees was holding the project back and stopping people working on the viewer to. They set up the Overte foundation to handle the legalities the developers were so worried about. The advantages of the foundation are many since they can now raise funds and impose rules to make it difficult for Patent trolls hijacking parts of the project and stifling development and innovation

My 2nd prediction fell way short of my wishful thoughts but the latest release of Hypergrid dose have the Outward bounds permission and more work is being directed at security. Nothing yet has got Avination HG enabled despite the owners well-meaning statement early on in 2011 which said AVN would enable HG as soon as possible.

My 3rd prediction was a rather bald statement that more developers would pull out of TPV development. Well, actually, a few have, notably Kirstens and Jacek of Imprudence. But, on the whole I would say more rather than less are working on TPVs since Opensim devs relaxed their rules for submissions but getting stuff like Mesh to work in V1 viewers has got coders busy again especially finding upload solutions for Opensim where Mesh can be handled free while Linden Lab decided to penny-pinch (or nickel n dime as American's say) as usual.

My 5th prediction was that LL would lose more market share but, though they lost over 500 sims the traffic is still holding around 60k peek and 30k off-peek but, when you consider LL gets in excess of 10,000 new signup's a day, then they really are running on the spot and going nowhere. And, in my view, its not going to improve in the coming year since LL continues the same old policy of cashing in on everything they do rather than looking at new developments as part of the service people are already paying a high price for through tiers and setup fees. In deed, it seems to me they are not content to let the residents make any profit on top of what they pay to the Lab. What I see is LL heading off in the Farmville direction with Linden Realms when surly the residents should be building these games? I mean, the Lindens cleared the malls, markets and stores in-world so they could profit from their web-based market place and introduced Linden homes that compete with the land owners paying tier so they could bring in more premium signup's. Second Life is/should be a platform on which "Your World, Your Imagination" can bare fruits for the hobbyist, game maker and content seller. Linden Labs just can’t stand seeing anyone else doing well out of what they made unless they get a huge slice of the cake. Thankfully, Opensim is getting better all the time and the recent survey on Hypergrid Business clearly shows the open Metaverse has grown a lot since the last survey while SL continues it’s slow decline.

That’s the beauty of Opensim, it can truly claim to be Our World, Our Imagination from the ground up.

My 6th prediction was an odd one really since I said we would see a breakthrough in browser based portals into virtual worlds. Well, there was actually a lot of progress and no one solution that really grabbed a new market yet other than, perhaps, Unity 3D. But we did have a serious patent scare courtesy of SPOTON3D. Their browser solution actually worked quite well but it was almost the same as work done previously by others. What hit the news was that the owners of SPOTON3D had the cheek to file a patent on it which effectively stops anyone else from using the code - which was open source and in the public domain!

My 7th prediction about Blue Mars having a bright future if the money holds out? OUCH!!!! the money ran out!

My 8th prediction was more than bang on target! Kinect did come to virtual worlds successfully but, as far as I know, it got mostly used to build animations for avatars and not a lot else so far.

MY PREDICTIONS FOR 2012...

Well, I am not going to get carried away this time but I will stick my neck out and predict Linden Labs will pull out all the stops to get Second Life growing again. Really, they must, yeah? Or will this be the year they call the beginning of the end!

Enough of that. I want to make a considered prediction about OSgrid which currently is the leading grid of the open Metaverse. Based on the Opensim platform OSgrid is, in my view, the HUB of the Hypergrid with many small standalones connecting to it via hypergates. I predict OSgrid will grow substantially in the coming year because refugees from SL will continue to cross the divide in ever greater numbers. LL will pull the plug on V1 viewers soon and, since they will remain usable in Opensim with MOAP and Mesh this will have an impact too and might even herald the beginnings of a break with some of the SL protocols leading to a more Opensim-focused viewer.

Here Lbsa Plaza on OSgrid is busy most days. On this day 24 people were sharing information and getting help from mentors

I would also predict we will finally see a viewer for Opensim that includes Grid Search in one form or another as an option on the menu bar of the opening splash screen. This has been on my wish list for several years and the one thing I think that would really set the Open Metaverse apart from Second Life. I know there is a lot in common especially in the area of content but LL is never going to allow content to be transferred to Opensim grids even while so much that is sold in SL is actually made in Opensim!

It's true, people with large SL inventories are held back from going to Opensim - not that they have to lose that inventory anyway. There is nothing stopping people from using both Linden Lab's grid and the Open Metaverse grids since the viewer is presently compatible with both. Call it dipping a toe in the water and finding the Crocodiles no long bite. In fact, stability is better than it ever was and for sims run on good hardware run easily as well as Second Life and, in many cases, better. Personally, I experience more lag and crashes in SL these days than I do in OSgrid, especially on my own sims which I know are well resource. Yes, the beauty is I control the virtual server and it costs me a fraction of what LL would charge.

Now for a bit of a downer. Sadly, I do actually think the walled garden grids like InWorldz and Avination will not fair that well. We have already seen a sharp decline in Avination who's renters have probably gone to Kitely and OSgrid, both of which have seen the biggest increase of sims. InWorldz declined sharply at the time Avination was growing back at the start of 2011 but, even though they have recovered a lot they still have not grown beyond what they had before Avination took off. On the other hand even though Avination lost many sims and users they may yet pull up a bit but my money is on grids like OSgrid simply because more people want low cost virtual land and some community more than they worry over content. And anyway, OSgrid is bristling with free and low cost quality content anyway. Not just that but the physics in OSgrid, though far from ideal, are actually reasonably good. InWorldz physics are presently none-existant by contrast and Avination still has only ODE the same as OSgrid although there has been talk of them getting Havoc while InWorldz developers have been talking about PhysX for over a year now. In fact, I think the residents of InWorldz were promised it as early as March last year and it still hasn't happened. Perhaps I should predict that for 2012!

Can I predict anything for Aurora sim?

Actually, No, not really since I have been left largely in the dark about what is happening in that team even though I was invited to report news for them. All I can say is that Revolution Smythe continues along with other team members to patch the code but most of the work done is bug fixing and nothing new and exciting to report. Work also continues on Astra viewer and I was told my ideas about the grid search are in the works. I feel sure something is going to happen soon though. Just a feeling.

Anyway, I think I will leave it to the grid builders to predict for themselves where they are going.

Let me just wish everyone a prosperous New Year.

Second Life: Residents Vote For Realistic Mesh!

2011-10-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

Mesh has been a long time coming to Second Life and now it has finally arrived it has proved to be incomplete and it has not exactly grabbed the interest of the majority of residents as the "must have" new feature. For reasons perhaps to do with upload price, entry requirements and higher than expected prim cost, not to mention incompleteness, it has kind of fallen as flat as a pancake in the laps of the residents. On the flip side of the mesh coin is yet another oddity that brings into question the motives and thinking at Linden Labs yet again. The more vocal residents of SL are often accused of resisting progress and yet we now read of an example where residents are actually clubbing together to pay a bounty to Karl Stiefvater, better known as Qarl Linden from his days at the Lab, to develop a parametric deformer, which will cause mesh clothing to fit the avatar shape and move with it more realistically.

Typically, Linden Lab's response to the question of producing a parametric deformer has been one of muted interest. They would like to implement one but it's a maybe, one day, if ever kind of response. In frustration residents have taken the matter in hand and turned to Stiefvater to give them something they actually want while the Lab coldly continues on it's merry way. Rod Hubbles promised the rest of 2011 would see the Lab tackle the serious problem of lag which has reached the point of rendering Second Life sims virtually unusable for many but rather than coming out in support of the resident's initiative he has shown he is just as blinkered as his bosses, preferring to make big noises about introducing server-side bot technology and throwing out a little spin about SL growth.

Why hasn't Rob given encouragement to the residents by making a statement in support of the their initiative?

Well, Linden Labs doesn't exactly have a reputation for listening to its residents and it comes to something when some 1800 users have declared their wish to see a parametric deformer developed and even put their money on it when it would have cost very little for the Lab to do it. It's not like they aren't in good profit given the high cost of Second Life services - profitability that was partly achieved by sacking one third of their staff last year I might add.

Stiefvater was, of course, a victim of the Lab's cost cutting when he got sacked so its ironic that the residents are now turning to him to develop this feature for them and, given that he was instrumental in bringing many new tools and ideas to Second Life, including sculpties (he also had a hand in creating digital effects for the Matrix movies and 300), it strikes me as foolhardy in the extreme to let this brilliant talent go. We know there is politics involved - there always is with LL - but Qarl did take the view while at the Lab that he should work on things the residents were asking for, and voting for. With this initiative they will surly vote with their money too and Qarl is right there with them to take on the task. But, whatever, it is clear Linden Labs will never really bow to resident pressure no matter how much they say they listen. They have got their own plans and that's the bottom line.

Thankfully, Open sim is not governed by corporate greed and this feature will undoubtedly benefit the open Metaverse as well and could even lead to more content creators abandoning Second Life in order to work in a less restricted environment at a fraction of the cost. Residents organizing fund raising to get features they want strikes me as a form of true democracy where people vote with money. So, while Linden Labs may look down on this kind of initiative as threatening their business there are many others that see it as a positive step towards greater freedom in virtual worlds. Linden Labs bosses are not ignorant but they do have tunnel vision and the money to go where they want to go. The only question is how many will be left travelling with them?

Link to Maxwell Graf for more on Resident's initiative here

Second Life Lag: Let's Do The Time Warp!

2011-09-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

Since the start of the year many sims in Second Life, mine included, have suffered what has been dubbed, Time warp lag. Typically, it comes on like a storm which lasts for five minutes or more. During that time movement is impossible and even chat freezes. It is not the normal kind of lag like running on the spot, slow movement and delayed chat. This is total freeze up and it clears just as suddenly as if nothing had happened. It can happen at any time of day but it's happening more often and is a daily occurrence. Not all sims are affected yet but I noticed that more are reporting the problem where, a few weeks before, they had not experienced this problem at all.

There is a JIRA report on the issue here, and another here but, typical of Linden Labs, unless enough people view the JIRA, vote and comment on it, it gets low priority. So, while this problem affected less sims a few months ago, the numbers have been increasing. What makes this particularly difficult is that support tends to buck pass and simply quote the JIRA issue and Linden Labs is working on it.

Well, be that as it may, it's no consolation to the sim owners trying to get on with their business when the buck gets passed and nothing is resolved and, what's more, the problems are not just limited to lag spikes. In the pursuit of Mesh and the development of Viewer x2/x3 Second Life has been virtually in a state of beta for the past year with weekly server updates causing no end of problems for paying customers from failed scripts to loss of content from the sims. It is hard enough to run a role play game as I do in Second Life and meet the expense (Second Life is expensive!) and then, on top of that, coupe with the problems being forced on us for the sake of the kind of progress Linden Labs believe we or, should I say, they need.

Imagine your a pirate sailing along happily blowing other ships out of the water and suddenly, without warning you boat is stuck like you hit a sand bank. The only reason you know you didn't run aground is because your avatar is frozen too and you can't even post a few words in chat. You are frozen and the mini map may even turn red. If you are lucky you wont actually crash and maybe 5 minutes later you find all is well again and the ship moves off like nothing had happened. Imagine similar happening in a variety of situations. Well, this is what it is like for many in Second Life presently and it didn't just start yesterday. It's becoming a long standing problem along with plenty others for the sake of so-called progress.

Using Open Sim or Aurora we accept it is alpha software and many problems can arise but Second Life is 8 years old and, given the high cost, customers might be forgiven for expecting the foundation of the software to be stable enough to withstand further development. Clearly it is not and rolling out new code every week is taking it's toll. Moreover, it is trying the patience of customers to breaking point which I am sure is contributing to the decline of Second Life.

The Linden Grid has lost over 500 sims in the past year including some well loved old timers. I personally closed two sims several months ago and scaled back because of the lag and other issues I felt are damaging my role play game, loosing me business from my content sales and loosing me players too. I now run just two sims because I want to keep my game afloat or I would close them too. The money saved I now invest in two servers to run both Open sim and a separate Aurora grid for evaluation purposes with a view to moving the game to the open Metaverse eventually or, at least, running it in parallel with Second Life. But I have to say, while the physics in Open Sim is still not on par with Second Life, I do have control over my grids and can be sure they are well resourced for what I pay, and, fact is, I pay a lot less for a lot more.

Linden Labs just don't get it. In my experience few people are excited about Mesh, or Display names, or Viewer x2/x3 but perhaps some techy geeks are and, no doubt, some content sellers looking to make money out of it are. I think there is more excitement about bouncing boobs and wobbly butts in fact but, seriously, the vast majority in my view would settle for less if it means an unimpaired user experience. More is less when it don't work properly and spoils what is tried and tested. And that is a simple fact because less is more if the user is content. Second Life growth has been static for several years and I rather suspect people are voting with their feet and going elsewhere which is not good news for those of us who struggle on.

I, in common with many others in Second Life, run a role play game because that is what I enjoy doing. I engage in scripting, building and content creation but making money is not what I am there for. If I can offset costs then great. It helps a lot. I am able to contribute to the Second Life community at partly my own expense but when I find I am meeting more of my $1000 a month budget due to circumstances beyond my control then I have to question it. I cut back, as I said, several months ago to reduce my SL budget to $600 a month so already LL has lost $400 and, of course, it means less money being spent on content too. I am sure I am not alone in this because I know a lot of people in Second Life including other sim owners and we share pretty much the same experiences and similar views about Linden Labs. Just another fine example of Linden Lab's blind dictatorship can be read here on Soror Nishi's blog.

Linden Labs are profitable at the moment. They made in the order of 100 million dollars profit last year. For my money they could have set up a separate grid "Second Life II" to roll out viewer x2/x3 and Mesh, etc, in their own time. "Second Life I" could have been left on viewer 1x and kept a whole lot of people much happier. People would have then had the choice to move to SL2 when they felt comfortable with it. In time SL1 would close if SL2 gained the bulk of the residents. We all know the horror stories of going on vacation only to find the hotel is still under construction, well, this is how it feels in Second Life these days - a grid still under construction!

Aurora Sim, The Astra Viewer and Mesh

2011-08-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

News recently blogged by Inara Pey here revealed that a new sister project to Aurora Sim has been initiated to develop a viewer that is being designed to specifically support the platform's features. The developers had not intended for this to become public knowledge presently due to it's highly experimental nature but Inara appears to have noticed it on the Aurora github and the fact it supported Mesh prompted her to try it out in Second Life and report her findings and offer some pictures on her blog.

As I am now involved with Aurora Sim and responsible for the weekly news reports I have posted an official notice to Aurora Sim News which makes it clear that the viewer is not intended for general use, is not a stable release and is available mainly to team developers and testers working with it. Of course, the fact it supports Mesh caused something of a stir on Twitter after Inara Pey blogged about it but all that really happened was Latif Khalif, who develops the Radegast text viewer and recently joined the viewer team, decided to make a quick Windows installer so people could check out Mesh and the Astra viewer dose handle it pretty well. However, this rather over shadows the real purpose of the viewer.

Aurora Sim team were already working with Imprudence/Kokua devs as sister projects in order to get support for Aurora Sim features in the viewer but Aurora has been developing rapidly and there has been some delay in being able to carry out tests. Moreover, given the present uncertainty since the announcement by the Imprudence/Kokua lead, Jacek that she is to retire from the project in September, a group of viewer developers who support the Aurora Sim project decided to launch their own version based on Astra.

There is not a lot I can say at this time about the new viewer but it is based off of the Singularity viewer from Siana Gearz with many features & functions brought in from Imprudence & other viewers. It supports Mesh but not MOAP (Media on a Prim) presently and the developers are working on adding download functions and other features. Revolution Smythe told me a while back that when they finish the generic properties module this will allow new properties to be added to objects very easily. The module will send the information about all new properties it has to the viewer and the viewer will have a new panel in the Build tools window, which will show all of the properties, so that they can be edited easily. "Its annoying to go add each and every property manually into the viewer." he told me, "This would allow an easy way to add things to the viewer." So here we get some idea what the viewer should eventually handle.

There is also some change to the grid manager in the present experimental version of Astra which is the beginning of support for an idea I proposed to Revolution Smythe that would make it easy for users to find grids and allow grid owners to add their grid to a central database which the viewer can call data from. However, there is a great deal of work to be done and things change quickly so I can do no more than speculate on the official launch release. The viewer may even have a new name by then but, in any event, the current viewer releases remain experimental and are not intended to be in general use.

SpotON3D: Patent Challange to Open Sim?

2011-08-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

Since I published my last bog entry about SpotON3D's application for a patent on Open Sim in a browser a furious row has been continuing which accuses SpotON3D of effectively trying to hijack the open Metaverse by attempting to patent key features in blatant disregard for the open source community and the hundreds of programmers who have dedicated a huge amount of their time and skill for little or no reward. In a recent meeting on the SpotON3D grid called with just three hours notice, co-founders, Tessa Kinney-Johnson and Stevan Lieberman, a patents attorney, gave limited answers to questions put to them by the few who turned up. However. far from settling the concerns of the community, Leiberman revealed the company is seeking more patents totaling five presently but has not ruled out filing for more. All of the patents relate to the emerging 3D Web.

In a recent article on Hypergrid Business, however, Lawrence Pierce questions the motives of those most vocal in condemning SpotON3D and asks why 3D Web related patents filed by IBM has not drawn the same reaction. In December 2010, said Lawrence, HB ran an article indicating that IBM had filed a patent on sim design methodologies here. He noted it drew little reaction from the Open Sim community and certainly none of the outrage characterized by the controversy focused on SpotON3D but he failed to mention that last year Deva Canto ( a core developer and inventor of Hypergrid) had already warned Here that patents could pose a serious threat to the open source development of Open Sim.

Ilan Tochner of Kitely Virtual responded, "While many big corporations hold patents relating to virtual worlds, those companies very rarely try to enforce them against small businesses because the money they could get from licensing would be far less than the potential PR damage that going after small businesses can cause them." He went on to say, "Small companies, however, do frequently try to extract patent licensing fees from small businesses that can't afford the legal costs of protecting themselves. SpotOn3D is a small company that has explicitly stated they intend to do go after other small businesses once their patents are granted."


OSgrid, which is Hypergrid enabled, has served the Open Sim communty from the beginning and allows anyone to attach their standalone sim.

Vanish, who runs Opensim Creations, also commented "Personally, the thing that's pushed this over the edge is SpotOn's history of using every chance they get to advertise their own products, combined with taking the platform (OpenSim) their whole enterprise is built on for free and for granted, while calling their own improvements and innovations too valuable to contribute any of them back to the project, and finally filing for patents that could effectively prevent others to contribute a similar technology of their own to the OpenSim project, which would effectively stifle OpenSim itself."

Lawrence Pierce dwells on the wider issues surrounding patents and dose not explore the reasons why the Open Sim community is apprehensive. He appears to take the view that those opposed to SpotON3D's patent bid are just motivated by competitive interest while ignoring the fact that many other advocates of a free and open Metaverse have strong reservations about SpotON3D's aims too and have done since they first announced what their business plan, grid structure and objectives are in a notice to SLUniverse Forums Classifieds back in June 2010. In that announcement Tessa states "By design, SpotON3D is setup to interlink Virtual Environs and Grids in an organic fashion, linking them together via a common gateway, enabling avatars to travel seamlessly from one Metaverse to another." That is clearly a reference to Hypergrid. She goes on, "With context sensitive memberships (reference to Open centralized Avatar IDs), built in Web Window interface (reference to Browser plugin), the ability to purchase items that deliver to multiple grids (reference to multi-grid vendor system) and in essence replicate their inventory legally and responsibly, users can experience a rich network of grids that form the emerging 3D Web." She goes on to list various individuals and business interests that endorse SpotON3D, amongst which I noticed Mana Janus of the OpenSim Hippo Client (the browser plug-in uses a modified version of the light weight Hippo viewer) and Mana has also been posting comments in support of SpotON3D recently.

The references to key features of the emerging 3D web include Hypergrid, Open Avatar IDs, Browser plugin and multi-grid vendor system are all possible targets for patenting and Tessa has made it clear in comments to this blog they will be controlling what viewer can be used too. Moreover, in January of this year, SpotON3D, in a press release, announced, "SpotON3D is most happy to announce our partnership with the Phoenix Viewer team in creating a Phoenix-flavored viewer just for SpotON3D Web Worlds!" In the same statement they listed the following key features...

1. Our BoostCloud dedicated servers to let you entertain up to 125 users without impacting your neighbours, or they you.

2. Our Universal Registration, Avatar & Inventory System

3. SpotONSynergy and Double Dutch Delivery system backed by PayPal® using real USD to create a truly portable economy system

4. Integrated SpotOn3D EZPrezTools and much more coming at you this year.

Above, in the SpotON3D statement they say they are developing a "Phoenix-flavored viewer just for SpotON3D Web Worlds!" And it so happens that Phoenix, which is currently the most widely used TPV (third party viewer), only lists Second Life and SpotON3D in it's grid list when there are much bigger grids like InWorldz and Avination. Moreover, I read that SpotON3D are actually employing some members of the Phoenix development team to work on their viewer and, clearly, there appears to be a partnership or working relationship with Mana Janus too. The statement concludes with, "The teams look forward to the exciting changes that will undoubtedly take place as the Phoenix team helps to further develop SpotON3D’s network of Web Worlds and associated grids." Here again we see SpotON3D staking a claim to the 3d Web when they refer to "SpotON3D's network of Web Worlds and associated grids" SpotON3D's network of web worlds is at the centre, the hub if you like. The associated grids are on the outside paying licence fees for any amount of patented features that the Metaverse depends upon to exist at all. Those who don't want to pay for a licence to connect with each other run the risk of a law suit. So, it adds up to one thing; you can pay SpotON3D licence fees or use their grid services which puts you inside their network. If you chose otherwise then patents will ensure you will never experience anything that can be described as free Metaverse.

Here, the people behind SpotON3D clearly state their long term aims and ambitions...

"CEDA Holdings, the parent company for SpotON3D, began development of their SO3D Grid Systems in November of 2008. With the help of a team of dedicated programmers, web developers, modellers and grid experts they've succeeded in creating an exciting new experience that answers many of the complex problems seen in their contemporaries, with a ten year vision for the development of the 3D Web. SpotON3D's secure and business centric focus caters to an augmented reality experience that embraces existing 2D web assets, real world meeting functionality, attracting a diverse pool of users from the business, academic, technology, and artisan communities online. Short term goals are to provide a stable beta grid platform for early adopter businesses and organizations to use, either as a member of the SpotON3D grid, or on their own affordable private label grids. The long term goals are to create the infrastructure to enable these professional grade grids to interconnect via the SpotON3D's client, a blend of open source and proprietary software."

If there is any doubt the statement above is in their own words for the record. Their long term goals are to create the infrastructure to enable grids to interconnect via SpotON3D's client and, a wealth of ready made open source to utilize as they strive to bring it about. Their statement pays no acknowledgement to the countless hours of unpaid work put in by the developers of Open Simulator, without which they could not achieve any of their goals. It totally ignores the pioneers too who have worked to developed the grids and community, made the content, sent in the bug reports and publicised the whole idea of a free and open Metaverse these past four years. Like robber Barons it appears like, SpotON3D are simply doing the dirty deed and attempting to take over the open Metaverse, or control it, by utilizing a legal devise. The patent.

Novagrid is based on Aurora Sim and is also Hypergrid enabled allowing connections freely to OSgrid and other worlds. Nova sets a model for commercial grids in that they offer low cost hosting for as little as $10 a month and permits anyone to connect their own standalone without charge.

Lawrence Pierce has written an interesting article but, in my view, he totally fails to understand what the community is worried about and prefers to rather dismiss the whole issue as competitive interest between competing virtual world companies. Well, that may be in part true but it is not the whole story. The whole story goes something like this...

Open Sim has been in development for four years. In the beginning it was just a haven of dreamers and code geeks then came the Open Spaces fiasco when Linden Labs used bate & switch tactics (as they were described) to force though a price rise with the introduction of Homesteads. This out-priced small users who built their labour of love virtual homes and small worlds on Open Space sims. Nineteen hundred servers got returned and land Barons and opportunists bought up the rest at knock-down prices. This resulted in the first wave of refugees seeking affordable sims in the few start-up grids based on Open Sim. Very little worked well at that time but a small community did come into being. These people persevered and overcame the problems of working with alpha software, and many contributed back one way or another. The free Metaverse had a very shaky beginning.

As time passed more things began to work and the platform became more stable. More people abandoned Second Life attracted by the lower costs and the sheer freedom to explore and express their creativity without corporate overlords breathing down their necks telling them what was good for them. Some of us did see that patents could snuff out the dream in it's infancy and we blogged about it warning what could happen. Even I did not notice SpotON3D until now which goes to show how much anyone was interested in their business model. SpotON3D had announced their intentions two years ago and, unfortunately, no one really took them seriously because there has been big talk before from start-ups who promise great things on the back of alpha software and it rarely meets with approval or acceptance.

In recent times Open Sim has become more stable and the level of innovation has grown which is a testament to the pioneers that have seen it through the bad times. Today, Open Sim, the platform and infrastructure of future virtual worlds, be they forked versions like Aurora Sim or as yet unknown developments, are on the threshold of providing the open source software on which to base a truly open, and connected, Metaverse. But, just as the dream is about to come true, the patent Jackals are gathering.

SpotON3D could have kept their source secret. Everyone would have understood that but seeking patents on key components of the free Metaverse to stop competition is clearly going to hurt innovation and impose higher costs through licensing on a community that has been there under Linden Labs. The unemployed, low income people, stay-at-home carers and the disabled are amongst the many that have found an affordable virtual haven to express their creativity and escape the stress of the real world for a few hours. Sure there are commercial grids which have software they keep secret but even Avination CEO and core developer, Melanie has stated her intention to open up to Hypergrid. And InWorldz lead developer, Tranquility has said if the community asks for Hypergrid then we will try to fulfill their wishes. Neither talks in terms of controlling the free Metaverse. There is room for both commercial and none-profit concerns but not for patent Jackals. There are some brilliant coders working to build this free and open Metaverse and they will find a way over those patents. Mark my words!

SpotON3d to Patent Open Sim in a Browser!

2011-07-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

SpotON3d has released a browser plug-in that enables you to enter fully functional Open Sim virtual worlds including the ability to build and create content. This puts it ahead of the competition by a long margin. Up until now it looked like Unity was going to dominate the browser plug-in market for the 3d web but Mesh-enabled Unity3d requires content to be created in advance and downloaded. No one has yet been able to enable the Second Life building functions. I took a look at the SpotON3d browser plug-in after reading about it on Hypergrid Business and I was truly amazed how well it performed. I could even tab to other web pages and back while the viewer continued to function just fine.

Gaga arrives at the Welcome sim at SpotON3d grid

I went to the SpotOn3d web site here, signed up with my avatar name, Gaga Gracious and selected a starter avatar. After downloading the plug-in I was into to the Welcome sim, politely greeted and given some Landmarks. I took off to the freebie store and did some shopping which, I discovered all happens on a web page which comes up inside the viewer window where I could click to get what I wanted. I did a skin change and dressed in a new outfit then set off to explore. The source of the viewer is Hippo which is pretty light but tacked onto the side like SL viewer 2 are a bunch of buttons that open a side window for various purposes including managing account, Land Store, Help and Web Sales. It was not my preferred way because I dislike Viewer 2 but the important thing was this all worked seamlessly and in a browser.

Dancing at Club54

So, I took a trip (I did crash a few times on the SpotON3D grid) and eventually ended up dancing out of boredom at Club54. I never came across another avatar on my travels after leaving the Welcome sim. However, this plug-in could change all that because, for the casual web surfer, this was really quite easy and, unlike Kitely where you still have to download a full viewer separately, with this you don't. The plug-in download is pretty small but bigger than the Kitely plug-in and, once installed, opens up a browser page where you can register a name and chose your avatar. Once you have clicked the verification link sent to your email address then you can simply return to the login page at the browser and the fully functional viewer is activated. You just login and away you go.

Gaga is a hopeless flirt but she dose find time to sail,
build, script and make stuff. This is all
on OSgrid and Gaga demonstrates the browser
can handle building just fine.

I was pretty amazed by it and, though it did seem a little slow, it really was not that bad. I was able to rez a prim to edit, change clothes and appearance fine. Everything basically worked. Finally, I logged out rather than quit the screen and was presented with a SpotON3d splash screen and, at the bottom, all the buttons expected on a Hippo viewer including the grid list. Of course, I entered the addresses for a number of grids including OSgrid and both my Open Sim and Aurora grids. OSgrid was fine and so was my own Open Sim grid. I could login to them and everything functioned just the same as if I had opened a full viewer. I was able to log into my Aurora grid too but, Aurora having advanced features like variable sim sizes met with problems. On a standard region all went well though so, presently, the browser plug-in is good for SpotON3d obviously, and other Open Sim grids but there would need to be a new version for Aurora that handles it. But that is true for most current viewers too because only Imprudence and Astra are designed to enable the features of Aurora. Anyway, I logged into Nova grid which is Aurora-based and everything was just peachy. See some of the pictures. I could even use all the top menus and even change environment settings through all states from sunrise to sunset and night.

Arriving on Aurora-based Nova grid

Environment settings

Sunset

I am not sure but it might not be possible for anyone else to develop this for others grids since SpotON3d appear to be seeking a patent. The developers are using open source code in the form of the Hippo viewer which is actually downloaded to your PC as part of the plug-in package and then the viewer is launched inside a web page using a browser plug-in built on the FireBreath open source toolkit for creating cross-browser plug-ins. I actually know very little about SpotON3d other than they have something going with the Phoenix viewer developers which I noted don't offer any other grid addresses in their grid list besides Second Life and SpotOn3D. What I do know is that they run a large proprietary grid and host other grids too. They have their own vendor system and deliveries can be made to any grid on their servers but not outside their network. They also offer a cloud service for running events where a heavy load is expected for short periods. What I get from SpotON3D is that they appear to be separating their grid services from the rest of the open Metaverse and I don't just mean a single proprietary grid like Avination or InWorldz. I mean they are the provider of multiple grids and asset services within a single all-embracing network which they claim to be a 3d web.

Arriving at Second Life

A row has already broken out about the patenting of the plug-in where it has been pointed out that the technology is not new and was invented by a small start-up company called InDuality backed by IBM around four years ago. Since then others have used plug-ins for browsers to launch other versions including Unity3d-based worlds. The CEO of Kitely Virtual, Ilan Tochner has been particularly vocal on the blog network and has asked for the patent number under which it has been filed but so-far that has not been given. Patents and copyright issues have always been seen as threat to the open Metaverse where any one company could effectively shut off the open source development projects if they patent something that no one is able to find away around. The owners of any such patent could end up monopolizing the 3d web and impose their terms for licensing that would, of course, prevent other companies and none-profit concerns from offering competing alternatives.

Gaga in another avatar enjoys a touch of eastern promise and sailing with pirates on the Barbary Coast

With all that said however, a plug-in for launching a viewer in a web browser wont of itself prevent continued development of Open Sim or Aurora or, in deed, the third party viewers since all that is being shut off without seeking a licence from SpotON3D is one particular means to deliver the virtual experience, albeit potentially a powerful one. Kitely is probably SpotON3d's nearest rival in all this since Kitely has built it's business model on delivering cloud-based Open sim worlds to the public and it stands to reason they might be in the process of coding a similar solution. But, in any event, I have no doubt that the ability to seamlessly experience virtual worlds in a browser has the potential to vastly increase adoption and it would be a bitter blow to all those coders dedicating their time and effort for free to bring about an open Metaverse only to have one company that, in this particular case, has contributed nothing back monopolize an important part of it. Kitely do, at least, contribute code back to Open Sim and are not seeking patents that might do damage. They also actively respond to feedback where SpotON3D, as far as I can see, appear to be entrenched in there own plans rather like Linden Labs of Second Life.

With friends in a UFO, Gaga enjoys Sci-Fi too!

Kitely have shown how virtual worlds can be delivered easily and cheaply to the netizens who enjoy virtual worlds for escapist pursuets in role play, gaming and social interaction. Creativity is at the heart of much of what the open Metaverse is about. SpotON3D has developed yet another useful tool for delivering the virtual experience effectively and easily to this growing market. There is room for everyone to profit by developing technology and services but it would be a rum deal to take what the community has given freely and patent something that would turn it into a monopoly for one company. Deva Canto, inventor of Hypergrid, warned about this over a year ago here and I picked up on it in my article first published on Chapter & Metaverse blog, "Free Metaverse vs Patented Monopoly" then re-printed it here. In this case there is no real threat to Open Sim development in itself but the implications are abundantly clear. There is a clear and serious threat to the development of a free and open Metaverse if a patent like the one sought by SpotON3D succeeds. Others are likely to follow.

Content for Open Sim and Aurora Sim Grids

2011-07-29T04:32:00.000-07:00

Since I have been getting a lot of hits on this blog I though perhaps it would be a good idea to add some page links at the top with useful content for my visitors. There is actually a lot of grids in the free Metaverse and, as I wrote before here, it seems a shame to me that the viewer developers don't do more with the grid list function to help promote them. After all said finding grids to visit can be difficult for noobs and I am sure many simply chose from the grid menu and don't add grid address' themselves. It's not hard to add an address and most, if not all, web sites run by grid operators generally do explain how but how much better would it be if when you open a viewer you find a search box as well as a menu of suggested worlds?

I spoke to Rev (Revolution Smythe, lead developer of Aurora Sim) about this and he said he favoured the GRID HOP list and, as he is working with viewer developers one hopes something will happen soon. I have, in fact, been asking for this for over a year from the Imprudence developers and, while they have been accepting grid details ready to launch something, it has not happened yet and given the team seems to be bogged down with finishing Imprudence 1.4 and getting onto Kokua I am not exactly holding my breath. Anyway, for the benefit of my readers I am adding my own list to the METAVERSE link which will include some useful information about most of them and a picture and discription for the larger grids.

The next link I am adding - VENDORS - will keep a listing of web sites offering both commercial and free content that can be used in Open Sim and Aurora based grids. Of all the web sites I looked at I think Sunny Whitfield's Total Avatar Shop stands out as one of the best for low cost high quality creations. Sunny supplies to many grids including InWorldz, Second Life, OSgrid, Alpha Towne, Virtual Worlds Grid, My Open Grid, New World Grid, and Kitely. I am sure there are more too but she will deliver to almost any grid if requested and even go to the grid personally to make a delivery. This is what makes Total Avatar Shop one of the best in my view so the site features right at the top of my list.

Another site I like is Opensim Creations run by Vanish Seraph of tgib.co.uk. The store front is run as a none-profit outlet catering to Open Sim residents and anyone may list content on the site if it is being offered free or with a small licence fee attached. The virtual goods come mostly in the form of XML files that can be uploaded to your grid using the Import feature of many viewers including Imprudence and Hippo. The site also offers OAR files of complete regions including terrains, landscaping, objects and textures. Even scripts are included.

Many of the grids now offer content direct from listings on their own sites which may be delivered in-world or come as XML or OAR downloads. I don't want to leave anyone out so all these will be listed too. There are some grids that don't offer direct sales from their web sites in order to encourage residents to shop in-world so they only advertise stores that have outlets in their grids. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not, especially for Opensim-based grids. I think it is damaging in Second Life as more people buy from Market Place and have goods delivered in-world rather than shop in the stores and malls that are run at great cost. Certainly, from what I have seen many of these SL merchants are closing their stores for lack of buyers while transferring the main thrust of their business to the web. AvWorlds, a newish Opensim-based grid, has taken the brave decision to protect their merchants so their site only carries adverts direction customers in-world.

Next one along is TEXTURES. I am always on the hunt for good textures and make many myself as and when I need something I can't find. I make templates too for clothes but if I find a site offering them at low cost it will get a mention for sure. Anyway, I am listing some great freebie sites and I shall add some I know offer a licence or permission to use them in Open Sim and Aurora.

Finally, I have the RESOURCES link which will list anything including but not limited to scripts and other useful stuff I have to offer myself or find on the web. For example, I am very much into sailing a boat in Second Life and on my private closed grid. In fact I have two grids running on fairly powerful virtual servers. One runs an Opensim grid and the other, Aurora. For a while now I have been evaluating and comparing both platforms with a view to eventually opening one of the grids to the public. Aurora is hot favourite presently. It runs smoother and faster than Open sim and is feature rich while Opensim is actually quite lumpy so to speak. Anyway, Revolution Smythe has told me he plans a big upgrade to vehicle physics soon so I am expecting some improvement in sailing my boat.I want to offer my boats to users so the RESOURCES link wiIl be a good spot to offer this kind of thing.

The HOME link just brings you back to the blog of course which is always moving on as I write more about the free Metaverse. The other links are static pages making them easy to get to without having to search through the blog if I posted stuff there. I hope the links will be useful and I will try to keep them up to date and add new links and content as I find it. If you know of a site or run one and would like it included in the links then please do leave me a mention on the comments together with the site address. I will visit and take a snapshot of the home page and do a little write up for the link.

Aurora Sim Security: a Mirror World

2011-07-23T22:46:00.000-07:00

Aurora sim has been advancing at break-neck pace since I last wrote about it and, with the release of 0.4, the platform now supports IWC (Inter Worlds Connector) in grid mode enabling travellers to teleport between any Aurora-based grid. To bring more compatibility between Aurora and Opensim, on which it is based, Revolution Smythe (lead coder of Aurora team) has released a bridging module too which enables Opensim users to Hypergrid to Aurora sims and back. Even the problem of porting content back and forth now seems to have been solved since before anything brought to Aurora couldn't be taken back to Opensim. It's breathtaking really to think how far the project has progressed in so short a time given that Opensim has taken four years so far. In just ten months Aurora has reached a state of advanced Alpha but security-wise it is, in fact, already far in advance of Opensim. For me it is almost too much and too fast to really grasp all the concepts. But there is a strangeness about Aurora that draws you in. It's like science fiction and everything you wanted in a virtual world unfolding before your eyes. Makes you feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Gaga joins the meeting on Nova grid. Revolution Smythe is the guy with the spiky blue hair but don't be fooled by appearances. Rev is a genius and a frantic coder with a knowledge of Open sim and Aurora second to none.

Revolution Smythe admits to not being a fan of Hypergrid since he considers it seriously insecure and IWC is intended to improve the security but, in any event, a lot more Opensim grid owners will be thankful for the HG bridge regardless of the security issues and we can expect more connection as a result. The Aurora team have said in their founding statement that they want to remain compatible with Opensim as far as is possible and the HG bridge will help to ensure that. Of course, there is a lot more to Aurora sim than HG or IWC and, with the decision to put Open Simulator project under the direction of the Overte Foundation, more cooperation between the projects is expected too. An example is the recent inclusion of the llCastRay(), a patch that will help improve the shooting of bullets, etc.

Opensim was developed under a BSD license which allows proprietary commercial use so other projects can be built on top of it and even forked versions of the platform which includes InWorldz and Openlife grids and, of course, Aurora Sim itself. However, the GPL license under which TPV (Third party Viewers) are coded does not allow derivative, proprietary commercial use and this was the reason for the six-month rule where contributors could not submit patches if they had been working on viewer code recently. Linden Labs are the owners of the Second Life viewer code and allow TPV coders to create their own style of viewer with added features. It is often said Opensim server code was back-ported from the viewer code but this is not strictly true since the platform code is all original and largely based on guess work about how the LL code works. But, I digress. Hypergrid is unique to Opensim and, apart from a brief period of collaboration with the Opensim HG protocol, Linden Labs has shown no interest since and, unsurprising really, the security - or lack of it - is a major factor.

Regular weekly community meetings are held on Nova grid which is Aurora based too. Not long ago just a few people came to these meetings but suddenly the numbers are growing.

There has been a lot of debate about HG security and most people are agreed it just can't be guaranteed in an open source project where anyone can make changes that are designed to steal content and infringe copyright. Revolution Smythe has stated the HG protocol is fundamentally flawed. Even by setting the Outward bounds permission to null which prevents content from leaving the grid in which it is supplied is only an attempt to plug the hole and the fact we see Avination - a grid owned and run by Opensim core developer Melanie Thielker - has not yet opened their grid to HG demonstrates that commercial grid owners are still nervous about it. For grid owners who believe in a more Utopian Metaverse then the current flavour of HG is probably sufficient to satisfy them. They do, after all, share content freely and most would prefer an IP rights form of license anyway. However, business interests are growing more aware of the potential of virtual world platforms and they demand a high level of security for their virtual creations knowing content theft is a seriously damaging problem.

IWC takes a different approach than HG to security. HG works by calling content data from one sim to another. IWC, on the other hand, connects two grids together for the visitor. It is like the traveller has not really left their home grid and, though this is a very abstract concept and indeed complex, it actually offers greater security. What you appear to bring home you don't actually for it never leaves the grid in which it is supplied unlike HG where it does. And yet, you bought the content and have access to it, apparently, at home. Another way to describe IWC and, in deed, Aurora sim is to look at it as an integrated network of grids and sims. With HG in OS everything is separated. With IWC in AU everything is networked.

HG also allows avatar appearance to be called from the traveller's home grid which partly touches on the IWC concept but if you are allowed to take away clothing, skins and other body attachments inevitably they can be copied on the home grid. IWC calls the clothing, etc from the supplier's grid when ever you wear something that you bought or got supplied while travelling. The act of visiting and buying made your avatar part of the grid, or grids, you visit. Effectively, your content is spread all over the Metaverse but it looks like you have it all in one place - in your inventory which is not strictly true.

Mirror World...

Revolution Smythe is the inventor of IWC but even he admits it's still not a perfect solution but is much more secure than Hypergrid. Ideally, he told me, he would want to push to something else like Mesh Networking. With Mesh networks you are looking at the Metaverse grids a nodes which communication with each other. Each node is selfish and holds onto what its got but must act as a relay and collaborate to propagate data in the network. In other words it holds onto the content created there while sending data about the content over the network and relaying data from other nodes at the same time. Again, this is very complicated to understand, but perhaps a better way to look at it is if the nodes are like mirrors reflecting data. No matter where the traveller goes they will be visiting a node that carries data unique to their needs, to them, to their inventory. They are a part of the whole and never really own anything unless they created it. Content thieves can not steal a reflection.

What this could all mean for the future should not be under estimated. If Revolution Smythe and the Aurora team keep up at the rate they are progressing I am convinced they will have a platform that is so advance and secure that it's conceivable even Second Life could safely open it's vast asset servers to the Aurora system if, of course, they both adopt the Mesh Networks concept. This would enable users who own large inventories which they have invested a lot of money in to use it anywhere in the network and finally Second Life residents would be able to travel. It would be good for Linden Labs and their merchants, and it would expand the open Metaverse creating a vast commercial market for virtual content. Linden Labs would just have to change their business model from renting virtual land (Sims) to providing data services.

It's quite something to see the clones of Rev come marching in!

1001 Bots...

Changing the subject to finish on, at the last weekly meeting on Nova grid attended by team developers and supporters, Revolution Smythe demonstrated the spawning of bots. It was quite a sight to see hundreds of bots which were all clones of Rev. Skidz, a core member, has also produced another great video which I am showing here. 1001 bots on a sim is quite an achievement!

Now, what would you do with all those bots?

Dose the epic battle for Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings come to mind?

Aurora Sim: A Brave New Virtual World

2011-06-06T06:32:00.000-07:00

When I first read about Aurora sim back towards the end of 2010 when the project was first initiated I was impressed by the long list of improvements over core Opensim that the development team, headed by Revolution Smythe (Rev to his friends), promised. I was not only impressed but more than that, I was quietly intrigued. However, I remained skeptical that such a small team could deliver on their substantial promises considering that core Opensim, on which Aurora is based, has been in development for four years, and while improved greatly in the last two releases, still lacks so much that is taken for granted in SecondLife. Aurora team basically set out to turn Opensim on it's head and reconstruct it from the ground up.

Coming from a background in role play as I do the visual experience and ability to immerse one's self into a virtual world are very important to me. I want a high degree of realism which is still by far and away lacking in SecondLife. I want the kind of quality graphics and responsiveness one gets from games running on PC and Xbox but without the actual game they are selling of course. In short, I want a virtual world that is broader in scope, has better scripting and features that support the themes gamers and role players try to build for themselves and their fellow players. What I came to realize as I got more into the work the Aurora team were doing was that they are game focused and this got my interest up. Revolutions Smythe explained to me that, in the fall of 2009 before he started Aurora, he built a game off of what was the base of Aurora today. The problem was the viewer software couldn't handle it, he said. Fortunately, the Imprudence viewer developers agreed to collaborate and, by changing the licence slightly from that which Opensim uses, Imprudence/Kokua and Aurora Sim became sister projects in October 2010.

Aurora's developers set out with a broad set of ideas, the aim was to complete all that was missing from Opensim and the desire to bring about change that was not lead by developments in SecondLife alone. They replaced the Robust server, and underlining communication framework altogether. They rebuilt the scripting engine adding support for more functions including osFunctions and aaFunctions, and they are adding support for more scripting languages too including C# and VB. But there is so much more. "We are working on some advanced features," Revolution Smythe told me, "When we finish the generic properties module this will allow new properties to be added to objects very easily, such as the Cone of Silence (see video below), which disallows the viewer from seeing things inside the 'object'. The module will send the information about all new properties it has to the viewer and the viewer will have a new panel in the Build tools window, which will show all of the properties, so that they can be edited easily. Its annoying to go add each and every property manually into the viewer." he went on, "This would allow an easy way to add things to the viewer, and in which any version of the viewer supporting the module would be able to see it. I fully intend to let the sim designer change settings so that the viewer sees exactly what they wanted to show like with setting parcels and altitudes for windlight (not LightShare(tm)). We have already added new settings like Region/Estate in Imprudence and we will add the ability to turn off the minimap and avatar name tags so that RPGs and things can run smoother (no cheating). You just have to lock the clients to Imprudence only which is easy with the viewer ban module (included)."

The unpredictable lady, Aurora Borealis dances in the night sky while Gaga day dreams about the shape of virtual worlds to come.

Aurora 1.0 was released early in 2011 and I reported my experience with it here at the time and, accepting it was a pre-alpha release, it really didn't do more than prove the concept and show that the team were in business. The next release a month or so later, Aurora 2.0, was a good general tidy up of the code with multiple bug fixes and something completely new, variable sized regions!

Looking towards a single 65k sq mt region from a massive
var-region on an Aurora grid up to 256 times the area.

Opensim has mega-regions which are clusters of sims where one sim is the parent and the rest are attached as child sims thus each region is still consuming server resources separately while with variable sized regions now under development in Aurora sim, or var-regions for short, they simply expand a single region up to 256 times a standard SL region area. That means that just one region is consuming server resources and, where it would take a lot of sims to build a really large space using the mega-region protocol, var-regions can expand to create truly massive spaces that would take hundreds of Opensim regions in a mega-cluster to create the same area. Aurora is already up to four times faster than Opensim. Also, by taking advantage of HTTP Textures, objects like buildings come into view more quickly too so increased performance like this lends considerable support to rendering such vast spaces.

Terraforming my Aurora standalone test sim was fast and smooth, better than I ever experienced in SecondLife or
even Opensim. I shaped equal to 3 standard sims on this 1024X1024 var-region in little over 5 minutes. The
distant land is left flat to show the sheer scale of it. All that on single server too!

On May 21st Aurora 3.0 was released just seven months into the project which is both a testament to the concept and the sheer determination of the developers to make rapid progress. Windlight features have been enhanced and they surpass Opensims's Lightshare. You can see further than one region away. Groups, Profiles, Abuse reports, Search and so many of the things taken for granted in SecondLife and still absent or dysfunctional in Opensim are now working including more responsive land editing, an integrated backup system, an integrated combat system and true server side bots.

A Role Player's dream come true!

Imagine a city that builds itself with all the effects of traffic and the bustle of city life. Parts might be degrading while new parts are in construction, even city lights and neons flickering on and off, and transport hurtling along while everywhere bots appear and busy themselves as the anonimous populace. The nearest comparison is Sim City but this is something else. It is a living, breathing backdrop to a game world where role players can pursue their storylines in a realistic setting that surpasses anything you could ever expect from SecondLife or Opensim.

Imagine building the dark cityscape of Blade Runner on an Aurora
sim where punks rub shoulders with Hara Krishas and replicants
are on the lose. Above you see the Gorean city of Ar on
Role Play Worlds grid which Gaga visited last year. Now do this
build with the city builder module and see it come to life!

A plug-in like the city builder and bot engine will elevate virtual worlds closer to the experience envisaged in prophetic Sci-Fi novels like Neromancer and Snowcrash. One can imagine Blade Runner set in an Aurora sim world or truly astronomical spaces for role play games similar to Eve and other space opera genre. To that end Aurora has support for controlling the viewer, as mentioned above, to over ride settings so the visitor sees the world and interacts with it as the designer intended. The physics engine, ODE, though inferior to Havok, has received special attention and a lot of work giving more support for vehicles. Movement is smoother for avatars too including a smaller, lighter capsule that moves more realistically. Then there is the gravity effects that can be centred and have everything revolve round it. It will be a Star Trek fan's dream come true.

Improving Physics...

Demo of the bots on an Aurora sim

Improving the physics are a key objective of the Aurora devs. It's not enough to be able to walk, run and fly. Vehicles have to function well too and be responsive to the sort of environmental effects associated with the real world and even the distant reaches of space. In SecondLife they have Havok which Linden Labs can afford the licence for. Opensim is limited to ODE without the kind of improvements done by the Aurora devs. It works and that is the best that can be said for it. The Opensim devs take the view it is for those using Opensim to obtain the licenses and upgrade the physics. They just don't see it as important as other things like Mesh and Hypergrid. In deed, Opensim devs, for all their work and dedication, they just don't appear to see Opensim as anything different than SecondLife even though time and again I have heard it said, Opensim is different. No, it's not. It has the same look and feel, too many of the same quirks, and yet is lacking some very basic stuff that is actually useful, and, after four years in the making, Opensim still doesn't function as well as SecondLife. On the other hand Aurora devs do see Aurora as different but they still want to retain and improve what is good and useful. They want to do better than SecondLife. They want to take it beyond the familiar paradigm so that virtual worlds really capture the imagination and lead to deeper immersion. There is no denying that physics remain a stumbling block but the Aurora team do recognize that good physics are an essential component of the core server code and, not to be beaten by the power of corporate money, they are considering more options.

Aurora devs think very little of ODE even though they have done a lot of work to improve it, work that should have been done by Opensim devs had they looked at Opensim as something more than a social/educational platform. It is one of the founding aims of Aurora devs to improve the physics and, recently, I was in on a discussion in which Navidia PhysX was mentioned. From what I gathered, Revolution Smythe has already done work to integrate PhysX but there was still a lot to do and another dev that has been working with PhysX separately was able to point Rev to new code sources and testing facilities. So the outcome of the conversation gave me reason to believe Aurora will move to a new physics engine before too long or they will continue to improve ODE far beyond it's present capability.

Project Wonderland Capabilities from Nicole Yankelovich on Vimeo.
The Cone of Silence implemented on Aurora sim is basically the same as Wonderland seen in the video and I suggested to Rev the cone might also block the viewer from seeing inside the object too which would give privacy on mature sims and serve to increase realism in the virtual world as well. Rev agreed and said he thought it can be done but we will have to wait a bit longer for that one. Perhaps they will change to name to Cone of Privacy too.

Apart from the problem of physics there is also the question of compatibility with Opensim. On the original features list they did state their aim to remain compatible as far as possible but, at present, anything ported to Aurora can't be ported back and, where initially hypergrid teleports did seem possible, they now aren't. The devs decided to disable HG on the premis that until HG stops being incompatible with itself (there are several versions all mutually incompatible with one another) there is no way it can be made to work properly in Aurora. However, the devs have now introduced their own version of HG called Inter World Connector or IWC.

Inter World Connector...

IWC, they say, will be more secure than Hypergrid since security receives particular attention throughout the system. The details of IWC are still not clear at this time but what I gathered was that IWC generates a secure URL on the fly and there are varying levels of trust between grids that are both user and grid operator settable. These levels of trust range from full trust (level 4), where inventory can be sent to other grids with the avatar, down to nothing gets out (level 0). So, where HG has the Outward bounds setting in 7.1 it would appear Aurora has more options although I have no information yet what they might be. One assumes travelling avatars will keep their appearance in the same way that HG works where the skin, shape and clothes, etc, are called from the avatar's home grid so are not downloaded to the visited grid and can't be copied. In Opensim 7.1 grid owners can turn HG on but prevent items acquire on their grid from leaving it while the avatar can still travel with their same name and appearance. I can only imagine IWC will work in a similar fashion but with extra permissions. However, Rev has said it wont be compatible with HG.

Now, I have noticed that many people that are interested in Aurora are concerned about compatibility since they are, for the most part, familiar and probably comfortable with the way Hypergrid works even if they are less than happy with the function of Opensim itself. In deed, Hypergrid is not only an essential component of Opensim for many but without the means to travel via inter-grid teleports it's hard to see how any virtual worlds platform can ever lay claim to be the Apache of the emerging 3D web. Many users are running their own standalone sims attached to grids like OSgrid. Others run grids of their own too. In fact most grids run on core Opensim with a few exceptions like InWorldz and Openlife which have developed their own forked version so are probably too far removed to ever be able to participate in inter-grid travel anyway. If IWC is going to be incompatible with HG then, for many, that will be a serious drawback to adopting Aurora. However, when asked at a recent meeting on the Aurora test grid, the lead developer, Rev did say he could make a bridging module but he didn't say he would. In any event IWC has yet to be fully implemented so currently it remains an open question. But it is an important issue for many, me included.

Okay, so I want to show off the Trekie-style top again. I made it complete with my very own Aurora Sim logo specially for this photo shoot of Gaga on my standalone. Shame about the hair though but I don't have any full perms to download presently. Anyway, I want to make this a tribute to the brilliant coders at Aurora.

Aurora is different in so many ways and yet remains open source. The developers are not content to build a bare nuts & bolts platform. They believe Opensim should have been more complete by now. All the devs have a long history in virtual worlds and started like most of us in SecondLife. They wanted better and brought their coding skills to Opensim in order change things and help build a truly open metaverse. Many have joined the Aurora team but still contribute to Opensim so there is still plenty of collaboration between the projects regardless of a parting of the ways. Most important to me is that they do seem to be listening to the community and, thankfully, they don't have to please any profit-hungry corporate overlords. They have similar views to the community and suffered the same treatment meted out by the blinkered mandarins that run Linden Labs. They tried hard to work with Opensim (and some still do) but the narrow focus thwarted their creative efforts to advance the code. They are visionaries and want more from a virtual world and they believe there is more to gain. My only worry is that while striving for perfection they don't lose sight of the hopes and dreams of the growing community that have already embraced the free Metaverse. If they throw the baby out with the bath water then Aurora risks becoming just another games engine. The socioeconomic model built by SecondLife is still part of the big picture while the virtual experience can and must improve. Connectivity is important too if the free metaverse is to thrive, and that requires a degree of compatibility in key areas especially content and avatar mobility across worlds. I have no doubt though that the Aurora team are on the right track and I believe the project will go far. And do it fast!

UPDATE [Aug 8th 2011] Aurora Sim has moved on considerably since the article above was publish. Currently we are using 4.1 which includes many bug fixes, improvemnets, IWC in grid mode and a Hypergrid Bridge module to connect with Open Sim grids. See more recent articles...

Metrics: A Changing Metaverse

2011-05-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

It was interesting to read Hypergrid Business' monthly survey of the virtual worlds of the metaverse. SecondLife lost 41 regions while Opensim based grids collectively gained 1,102 for the top 40 grids. But HB is actually tracking 144 grids of which 80 report region counts. What is particularly interesting about these surveys is the picture it paints of the changing state of the metaverse which is in a real state of flux.

OSgrid and Kitely lead with significant gains in regions while Avination, which rose so spectacularly in the early months of the year, lost regions and active users. InWorldz continued slow but steady growth and Meta7 closed due to legal issues. At the same time more grids came online. So it appears users are moving about a lot and new people are experiencing the free metaverse for the first time. The big loser of course is SecondLife which, while losing 41 regions might not seem much, has lost 500 regions in the past year.

There are so many options now compared to a year ago and the cost of setting up has dropped significantly too so it's no wonder Linden Labs, which still charges $1000 to set up a region and monthly tier of $295, is losing out. SecondLife still enjoys high traffic compared to Opensim based grids but no one really knows what the free metaverse traffic figures are. SL can report their traffic as it's all under one roof but the free metaverse is a partially disconnected cluster of small grids with no overseeing server to collect data.

Gaga checking a club out in Avination. Yeah, the dance pole works!

Hypergrid helps to connect grids but a lot of the grid owners keep it disabled to prevent content theft and, of course, partly to keep their residents on their own grid. Commercial grids of course are in competition with each other and since they rely on renting sims to users they obviously have a vested interest to operate on the same business model as Linden Labs which means a walled garden approach. And yet, even that is not stopping users from moving about no more than Linden Labs can prevent it's residents discovering what is out there in the free metaverse.

With the release of Opensim 7.1 at the start of the month things could be about to change still more. With 7.1 there is greater security to prevent content theft while still allowing users to travel to other grids with their same name and appearance. Once someone has found a place to call home (virtual home) and enjoy the community it offers they are less likely to travel so much but with 7.1 the barriers to travelling are reduced. What you spent on fixing up your avatar, for instance, wont be limited to the grid you call home so you wont arrive at some grid you visit looking like crap and having to rush around trying to find freebies to get fixed up for the visit. Moreover, you wont necessarily have to spend any more money to look as good as you did at home. Avatars are vain - believe it!

On the other side of the coin you probably wont be able to take anything you buy with you when you leave a 7.1 grid either unless the owner has the Outward bounds permission set to allow it. Most commercial grids, if they upgrade to 7.1 probably wont allow it anyway but that's not to stop you visiting to attend an event such as a music gig or dance with friends and just hang out. You might want to attend a business meeting or an educational class. Perhaps you are a role player in some ancient theme like Romans or the fantasy realms of Elves, Steampunk, etc, etc. And you set out to interact in war or peace with a neighbouring grid that follows the same theme. It's really little different than teleporting to a neighbouring region in SecondLife. You just find yourself on another grid and can still look the same everywhere.

Role Players at Role Play Worlds grid

The owner of Avination, Melanie Thielker has gone on record saying she will enable hypergrid once the security is better and she said she would press for this earlier this year. As she is also one of the code contributors to Opensim then we have no reason to doubt her. But Avination has not yet adopted 7.1 so it remains to be seen if they will open up to the rest of the free metaverse. Certainly, if Avination dose I think they will benefit with increased traffic and, since Avination has a reputation already for gambling there is another reason to keep the door open. InWolrdz on the other hand is unlikely to become hypergrid enabled even if they could because they have chosen to fork off from the main branch and develop their own code on top of Opensim which means they may be too far removed to be compatible now. This may yet prove a mistake for them as the metaverse becomes more connected.

There are of course still limitations to Opensim which may not please people coming from SecondLife where they are use to most things working after a fashion. Most notable is physics which are still better in SL than OS simply because Linden Labs can afford the commercial licenses. Opensim is still limited to ODE which most developers regard as very basic. certainly, you see it's limitations when sailing a boat on Opensim-based grids which is clumsy at best. SecondLife has Havoc physics which is far superior but this could also be about to change with the rise of Aurora sim. In Fact a lot of things are going to change with Aurora sim!


Decent physics still give SecondLife the edge when it comes to sailing and sea battles

Even Hypergrid Business survey might have to change as a result of the advances in server code that is being rapidly developed by the Aurora team. Most notably, region sizes. You see, Aurora developers have managed to change the structure of regions which they call var-regions. These var-regions can be up to 256 times the size of a standard SL region. Unlike mega-regions in Opensim, which are clusters or child regions attached to a parent region in order to avoid the problem of border crossings, var-regions are just a single region that has been expanded up to 256 times the normal size. So, where Hypergrid Business collects data on total regions on grids this would be misleading in the future when looking at grids running Aurora sim code. On a Opensim grid if you see 256 regions you can certainly count them regardless if some are connected as mega-regions. On an Aurora-based grid you might see just one region and count it as one while, in fact, it covers the area of 256 regions. The metaverse is certainly changing.

I have a big article coming up later this week which is an in-depth review of Aurora sim that I have been working on for weeks so check back again soon. But I will leave you with video from Skidz Partz - one of the Aurora team - to get an idea of just what is on the metaverse horizon.

Opensim: Finding open metaverse grids...

2011-04-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

With SecondLife in slow decline and the open metaverse growing it is hard to understand why the third party viewer developers are not working to help users find the grids that already exist. Moreover, we know new grids are in preparation and due to come online soon but unless they get the kind of advertising and exposure that Avination recently got they will be hard pushed to get any notice at all as more and more new grids come on line. What I have argued for in the past is for the third party viewer developers to take a lead and do more with the grid list to help users to find more grids and the operators to gain extra exposure right where it would get the most notice, in the viewer itself.

Linden Lab's own viewer, the much promoted and maligned Viewer 2, has no grid list for obvious reasons. LL are not going to help their competitors but the best known third party viewers do support the grid list. The problem is that, while they do often give support to new server features, they don't actually support the open metaverse by promoting it. Most offer a hand full of pre-configured grids on their list but it is left to the user to add their own favourites and, while it's not that hard to add to the list, many potential recruits to the open metaverse would stumble at this point or just connect to those grids the viewer developers have chosen simply because they don't know of any others. This, of course, leaves out the many grids not favoured and, from what I have been reading, popular viewers like Phoenix are being particularly selective. And worse still, their are viewers being made available by the commercial grids that naturally are biased in favour of their own grid and, perhaps, SecondLife. Once again, competitive interest has lead to a raft of viewers that appear to cold shoulder the rest of the open metaverse.

Now, there can be other reasons to release a viewer like the need to support home grown features on the grid server. However, all viewers are essentially based on Linden Lab's viewer code and will be using the grid list feature first released in the Hippo viewer to support Opensim so it's hard to fathom why viewers like Imprudence, which is targeted at a wider audience, has been so slow to upgrade in the very area that would be most supportive. In fact we now see commercial interests like Kitely bypassing the login process altogether by inviting their customers to download a small application that takes control of their viewer regardless of the make. Kitely makes it easy just to click a button to activate the user's viewer and log them in to their grid as if it were the only one that existed, SecondLife excluded too.

The old MeerKat grid manager

As far back as January 2010 I asked on the Imprudence forum if they might improve the gird list manager and make it possible for owners to add their grid to a database via a web page so that the viewer automatically populates the grid list. I thought that when users open their viewer they could use a search option either on the login screen or in the grid manager to scan the database in various categories. This, I argued, would keep the grid list up to date and save users having to find grid addresses to add themselves and, at the same time, allow owners to get exposure for their grids by adding them to the listing page on the web possibly with a description and even a logo. How great would that be to open your viewer and search for places to visit?

At the time I posted about this to the Imprudence forum I was told by one of the developers they would look into it later when other, more pressing, work had been done. One year on it hasn't happened but I did see a new post on the forum recently which indicated they were working on it. In response to a request to be added to their grid list a new grid operator, AvWorlds, was told their grid details had been added to a Kokua issue tracker list so they will be included on a new web site that was planned. From what I gathered the viewer will call on the database to keep the viewer list up to date just as I had originally suggested but this is still in the works and probably will have to wait until the Kokua (SL viewer 2 compatible) viewer is finally released. Even then, the grid list improvements probably will be way down the list of priorities and the list may still not actually be searchable.

From my point of view, and no doubt that of grid operators, a searchable grid list would be the single most helpful advance in third party viewers when it comes to supporting the open metaverse and yet catering to SecondLife users or individual commercial interests still seems to get priority treatment. Imprudence, and MeerKat from the Metaverse Foundation before it, did give support but in recent times Imprudence devs seem to be struggling with uncertain priorities and a degree of burnout. MeerKat, which discontinued, had unique features some of which found their way into the Imprudence viewer but some features got quietly ignored such as the method of teleporting from SecondLife to Opensim grids and back. Even now people will argue that the inter-grid teleport feature is superceded by hypergrid and so it probably is but hypergrid doesn't actually permit teleports to SecondLife. However, with the advancement of Aurora sim and the release of Astra viewer from the team who originally developed MeerKat we are seeing both teams giving some support to Aurora Sim features such as variable sized regions so perhaps Astra devs will look at the grid list again. A really useful feature of it was the ability to store different names and password to associate with different grids.

This is what I mean by mixed priorities though. All third party developers must follow Linden Labs policy on TPVs and, enevitably, they will give priority to new secondLife features in viewer 2 which, unfortunately, was developed by a team of egocentric clowns known as 80/20 whose idea of what a viewer should be was something akin to a web browser and a cluttered mess of popup menus with thumbnails, icons and all manner of pointless gibberish that would appeal to Facebook users - so they hoped. But read how 80/20 saved SecondLife for yourself. Fortunately, the third party viewer developers seem to have heard the universal disaproval for the UI display, even if Linden Labs ignores it, and are putting in great effort to disentangle the clutter from it. It seems to be getting priority treatment though while features needed by Opensim users are being pushed on the back burner.

I just hope Imprudence and Astra devs will look away from SecondLife for a moment and ask themselves what they can do for Opensim and the free metaverse that would be really helpful. A searchable grid list and stored identities would be something a lot of us would thank them for but I wouldn't hold my breath to see it any time soon.

For a current grid list check this out http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/statistics/april-2011-opensim-growth-statistics/

Kitely: Virtual clouds over deep troubled waters

2011-04-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

When I first read about Kitely I thought, what a great idea but the more I looked into it the less sure I became.

Kitely is an Israeli based start-up company financed out of the pockets of it's founders. They are leveraging the user ID system of Facebook to offer cloud-based virtual worlds to it's members and setting up your region is actually pretty easy once you download a small application from their web site. Then, after you login, you simply click a button and the apps calls up your viewer (assuming you have one installed) and you are into your very own region. No need to download anything. No set-up headaches. It's all done for you and you can start building and inviting friends right away.

At first I was reluctant because I didn't want to join Facebook but, apart from Maria of Hypergrid Business 's glowing report all I seem to read were somewhat negative comments about Kitely, mainly centred on the un-signed application and lack of a published TOS statement. But the apparent cheapness (which is probably not so cheap for any more than light use. See my breakdown further on) and it's ease of setup my curiosity got the better of me and I thought, what the hell I can always delete FB after I try Kitley out. So I went ahead and signed up with FB and visited the Kitely web site to download the application. My Norton firewall blocked it straight away because it was unsigned and deemed too new to risk. I had read about this so let it pass my anti-virus and set itself up. I will be absolutely honest now. It all went like a dream!


Kitely web site

First I clicked to enter Maria's sim and my Imprudence viewer sprang to life called up by the Kitely application. It logged me in with my real life name and the sim rezzed super-quick. It really was happening faster than I expected for an Opensim world. There I stood fully dressed as my new avatar fit to begin my adventure. I started to walk expecting to waddle like a duck but not a bit of it! The sim downloaded an animation to my Imprudence viewer automatically and I was walking normal - perhaps a bit girly but it was a female walk. I toddled off to look around and rezzed a prim box to check that out - no problem, it was fast and efficient. Good stuff I thought and took back the prim (I don't like to litter in someone else's sim) then went to appearance and messed with my shape some to try that out. Fine,,, Perfect.

So, after a while I thought I should really leave now because here I stood for the first time ever with an avatar that bears my real name. What if someone comes along? Yeah, I thought. I best leave and so I did. I returned to the kitely site after closing my viewer and clicked something to get some credits. It told me my Facebook profile was not up to much since I didn't have a picture of myself and 20 real FB friends so all I got was 10 credits instead of the 50 I might have got otherwise. Anyway, so much for that, I clicked to create a sim and, my word! it was ready in, like, seconds or so it seemed. Up came my viewer and I was logging into my new Kitely sim.

Gaga at Maria's world pretendng to be a real world person

I was really quite excited even though I was now standing in the middle of a vast sea on a tiny island. But it was mine and I had gained it so quick I was just left dumb-struck. I just felt this whole thing was marvelous! So now I thought I would raise some land and try that out before doing a bit of quick building. I raised the land very quickly. It was not sluggish or jerky. Up it came and I smoothed it off but, before I could drop a prim on it, Bang! The viewer closed and that was that. I returned to the Kitely site and tried to re-open it in case I had just crashed but it told me my region had been suspended for lack of credits. Ten don't go far.

Having lost my credits and no way to buy any I thought to look at the Feedback which would be the start of my troubles. I saw a comment mentioning the same problems I had just come up against, lack of credits, no pic, no friends. And yet, the nice Mr Ilan was saying no problem, sorry about that, here is 600 credits so you can go right back and finish your trial. Let me have some of that, I thought! And posted a request. Now, what happens is Kitely uses a system for comments and feedback called "Get Satisfaction". Up came a box, I typed my request and it gave me choices of user ID. Now, with hindsight I should have click Facebook but usually with comment boxes it picks up my Google ID and I am so used to that I clicked to accept Google without really thinking. Big mistake! The damn thing posted my comment in my avatar name - Gaga Gracious!

I realized my mistake immediately and deleted the comment then went into a bit of a panic because I knew I might have connected my avatar name to my Facebook real ID, and so I had because when I checked my Google profile it suddenly showed my home location. I removed that and took my real picture off any profile I had it on in a flurry of activity trying desperately to cover my tracks, and all the while cursing Facebook.

Next I returned to Get Satisfaction to be sure that comment had been deleted and it immediately recognized me as Gaga. So I went off to dig around on the Get Satisfaction site to try an close the account. I got up the profile created for me and found I was due to receive daily emails from them. I clicked that off then thought to myself, this is outrageous! Get satisfaction had taken my Google ID, my email address and created an account with spam emails set on by default. So then I found a comment thread where some 90 people were asking to have their account closed. In fact, you can't close the account, you have to post a request and hope an admin dose it manually for you.

To cut the story short I am pleased to say the nice Mr Ilan got in touch and promised they would make updates to address the problems I encountered. He also said they would work on other ways to access Kitely that didn't involve Facebook so I have to thank Kitely for that and, well, as they said, it's a pre-beta test release and they value the feedback. Perhaps they should have foreseen the kind of problems I faced rather than giving themselves the task of damage limitation addressing these issues after the event answering a host of blog and forum complaints.

I can not fault the Kitely product in itself from what I have seen though. Few times have I ever entered an Opensim world and not experience problems or varying degrees of lag, as well as things taken for granted in SecondLife that just don't work on Opensim worlds but given that Opensim is still officially alpha code we have become use to it's failings while it continues to improve. Kitely manages to deliver a sim in super quick time and it runs very well. However, I don't personally think it will come that cheap if put to regular use on a daily basis. The way it works is that your region is called from the Amazon cloud and activated anytime you or a visitor wishes to access it and then it starts to cost you money. It costs you $0.20 for every user hour which doesn't sound a lot but adds up if you spend as much time as I do in my Opensim region or SecondLife (virtual worlds for people like me are very addictive!). I mean around 30 to 40 hours a week just for me! Even this though is not too bad on my own since it adds up to just $8 at most per week which is $32 a month and yet, if I am just working on content, I can still get a sim connected to OSgrid for as little as $10 a month. So now add a little traffic, say as many user hours again for casual visitors, and the cost has doubled. but, it's still not a lot of people.

Now, lets get serious and try to use a region to run a club or mall. Or maybe a role play game with players dropping in for averages of four hours every day. Multiply that by ten which makes a smallish game and the cost would quickly spiral upward. For example, in SL there is a general practice for role play sims to associate where one will send a raiding party to attack another sim (all done in the spirit of role play of course) and the raided sim returns the raid at a later time. This, typically, can involve as many as ten or more players fighting it out for some time but it may even end up involving captures and return negotiations to free prisoners. You think that doesn't happen? Well, I am involved in role play and I promise it dose, and, what's more, it can get even more involved on busy successful regions.

Charting the costs...

Small store or home: 5 users clocking 50 hrs per week = $40 a month.

Medium store or venue: 20 users clocking 200 hrs per week = $160 a month.

Large store or club/RPG: 40 users clocking 400 hrs per week = $320 a month.

Busy large store, club/RPG: 60 users clocking 600 hrs per week = $480 per month.

On the large store figure you are close to the monthly tier charge of SecondLife regions but I can't deny the fact that Linden Labs will charge that fee regardless if your sim sits empty or not. With Kitely you pay for what you use and that's it. Moreover, you don't have to find the $1000 setup fee LL charges so it's added value. Of course it could get more expensive than SL which doesn't seem likely but imagine regular spikes in traffic if you are running a music and dance venue. 60, 70 and 80 users, if Kitely can actually handle that sort of load, could start to clock a lot more hours and one would hope you are making serious money from the traffic to make it worth while.

On all the charges down to the Medium store figure you are still going to be better off in one of the established Opensim grids. InWorldz will charge $75 a month and Avination, $60. Even Meta7 at $105 is still cheaper than Kitely on those user numbers and you wont be paying any setup fees in most Opensim grids either so Kitely looses that as a bonus to it's customers. And, in the short term at least, Opensim grids can offer more support since they have established customer services already and considerable content available not to mention established communities and well built sims and venues to visit.

For light use I definately think Kitely can offer a cost effective and valuable service given the speed and ease with which it is delivered. Typically, I think Facebook people might enjoy having the benefit of a virtual home they can fix up to their taste and have friends visit on occasion rather than relying on forums and text-based chat rooms, or even video conferencing, voice and web cam. Being able to walk about virtually and emote realistic actions such has hugging, kissing and, well yes, even simulated sex too. I am not convinced though the vast majority of people can visualize themselves in the virtual setting let alone having any form of sexual encounter that way, or even manage the learning curve or embrace virtual worlds as anything more than a novelty. SecondLife has been around for near on ten years. It is perhaps the best known virtual world and yet it has never gained the kind of user base that Facebook has in half the time. Even now, SecondLife gets up to 10,000 hits a day on their web site and many do try it briefly so they are getting the people through. My view is that if the masses really wanted to use virtual worlds then SecondLife has been high profile enough for long enough to have attracted them and it hasn't so why should Kitely succeed where Linden Labs have so far failed?

Perhaps the short answer is that Facebook is basically a web site that offers a useful service. It doesn't require a viewer download or present any technical difficulty to the average person. Facebook provides a service to people engaged in real world activity. The vast majority are just that; real-world people happily net-working in that mind set. Now that is not to say some can't or wont try virtual worlds but the fact is the vast majority know about them but haven't bothered to any great extent. Perhaps it all comes down to mind set anyway. The majority want to socialize and make contacts in the real world while a significant number will happily play in challenge-based virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft purely in a gaming mind set just as others will prance about in front of their Kinect or Wii screen at home. In contrast virtual worlds like SecondLife probably only really appeal to people that live in their minds anyway. Call them actors or the true avatars if you like. I don't think the masses could or would ever want to see themselves as anything other than a real person in a real world.

For those real world people who might venture into virtual worlds given the ease of Kitely they probably wont have the intense interest or dedicated a serious user might have but I am sure they might have more modest needs so I guess the cost might not be so bad for them. Perhaps an occasional business meeting or for schools and collages it might be cost-effective too but I don't go with the argument a Kitely sim would be great for content makers to use as a secure workshop since people with that level of knowledge and dedication to virtual worlds are probably already using sim on a stick or have Opensim on their computer to use securely and at no cost at all. For others Opensim is already cheap enough since you can get a hosted region connected to OSgrid for as little as $10 a month and it's always up and can even be a cheap to run showcase for your work or even a store selling your stuff. In any event I think most would rather know what their bill is going to be from one month to the next and, since Kitely charges for time and user numbers, there is no way to be certain what your bill could be but that's not to say it wont appeal to vendors selling clean PG-rated stuff. Kitely, you see, is tied into the user TOS of the registration processes they leverage and, in Facebook, that excludes Adult content. But, lets face it, mature and adult content is a major part of virtual worlds and their trade.

We have seen Kitely has already nailed it's policy position to the mast while not yet producing a full TOS statement. Currently, like Blue Mars that has largely failed, Kitely has banned mature content. On the other hand, SecondLife is more advanced and has market lead including a degree of tolerance for mature content and a huge content base in place. It is already well known Linden Labs has it's eye on the Facebook minions. It would take very little for Linden Labs to upstage Kitely since all they need is a similar plug in to launch the viewer and LL is in a good position to strike while the iron is hot too. SecondLife has existing traffic, a large user group on Facebook and a viewer that has been re-worked (much to the annoyance of the majority of existing residents) to appeal to Facebook people. And, lets face it, what Kitely boils down to is a cloud server farm and a plug in to launch a viewer which still has to be downloaded anyway!

Would Linden Labs serve sims from a cloud? Hell yes, I'm sure they would if the potential revenue generated looked like it was worth it. I mean, how long would it take LL to develop a plug in given their huge financial resources? I doubt for one minute that LL has not taken a look at Kitely's methods and business model. Nor do I think other Opensim hosting business' are blind to Kitely's operation either. SpotOn3D and Sim-OnDemand have been serving sims from a cloud for some time as well.

I think Kitely has a lot of work to do - and learn even - so perhaps I am judging them harshly but I think they are demonstrating a degree of naivety if they think their policy of shutting out mature content and forcing disclosure of identity will work for them. Kitely is another walled garden that just happens to use Facebook member identity and boldly imposes their own values on potential customers. In that sense they have gone one step further than Linden Labs who still allow alias names in place of real names and thereby actively guards people's privacy. Anyone that is aware of the furore generated by the Red Zone controversy in SecondLife will know right away that many people in virtual worlds have more than one alt name and, for the most part, do so for legitimate reasons - often simply differing role play characters. It's actually a common thing in virtual worlds and it's taken as an assault on privacy if anyone attempts to link alts to a single IP address or a real world name.

SecondLife was not built on any notion of social networking. It was built on the art of making virtual content for money that served all comers with both passive and mature content. This included also a lot of escort venues, red light clubs, BDSM, etc, etc, and some seriously aggressive role play thrown in while making it possible to create a degree of realism that made it interesting and enjoyable. That's why there is a viewer called Restrained Life and the Emerald viewer was so successful with it's bouncing boobs feature. A lot of what SecondLife is about is pure unashamed erotic escapism and even Linden Labs has tried to curtail it some after they started letting kids on the main grid and putting feelers out to the FaceBook community but, while it might be making some headway into FaceBook territory, it is loosing people to Opensim grids which, to put it frankly, are leaving SL because they are sick of LL's ever more restrictive Terms & Conditions. That is to say, paying high prices to Linden Labs and being controlled by the perceived values that suit their current business model.

People want freedom. Not to abuse it although a tiny minority always will regardless of your TOS policy. People can have more freedom by running their own server and sims and, with hypergrid, they can still be connected and not isolated behind garden walls paying good money and lip service to someone elses values. This is what Kitely is going to come up against and it wont be limited to that either. They will need content sellers and the best still resist leaving SecondLife while those that have, well, yes, many sell mature content!

Opensim is still not out of alpha and yet Kitely appears to be selling it as beta software fit for use on a par with SecondLife and established Opensim grids, most of which are advancing the software to improve stability. Teleports are, as yet, impossible and so too are border crossings because their apps is forcing a by-pass of the viewer login process which means there is no grid as such, just a collection of standalones called from the Amazon cloud. Presently they demand fall identity disclosure through FaceBook, picture of self and 20 real friends. And they don't allow mature content. Add to all that the possibility of running up a huge bill while your not looking and I have to say I don't think it will work out that well for more than light use. But, in all honesty, it is too early to tell and I think the jury is still out.

Traffic: Opensim Grids Up. Second Life Down!

2011-03-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

Trying to get an accurate picture of traffic to Opensim-based grids is pretty hard so I always look forward to the statistics published each month on the Hypergrid Business. Maria publishes metrics for the top forty grids indicating how well they are doing at the end of each month charting loses and gains in regions as well as the gains in user registrations. It's by no means certain if the metrics are 100% reliable but there is no doubt that the trend is upward over all.

I have collected my own figures too taking a daily sample of peek and off peek traffic for about six months and before that on occasion during the previous year. Back in September 2010 I counted traffic for a sample of round twenty grids and got a daily average of about 600. Back in January of this year that figure had risen to just over 1200 for the same sample. It's still not a big number and Second Life remains significantly more with approximately peek traffic of 60,000 and off peek at 30,000 but what is important in these figures is that Second Life is static while Opensim has doubled.

Second Life enjoyed peek traffic of around 80,000 back in 2008 so the current figures show a big fall in regular users. A few days ago I checked SL again at an off-peek time and got a figure of just 27,751 which just goes to show it isn't looking good for the virtual giant. In contrast, Maria's figures show Opensim grids consistently making gains, that is, more regions than Second Life which has actually lost over 500 over all in the past year although many of those are probably education and none-profits since Linden Labs doubled the tier from the beginning of January. Most of the Second Life losses seem to be gains for Opensim grids though.

One grid that stands out having the highest growth rate of any Opensim grid ever in a very sort period and that is Avination which had been hovering along with about 250 regions and no more than 1200 registered residents up till December 2010, then suddenly it took off gaining over a thousand regions from January to March. The number of new registrations has also exploded to over 20,000 to date. I visited Avination back at the beginning of January just before it took off and wrote about it here. At the time the daily traffic was a mere 35 peek and down to 18 off-peek but over the month it just kept rising so by the end of January it stood at around 200 peek rising to 395 mid way through February. It has dropped off some since but still manages up to 350 at peek times.

Gaga at the slot machines in an Avination gambling region

Avination growth is attributed partly to a promotional campaign which ran radio commercials in Oregon, USA that were also aired on Web radio and in-world radio stations in Second Life. Avination puts virtual-goods Merchant's interests first. puts restrictions on making freebies readily available and goes further imposing charges to download inventory. This is partly to protect the merchants but also to help prevent copybotted items finding their way onto the grid, they claim. To this end, Avination is probably the only grid that charges for downloads and groups, an action which has brought plenty of attacks from disgruntled users objecting to these charges when other grids don't. But Avination has come in for a lot more attacks over it's policy allowing gambling in the form of Zyngo and other types of slot machine play. In deed, when I recently visited again I found search awash with gambling and red light sims to visit so, clearly, Avination wants a slice of the second Life Adult market and it comes as no surprise that gambling interests that can no longer do business in Second Life have been quick to set up shop in Avination.

Avination currently charges $60 rent for a sim with 15,000 prims (free set up). So, they must be turning over in excess of $50,000 a month already and this appears to be the bread and butter of Opensim commercial grids and has not gone un-noticed by others which are due to go live soon. However, InWorldz, another commercial grid, has already been in business for nearly two years and started with a hand full of people that left OpenLife grid - a forked version of Opensim - which started up at the time of the Open spaces fiasco in Second Life around the end of 2007. Apparently, there was some connection between the InWorldz founders and the owner of OpenLife and a falling out which came to a head and caused the departure. InWorldz began as a small grid based on the official Opensim core server code and went live early in 2009. It grew slowly at first then took off last summer gaining around 800 sims which helped them break even and finally make a modest profit enough to pay wages at least.

InWorldz charges $75 rent per month (no setup fee) but offers 30,000 prims for mainland sims and 30,000 to 45,000 prims for pivate islands. The high prim offering has caused a few raised eyebrows from Opensim core developers and those opposed to walled-garden grids who insist no Opensim grid can reliably handle more than 15,000 prims which, incidentally, is the maximum that Second Life offers. What they say is, while it is possible to set a sim to permit more than 15,000 prims, it is not advised since it puts a heavy load on the server. This becomes more critical when people are asked to pay rent for sims on shared resources where a heavy user can impact on the rest causing excessive lag for all. Anyway, that aside, InWorldz has some coders that came with the migration from OpenLife and they promised to improve the core Opensim code and put right all the bugs and missing functions they insisted had not been adequately dealt with by the core developers when they accused them of concentrating on "shinnies" such as media on a prim and Hypergrid rather than cleaning up the core which they described as a mess. InWorldz no longer takes the Opensim core so has become a forked version too which is exactly the same as what happened with OpenLife.

On the plus side InWorldz dose have the reputation of being friendly and welcoming to new comers and they have attracted several role play groups to their fold, including, the Reaglen Shire tiny community and elfclan. The owners appear to go out of their way to be helpful and are quick to show noobs where to find freebies to fix up their basic "ruthed" avatar. Avination by contrast is not so welcoming and some have said their business-like attitude is reflected in their welcome sim which, I can vouch, dose seem bleak and rarely has anyone to greet noobs. But, bleak and un-welcoming as Avination appears they do have their plus side. For one, you get a de-noobed avatar to begin your adventure with so freebies are not your first consideration. For an Opensim grid lag is surprisingly low though and I personally have only ever crashed once when my viewer froze trying to access search. A change of viewer fixed it and all was well again. I had no problem with search after that.

InWorldz dose suffer a great deal of lag and many have noted this which is probably due to the high prim load on the servers and not necessarily to inadequate resources in general. OSgrid, the official Opensim developers test grid that lets anyone to connect a home standalone sim, also suffers horrendous lag on some of those standalone sims which are most often hosted on home PCs with standard home DSL connection. Sims like these can only handle a low prim environment and two or three avatars at most before lag becomes a problem. As far as concurrency is concerned, OSgrid fairs quite well with peeks of around 150 users online. But this is miss-leading really because the main grid can't account for all the Hypergrid connected regions and there are a lot.

One other grid I should mention is ScienceSim which has backing from such big names as Intel and IBM. I noticed the grid has dramatic swings in user concurrency, ranging between 100 off-peek to over 1000 peek. This may be due to load testing - I don't know for sure - or their connection with education. I'm not really up on what happens at Sciencesim but I do know Diva Canto, creator of Hypergrid, set an outward bounds permission for them recently which allows Hypergrid teleports into the grid but prevents inventory gained on the grid from leaving it.

New grids are coming on to the free metaverse all the time and each seems to be either catering to a particular niche or, in the case of commercial grids, selling themselves as a particular business model they believe will attract customers. InWorldz focuses on community while Avination focuses on content sellers. Both these grids sim prices are about level pegging though. Meta7 on the other hand is more expensive with charges $105 for a sim but they do focus on technical advances. Another grid aiming to go live soon also has higher sim charges, AvWorlds will charge $120 for a sim but the owner says he will give up to 25% discount to large land owners that rent out parcels at lower prices. They also promise to encourage in-world sales by only showing pictures of virtual goods on their web site and a link back in-world to the store in order to keep buyers patronizing the malls and business sims. No doubt there will be winners and losers but the free metaverse is really starting to take off so the traffic away from SecondLife is set to accelerate.

There are many more grids but most are small or hidden behind fire walls such as those run by colleges, universities and business interests so it is hard to really get a reliable figure on over all concurrency for Opensim grids but it must be in the thousands now. SecondLife can show a figure for the grid because it is all under one roof but Opensim grids can be set up by anyone with a server and a connection and this is what makes it near impossible to build an accurate picture of it's total traffic. However, what is absolutely certain now is that free metaverse based on Opensim grids are posing a serious challenge to SecondLife and it's getting bigger.

Aurora Sim - breaking the mould!

2011-02-25T05:38:00.000-08:00

I have been following closely the progress of Aurora sim which is a branch development of Opensim and promises some new and advanced features that will surly break the mould. The list of features is impressive and includes restructuring for greater efficiency, many bug fixes and pretty well all that which is missing from core Opensim. To that they promise to upgrade the physics, add centred gravity and mega regions of a totally new type which promises spaces up to 256 times standard SL regions.

The lead developer, Revolution Smythe felt mega regions were a hack and there had to be a better way. The team has worked out a way to have variable region sizes and even the possibility of none-square border shapes which fits in with the centred gravity possibility to create massive Space-like regions with planets and orbital objects such as asteroids and space craft in a much more realistic environment than the current flat spaces of SL type regions.

The aurora team have their own test grid known as Aurora-sim development grid which I added to my Hippo viewer and visited but there was not much to see at the time. It just amounted to a few standard regions. However, on the Aurora team web site they announced that on the 14th February they tested the first variable region. The test grid is at http://login.aurora-sim.org:8002/ and you need to add that the an Opensim compatible viewer and the web announcement is here Aurora sim variable region sizes

Gaga in Aurora Virtual World grid wondering around. Nothing exciting - yet!

Currently, and surprisingly, there are actually two new grids - one of them commerical - running the pre-alpha Aurora sim branch. Ansky and Aurora Virtual World, the later being owned and run by Enrico Ranucci of the New Voice OpenSim hosting company, better known for their $10 hosted sims attached to OSgrid. I visited AVW too and it really did not work well, apearence was borket and I couldn't keep hair in the right place but it was a fun experience. I did notice they are currently giving Free parcels with a generous 18,000 prims to play around with though.

Maria of Hypergrid Business blog has written an in-depth article on Aurora sim and raises some important issues about it regarding software licenses.

Kokua, the projected viewer based on SecondLife 2x from the Imprudence developers announced back in November 2010 they would be supporting Aurora sim and working with the Aurora team but, currently, they have not done anything other than consentrate on getting Imprudence 4 released so they can wrap up their work on SL 1x code and switch their attention to Kokua.

Hypergrid

Back in December I asked if Hypergrid would still be a feature of Aurora sim and was told not until it stops being in-compatible with itself. The developers claim they aim to stay compatible with Opensim core but after reading Maria's article I have my doubts. Anyway, in January I was told that Aurora sim is compatible with HG and that person had successfully hyper-gridded to another grid but now, in Maria's article, Ansky grid owner, Andrew Simpson who converted to Aurora sim server on the 17th February said the current version did not support hypergrid and, where Ansky was formally accessible via HG, it was now shut off. He went on to say there were still problems with HG anyway so he wont miss it at the moment.

Conclusion

I think Aurora sim is an exciting development but it remains to be seen if the team can actually deliver on the impressive list of features. That said, I keep wondering what SecondLife would be like today had Linden Lads shown the foresight and taken in some of these amazingly talented people and given them free reign to advance the server. Alas, I don't think any of these ideas could happen in SL and the open source community will forge ahead and break new ground for the benefit of the free metaverse. I think they are true pioneers.

Full list of features on Aurora Sim

Growth of Opensim & Hypergrid Progresses

2011-02-10T11:03:00.000-08:00

I did a rough count of Opensim traffic on the top grids back in September and got a figure of around 600. This month for the same sample I got a figure of around 1200 which is double. I don't claim this very rough count says that much but it dose show considerable growth in recent months. Most remarkable of all has been the rapid rise of Avination, a new grid launched by Melanie Thielker (also known as Melanie Miland), a core Opensim developer.

Avination has come from no where to a peek traffic average of around 220 online in just one month which is unusual when many grids are still struggling and yet have been around for a long time. This has sparked some negativity on the forums however - mostly from supporters of other grids worried they will loose residents - but that has done nothing to dent it's growth.

I noticed that Avination traffic has grown rapidly from around 35 online when I joined and quickly increasing to 165 peek about a week or so ago. At the same time InWorldz had dropped from 233 peek for the same period to 157. Meta7 dropped from a peek of 53 online to a peek of 29. There was not much change to OSgrid during this time so Avination seems to have gained some users from both InWorldz and Meta7 but I think they have probably gained more from SecondLife and the Internet. Over all though I think it shows an increase in traffic for Opensim grids in general since both InWorldz and Meta7 seem to have recovered some ground now even while Avination continues to grow. This is in stark contrast to Second Life which remains static.

Naturally, I had to go visit Avination but first I checked their web site which
proved easy to navigate and informative. I registered a name. Gaga Gridlock (couldn't get gaga gracious *sighs*), added the login URL to my Hippo viewer and arrived. No one was there to meet me but the grid did have 65 people on it. So I looked around and it proved average. It was bit laggy but at least I didn't need freebies to dress up. The avatar I got to chose was actually quite good for my visit (see pic) and I didn't need to race to find freebies to deal with the usual ruthed avatar.

I found some good brand names from SL there so that was a good sign and it was clear enough, the owners of the grid wanted to give maximum protection to them. I still didn't meet the rude person everyone was ranting about above on the forums so I put that issue down to anti-Avination propaganda. I set off to explore and as you see from the pic the builds aren't half bad. Seems lots of people are beavering away constructing and as the sims are relatively cheap at $40 and free setup that was not surprising. I did have a problem with search initially but this was down to Opensim viewer because search worked fine when I returned using Imprudence.

Hypergrid; Important Update!

Diva Canto (Opensim developer, Crista Lopes),added an OutboundPermission configuration setting to the HGInventoryAccessModule in the Git ‘master’ branch of Opensim. Setting this to false prevents foreign Hypergrid visitors to a local grid from taking assets back to their home grid.

This news was published on Justincc blog.

The most secure grids are walled gardens which prevent content being removed to another grid and mwhere it might be copied. Adding the new setting effectively makes HG grids walled gardens too but still allows avatars to visit with their full appearance and clothes drawn from their home grid. Thus, with the new setting, nothing is exchanged between grids during HG travel.

According to Hypergrid Business blog...

The way it works is that you - or the hosting company running OpenSim for you - have to set the "OutboundPermission" setting to "False" in OpenSim’s HGInventoryAccessModule. The setting applies to all the regions running under that instance of OpenSim. Typically, each instance of OpenSim would handle between one and four regions, but it can go higher.

According to Lopes, this is just the first step towards having asset security on the hypergrid.

"I did it now because ScienceSim is planning a big event," she said."A lot more will be coming regarding these kinds of policies."

Melanie Miland, owner of Avination grid, and Opensim developer working with Deva Canto has said in another topic on SLU, "Avination, is anyone there yet?"

And, to confirm, I work pretty closely with Diva Canto, who I will meet up with on February 24th. That will be our second real life meeting. The first time we put our heads together, Hypergrid 1.5 was the result, this time, I'm hoping for a push towards HG 2.0.
I do promote the secure Hypergrid; Avination is not a walled garden by choice. However, to keep the work of our creators safe, we can't, with the cuRrent state of HG security, safely enable hypergridding in Avination. Rest assured that, once it can be done without inviting wholesale permission exploits, it will come to Avination.

No one can say how this will work out yet and it wont be available until the next general release of Opensim, by which time it is sure to be much more developed, but it is as well for content creators to be aware of the progress and consider how it might help them grow their business on the free metaverse as it becomes more secure.

On the face of it, it may not seem helpful to content vendors if their virtual goods can't leave the grid in which they are sold but the important thing to remember is that someone came from another grid via Hypergrid teleport and was able to buy something and that means a bigger consumer base since you are no longer limited to your own grid's population (I have read elsewhere that HG grid owners are reporting that 50% of their traffic is via HG links). However, the question remains; Why would someone buy something they can't take away with them?

My thoughts are that stores will have access to a much bigger market via Hypergrid and I would want to find out which grids I could trust with the stuff I sell. It's unlikely I would trust a standalone but a reputable grid with a good track record and policy should present no problem. If I already have an outlet on the customer's home grid then that should make it easy but, given that I have some accounting record on my off-world server, or should have, then I should be able to make the goods available provided the grid is on my trusted list.

Kinect. It's all Happening!

2011-01-22T00:16:00.000-08:00

In my new Year predictions which I am expecting to get totally wrong I actually got something right already!

Someone has managed to hook up a Kinect to their PC and use it in Second Life to control their avatar movements and gestures.

Those same guys from the University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies, have pulled it off again so it's sure to surface in an Opensim world before long. I understand there is a two second delay though which might make it a bit laggy for combat. Still,those who need exercise might soon have great way to work out while chating to and dancing with their friends in their favourite virtual world.

Two video clips to follow; the first Second Life but in the next video clip a little more magic takes the form of 3D rendering and animation using 3ds Max software. A Chinese hacker has used the OpenNI drivers to get Kinect to translate the motions of the user. This works by detecting the position of body and hands to control the animated avatar on screen. Anyone with 3ds Max will be able, at low cost, to easily generate lifelike gestures to use with their avatar in an Opensim world.

The future is defiantly on the march!

FAAST. Open source control software for Kinect

2011-01-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

WOW! No I don't mean World of Warcraft I really mean WOW!

Following Pathfinder's lead, which he gave in my Predictions for 2011 comments I came upon a hack for the Microsoft Kinect sensor from researcher, Even Suma of the University of South California. Working with his team at the school's Institute of Creative Technologies they have managed to put a middleware program together based on the open source framework tool, OpenNI that exploits Kinect's sensor to recognize the player's skeleton and translate body gestures, movements and voice into keyboard commands. This lets World of Warcraft players plug Kinect into their PC USB and directly interact with the game. The software package is called FAAST (Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit) and released as open source so anyone, they say, can downloaded it and use with WoW or modify to work with other applications.

Given that FAAST is open source anyone working with virtual worlds like Opensim should be able to play with the functions to get an avatar to sit, walk, run, turn about and activate a selection of gestures. I am sure a lot more might be possible too such as bringing up the inventory menu and clicking to wear an item of clothing while at the same time the avatar is seen, apparently, dressing as the result of an appropriate gesture getting activated (I have always wished for this since clothes simply appearing seems to me very un-life like).

Currently, the number of gestures available to WoW players is limited but the researchers aim to add more. In the video the team released (seen here), Suma uses his body to walk, his left hand to move the camera and his right hand to select attack spells. I can imagine in a virtual world a gun or sword can be taken in hand and used in combat too by those users more inclined to action adventure but the possible application for interactive social, medical and education use would benefit tremulously. As Skip Rizzo, said in the video, the system could help get young people out of their chairs doing more exercise. In deed, rehabilitation exercises and the fight against childhood obesity and diabetes could all be helped with this system.

I make no secret that want to see a free and open metaverse of hypergrid-connected virtual worlds come about where we, our avatars, can live some precious moments as extra-sentient beings playing, socializing, working and making money and, above all, being able to marvel at the creativity of others and enjoy the fantastic worlds we create. I think Kinect could open up new and exciting possibilities for virtual worlds and facilitate interaction in ever more life-like ways. I imagine too that a few more years ahead Haptics will come into play too and we will be meeting and shaking hands no matter where on Earth we live.

Imagine being separated by thousands of miles from work colleagues or those you love and yet being able to walk towards their hologram while they walk towards yours. You meet and shake hands or just hold the hand of your wife or husband, and by the miracle of technology you actually feel the touch. How amazing would that be?

Predicting the Metaverse in 2011

2011-01-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

Everyone who blogs about virtual worlds seems to make predictions for the year ahead at this time so, not to be out done, I though I too would have a stab at it if only to look back next January and see how much I got wrong.

Gaga arrives at the Museum on Heritage Key grid

First off I want to mention that Justin Clark-Casey, a core Opensim dev, predicted last year that Open Simulator would not come out of Alpha in 2010. That's right it didn't happen but I have to say, despite it's continuing quirkiness it certainly seems a lot better and more stable than a year ago. It's frustrating when you consider how long Opensim has been in Alpha and I think the Chicken & Egg policy for submitting patches may have held it back more than anything else. I say that because the Imprudence viewer devs have decided to team up with Aurora now (a separate development of Opensim) when they had decided to work closer with Opensim in response to the Linden Labs TPV policy. They switched to Aurora and will develop the Kokua viewer after being frustrated with core Opensim policy so I read.

So I would now guess that Opensim will finally go to Beta in the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2011, maybe (I'm playing it safe!).

Gaga at Stonehenge on Heritage Key grid

My 2nd prediction is that Hypergrid will see more growth than proprietary grids over all especially if HG 2 arrives with a means for content creators to block their creations leaving the grid in which it is sold. I have though about this a lot and it seems to me that if sales are tracked on the sellers own server they could provide outlets on trusted grids for purchasers to receive what they paid for free of charge on their home grid and, since HG 1.5, avatars appearance is called from their home grid and not downloaded to the grid one visits this to my mind would be the kind of content protection that might just work. Certainly, objects like furniture wont be travelling to outside worlds anyway if the seller dose not allow it.

I have read that many HG-enabled grids claim up to 50% of their traffic is arriving via HG teleports so I predict substantial growth in Hypergrid travel in 2011 generally.

My 3rd prediction is that more developers will pull out of Second Life TPVs and turn their attention to Opensim, either getting involved with the official core developers (especially if they change their 'Chicken & Egg' six month rule of not looking at the code), or new teams setting their own goals and branching off. I think some of the laid-off Linden employees might end up contributing too. The Aurora team is an example and they have set an impressive list of objectives which I am happy to say includes improving the Opensim physics which, according to one core developer, they never considered it their place to do any better with - not that I want to knock them, I really don't. I think the whole Open Metaverse community owes a great deal of gratitude to them for their hard unpaid work over the years, without which we might not have Opensim today.

Gaga gets to see the Terracotter army on Heritage Key grid

My 4th prediction is that Second Life will continue to loose market share in the early part of 2011 due in part to the doubling of tier charges to none-profits and education but this will be offset by opening the main grid to Teens - a timely move. However, I suspect Linden Labs will alienate more of their older users by this move especially if the Lab starts bullying them about adult content still lingering in the Mature sector. I suspect many sim owners will find themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea when it comes to handling the visitors to their Sims. There will be fear about age and constant worry about nudity and public cybersex (actually, all sex is public really since one can cam in and listen through walls so LL has kind of made a nonsense of what Mature means). Probably many sim owners will either go to full Adult or shut down and be done with it and, possibly, move to Opensim where they are not subjected to looney Linden's policy.

My 5th prediction is that Second Life will recover considerably in the mid year onwards as Mesh comes to the grid and Viewer 2 and V2 TPVs get wider adoption but I don't think any of this will save Second Life from a very slow long-term decline. Simply because Opensim and other platforms will be advancing and seriously giving Linden Labs a run for their money.

My 6th prediction concerns browser based portals into virtual worlds. I am confident that some serious breakthroughs are on the cards. I have looked at a number of these and visited some of them. KataSpace from Katalabs which is built on WebGL and HTML 5. This can run on Firefox without a plugin. It works but still rather primitive. 3Di was, however, the first to port Opensim through a web page back in 2008 and the company is currently re-designing it to take advantage of Unity3d. Canvas is the latest to begin testing and based on technology licensed from IBM. Next up is Rezzable's Unity3d based portal and the one that impressed me the most (see pictures). I went to the page and opened the portal window. I found it smooth, and though it was merely a waltz down a corridor introducing me to Heritage Key's Opensim-based virtual museum, I was tempted to register and see the world. I loved it!

Then there was Friends Hangout yet another Unity3d based portal on a web page which I got to from Evolver where I made the animated avatar image seen on these pages. Apart from these efforts Blue Mars and Linden Labs are experimenting with Cloud to stream the virtual world to the web page but this is the more expensive route so the end-user is likely to have to pay for it. My prediction then is that anything based on Unity3d are the ones to watch and I think it might be safe to predict that by the second quarter of 2011 there will be a usable Unity3d web-based portal available for Opensim from the open source community.

My 7th prediction concerns Blue Mars from Avatar Reality. This impressive virtual world, with it's bigger regions and Mesh-based objects and avatars really shows what a future virtual environment should look like but I can't say I am convinced it will get mass adoption, not in the short term anyway. The viewer is a heavy download and good graphics card and high-end computer are a must. Then you have to download each city in turn before you can visit. If the owner makes changes then you have to download again. The developers are well aware of the download problem though and, as mentioned above, they are working on a cloud streaming to deliver the experience on a web page. I think BM has a long term future if their capital holds out. I predict major improvements through 2011 if it survives.

My 8th prediction is that Kinect will come to virtual worlds during 2011 although I hesitate to put any firm date on it. What happened was someone created drivers for a PC that allows devices to interface with the Kinect for Xbox 360. This lead to an Austrian company that makes hardcore porn videos showing how the controller can be used in interactive sex games. There demo shows a female avatar being grouped on screen. It's kind of spooky but it shows the shape of things to come and were we are heading.

Next up will be Haptics! What, you don't know what Haptics means? Think of the Holodeck in Star trek. Yes, using ultra sound to touch and feel virtual holograms. The mind boggles!

Imprudence picks up where Emerald left off

2010-09-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the hacking controversy by one of the developer team that produces Emerald viewer there has been a rush to dump it over fears that personal data is no longer safe and many of the 'refugees' have been downloading the Imprudence viewer as the best choice to gain some of what they like in Emerald, namely features such as bouncing boobs and RLV (Retrained Life) which strikes a cord with the BDSM fraternity in Second Life. But the influx to Imprudence has brought a rush of requests that border on demands. Power to the people might well be their clarion call.

This posses some real challenges to the Imprudence devs who are having to put features that existing uses have requested on the back burner as they try to meet the requests of the refugees. Looking at the Imprudence forum the Emerald people are pretty vocal too and some of their requests are deeply worrying for sim owners who pay for the sims they visit in Second Life. We have seen so many sim settings being overridden by Emerald from flying to spying and Imprudence devs are under pressure to give them the same. However, how much power should be given to potential griefers and those who don't respect other people or their property?

For my part I would want to have the power to enforce my regions settings and even deny access to people using viewers that break my sim rules if it's the only way to protect the virtual space I pay for (in fact this may yet be possible in Open Simulator since the infrastructure code is open source and can be tweaked to possibly block some viewers access). There are many ways in which my sim rules might be breached and I recall some role play sims banning the use of radar huds on the basis that in real life you wont be able to see over the hill so to speak. Emerald and Imprudence have radar built in and I noted that some of the refugees are calling for a longer reach already. Where do these demands end I wonder?

But in any event it dose add up to greater power being given to the viewer users with scant regard for those who pay for the virtual worlds they visit. There has to be something wrong with that. I also think it is just a little unfair of Imprudence devs to put requests made by those who came first on the shelf in favour of new comers that do seem to want the very powers I am ranting about.

I have been asking for the intergrid teleport that was developed in MeerKat viewer to be implemented in Imprudence since the demise of the MeerKat project at the end of last year. I requested it in January this year and was told it was going to be included once they ironed out the problems but no promises were made. Six months on and I am told it is on the back burner because of the influx of Emerald users and, as disappointing as this is to me, I know there is still time since Open Simulator is still not out of Alpha stage although it is looking pretty advanced now.

Changing the subject slightly I also requested the devs of Imprudence to upgrade the grid list which they had supported with an eye on moving closer to the Open Simulator standard. There are, in fact, over a thousand private grids now using Open Simulator and probably more since many are behind firewalls serving education and private companies. There are some well known girds that already support more than a 100 regions too but most have fewer than 10 regions. Hypergrid 1.5 makes it possible to grid hop around the many grids taking your clothes and appearance with you. With MeerKat viewer I could actually grid hop from Second Life to my private sim on one of the grids and back but it was not a rock stable experience I do admit and that's what I hope Imprudence devs will eventually tackle and improve on.

The open metaverse will eventually be bigger than Second Life and certainly more advanced but because it is still fragmented with much of it hidden away people get the false impression it lacks traffic. In fact the traffic is very high but because there is no central place to see the figures indexed as there is in the closed grid of Second Life, we just don't know what's out there and just how big it really is. I personally try to get round as many grids as I can find just as I once did in Second Life surfing the regions, shopping and visiting interesting sims. There are some fantastic builds on the open metaverse and many have owner-coded widgets and improvements over the basic infrastructure code. IWorldz, Meta7 and Role play Worlds spring to mind and, interestingly, many grid owners recommend Imprudence viewer even though their grids may not appear on the Imprudence grid list.

So what I am arguing for is a search feature to replace the current grid list partly because listing all the grids out there would make the viewer list far too long and partly to give the users a means to search for grids and also for grid owners to add themselves to the search engine. I know you can already add grids you know about but that only serves you and I would imagine that it might not be too difficult for someone entering a grid URL to click a button to send the info to the Imprudence server where the viewer gets it's current list from anyway. How much better if the Imprudence server supported a search feature in the viewer?

By way of example I got hold of the following list of OS grids which is by no means all the grids out there and the list does not indicate the total number of regions on a grid, only the number of hypergrid-enabled regions currently indexed by Nyperica

    * AnSky (3 regions)
    * ArchitectureIslands (2 regions)
    * AustriaGrid (2 regions)
    * CondensationLand (10 regions)
    * Cyberlandia (39 regions)
    * DjinnMetaverse (1 region)
    * DorenaVerne (5 regions)
    * DWGrid (1 region)
    * EdenRealm (3 regions)
    * FrancoGrid (26 regions)
    * FunGrid (2 regions)
    * GermanGrid (11 regions)
    * GovGrid (1 region)
    * HumbugCove (1 region)
    * Iti Motu (3 regions)
    * ItiMotu (2 regions)
    * JansSchmiede (1 region)
    * JokaydiaGrid (2 regions)
    * KimsWorld (1 region)
    * KorolovGrid (1 region)
    * LandofVikings (1 region)
    * Logicamp (2 regions)
    * MetaGridNet (1 region)
    * MetaverseNexus (2 regions)
    * Metropolis (11 regions)
    * My3dWorld (2 regions)
    * MyOpenGrid (1 region)

    * NZVWGrid (1 region)
    * OpenParadise (1 region)
    * OpenSIM.de (1 region)
    * Openvue (1 region)
    * OSGrid (53 regions)
    * Otherland (1 region)
    * Pixelpeach (2 regions)
    * PMGrid (10 regions)
    * ReactionGrid (16 regions)
    * Sanctuary (2 regions)
    * StaminaGrid (1 region)
    * TaxiLand (1 region)
    * TerraNova (1 region)
    * TGIB (1 region)
    * TomsWorld (2 regions)
    * TromblyInternational (1 region)
    * TroppoGrid (4 regions)
    * UCIGrid (2 regions)
    * UFSGrid (1 region)
    * Upper. Hotel Attraction (1 region)
    * V-Business (9 regions)
    * VirtualHighway (1 region)
    * VirtualRealityGrid (1 region)
    * Virtyou (8 regions)
    * WilderWesten (10 regions)
    * WorldSimTerra (9 regions)
    * YourSimSpot (1 region)

The viewer search engine could categorize grids by content. ie, education, business, shopping, role play, socializing, dating, gambling, adult, whatever. Perhaps eventually the search engine could do much more such as advanced searching in sub-categories even. There would be no need for a web crawler either since the grid owners will add themselves but a crawler could check for the home page of a grid site and if not found delete it from the list and save the need for an admin to do that task. I don't see any real limit to its potential but I do see it as a powerful feature to have in the Imprudence viewer and one that would attract many more people to want to use it.

Continuing my travels...

2010-07-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

Now I have published everything I wrote for C&M I will set to work to update my Radegast review and tell the story of how MakeAIML became a plugin and a little of how it works.

Stay tuned travelers...

Free Metaverse vs Patented Monopoly

2010-07-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

Here I re-publish a rant I made about people who patent code that should have been contibuted to the Opensim project. I have not included all the comments that were made but the article did cause more then a little bit of a stir and the comments which you can read on Chapter & Metaverse blog make interesting reading.

I have been reading a recent article from Deva Canto, an Opensim dev, on her blog in which she makes a plea to developers who build on top of the Opensim platform not to patent their code or it will hinder the continued development of Opensim. She gives a warning too to those who take the open source code which a dedicated core of developers have been working on for a long time and use it for their own business ends and, while contributing nothing back, actually threaten the prospect of a free Metaverse.

She goes on to say,

one of two things will happen: either (1) what you patent is so important that it will be critically missing from the common infrastructure because of your patent, therefore the infrastructure will never happen; or (2) what you patent can be done in a different way, in which case that other way will make it to the common infrastructure, and your patent-based business will miss the point.

We are seeing a growing number of grids based on Opensim who's developers take full advantage of the freely available source code. The core developers of Opensim have from the beginning had the goal of building the infrastructure of a free Metaverse for the benefit of private, educational and business interests alike. Everyone owns it. It is the virtual air we breath and just like polluters, there are people that would strangle the baby at birth for the sake of personal gain.

The dream is very clear; a Metaverse of immersive interconnected virtual worlds. Not walled-up monopolies like Second Life or the twenty or so other contenders for the virtual market. The aim is to have lots of small and large grids sharing a common resource on which to build a rich and diverse virtual super grid. Users will be able to grid-hop as easy as teleporting from one sim to another. The hope is for Common standards and methods to arise for names registering, search, money and copyright protection. The users will be able to hold their own property and wear it and use it where ever they go. All this is threatened by those who are effectively stealing and damaging what belongs to everyone.

Deva warns,

you won't gain any friends among some of us core developers (me, at least). You're putting the whole effort in jeopardy. I can guarantee you that if something you patent is critical, I won't stop until I find another way of doing it that doesn't step over your patent.

Not withstanding all this however, Opensim enjoys substantial, and growing support, and there are many new grids emerging built by people that heard the message given long ago by Linden Labs; A virtual world built by the residents and for the residents. OpenSim is not a walled garden. It is open and free and it will cost the individual a lot less to build and express their creativity. Those wannabe Grid Barons will only ever make it more restrictive and expensive for everyone and that's the author's opinion.

Role Play Worlds

2010-07-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Here again I re-publish a review I did for RPW on the C&M Blog...

I like to see myself as a hitch hiker travelling in the free Metaverse looking for grids to visit and things to see. Well, I spoke to Rock and we both agreed that I should set off and take a look at some role play worlds since that is the back ground I come from. So I hitched a ride on a passing metabeam and materialized in the world of Gor.

I arrived at the Gor Grid only to find it is now called Role Play Worlds. I landed in the reception region that was apparently still under construction and, with no links available, I resorted to using the map to try to find some life. I teleported to another sim and found it also under construction and at this point I was beginning to feel I might be wasting my time but I am glad I decided to barge in on two avatars way off in the distance because this was going to turn out to be better than my first impressions were having me believe. One of the two ladies I accosted turned out to be a builder busily doing her work, I had come across Breezy Kanto who welcomed me and gave me an LM to the Gor reception building on the same sim. Seems I had chosen the right place quite accidentally since I could have gone to any of the 100+ regions on the grid which, surprisingly, did show more life than you might expect from a large OpenSim grid.

I found myself in a gothic chamber and I followed the circular walls to a door and entered another chamber. This one had Gorean information notices informing me of the castes I could chose from to begin my role play. There was a free combat meter available too which I was obliged to wear if I intended to continue. The RPX meter controls what happens to you in world, your health and such and in the next chamber I came to I found the walls lined with assorted weaponry that could be taken free and used to interact with the meter. In other words, these weapons could be used to kill or capture me!

Finally, I left the building and found myself in a market offering both freebies and paid items. There was plenty on offer too but I couldn't buy anything of course. I no local currency. I saw some notices though that said you can pay for your goods in Second Life and have them delivered in RPW. When finally, I got to meet the owner I would learn that RPW is laid out as a number of role play worlds as the name states and the world of Gor is the main one. There is a main reception area and another for each world. You will get all the help you need at the receptions as I did and on leaving the reception you are treated to a themed market where you can prepare and clothe your avatar with plenty of freebies.

Now, I confess, I had already been to the Gor grid once before some while back and had skinned up and dressed in freebies so I was respectable which is just as well because the one thing I hate is landing as a Ruthed avatar. I can't find the freebies quick enough. Yeah, I am vain.

Well, I was wandering about pretty aimlessly until I came full circle back to the reception building to find Breezy and the other woman, Tessa Mureaux. I decided to question Breezy about the grid and she called the leader and had him TP in to talk to me. This was Aramil Ewing. one time leader and founder of the Askari Mercenaries in SL Gor. He told me that this all started out as a hobby when he and friends decided to setup their own Opensim grid. They chose to run a role play based on Gor because that is what they all enjoyed in Second Life but in Opensim they felt they could manage it better and more by the book so to speak which loosely means they make rules and laws based on common events found in the Gorean novels - all 27 of them. Aramil explained, "All of us, well the 90% of the users here has been on SL. I was a role play gamer even before I joined SL, when D&D was done in pen and paper, as well a deoria. Our aim is to develop a planned world, thinking of a true MMORPG."

Aramil called me over to a large map of Gor which is taken from the web and most Goreans accept as a true representation of their world. The map was overlaid by a numbered grid and Aramil said, "We choose that one because the names of the cities are on it and kind of more by books. Still there are some SL add-ons like Midgard, but was a good one to start with. Each rectangle you see there is a sim location so we use it as guide to know where and how to terraform and build the sim located in a defined spot.

I replied, asking, "That is a lot of sims. Do you really believe you can create them all?"

"Yes," he answered, "we already have several ones. Of course is something that will not be filled in the short term."

I fired back, "It will take a lot of people to populate such a vast area. Do you think you can get that many people to come here?"

"We have a group there (in SL)," he said, "The Gor Grid, and recently Role Play Worlds, mostly to keep informed the interested users about the progress but the same community spread the word and invite users to RPW."

So, my understanding from the conversation was that there is considerable inter-grid travel between RPW and SL and, while I noticed there were about 14 people actually on the grid at the time of my visit, it was clear that the numbers fluctuate considerably at the moment but there are times the numbers rise sharply so this is due in no small part, I think, to their maintaining strong links and contacts in SL. It also accrued to me that this may well be the pattern for RPG and other gaming ideas, people will maintain strong links with SL while they build their grids. In deed, I can imagine a gradual exodus of Second lifers finding their way to the free Metaverse via role playing connections. Some may chose to grid-hop and play in both worlds while the numbers who stay permanently will depend on how Opensim develops and the advantages to be gained. Certainly, there seemed no lack of enthusiasm on the part of Aramil to create a world that would give the Gorean community, at least, what they might be looking for and not finding in Second Life.

Aramil offered me a tour and with three others in tow we set off and on a walkabout crossing sim borders, climbing hills and visiting camps and outposts. Along the way I asked, "tell me. Are people role playing?"

He answered, "lot of them are building but always there is time for rp."

"Building has taken up much energy..." said Jet Racer, who had been tagging along with us, "but there has certainly been roleplay."

At this point I asked about the slaves, whom Goreans call Kajira, "Do you get many Kajira coming over from SL?"

Aramil laughed and said, "Yes, the major population are Kajira and you can see this by the polls on the web site."

Next we came to a port with a dock and several ships moored up. "Ok, this is another thing in our grid," said Armail in his slightly broken English as he stepped onto the dock. "Some (of these) ships that tp you to exclusive points on mainland like one to the north, the other to the vosk region, the other to the south and from there you need to travel. What we plan is to block intersim teleports once the grid is more filled so in rp you actually need to travel and that encourage rp. People will travel by foot, (fly) tarns and (sail)ships, once vehicles work properly on opensim, etc."

"Will that confuse people first time they arrive?" I asked.

"When people arrive, they will land in a General Welcome Area that is on the build and they will find the info needed there and from there to each world welcome area so before they reach mainland (the rp continent) they will have all the info and tools."

"Try to board the ship." he told me, "and choose mainland in the menu. Each one of them take you to a far away area of the continent. The idea is in time have ships drived by users to transport them along the world."

He turned now and headed off up a path with the rest of us following and after a long trek uphill we arrived at Black Stone town and here Aramil informed me that a major aspect of their RP would involve taking and holding locations such as this one.

Aramil explained, "One feature of rpw are the fight to keep sims. This town is one of them so any group can take over the place and keep it while they are able to defend it. Imagine yourself as a free woman of this town and the admin and the guards are defeated by another group, so you will be now under a new admin, and it is up to you how to rp that scenario. This is the way to encourage more realistic role play."

We set off again and Aramil pointed, saying, "ok if we follow that path. You will cross all the northern lands to the west and will find a path through the forest to the south we going west to the crossroad but to walk the mainland will take a lot (of time) and one thing we are tying to keep is to make the terraform the most natural and realistic possible so we are going down a mountain and you will be actually going down, and you will experience that all grid wide."

We had arrived at Tovaldsland and I was informed this is another sim to keep if you fight for it. Armail then said we can go on to the city of Ar now and to get the picture of Ar in the mind I recalled reading the book, Tarnsman of Gor in which Ar is described as the leading city of Gor and famed for it's many cylindrical towers.

And sure enough I beheld the towering cylinders rising above the city. Breezy proudly explained the amount of work going into the city's construction.

"It covers 9 sims," she said, "It will be most glorious."

I could certainly tell heart and soul were going into this work as I took to the air and flew over the city. I landed on a platform and took a look at the designs on huge post prims. On the ground stood a large model of the city too and I looked around at the city and couldn't help being just a little awe struck.

I loved the city yet I found myself regretting I had not come to the Gor Grid sooner. I would have seen the old city of Ar and the pictures Breezy gave me reminded me of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It had suspended walkways high up in the mist spanning between the towers and the colours were not so bright. It had the feel of Steam punk, slightly Victorian yet modern and I could imagine the great Tarn war birds flying over and landing on the tower perches.

I have posted more images of old Ar here.

Shortly after I arrived at the arena and was treated to a show of arms by Aramil, Jet and Tessa. This prompted me to ask about their combat meter, the RPX system. Aramil filled me in...

"ok, when we start, we was thinking on use some of the meters that users was used to, so Qapla offer himself to bring it to RPW and develop with us a system we has been working on paper since the beginning. But his schedule is kind of busy, and was delaying us, so we decide to give priority to it and develop it in our own (time). So BlueWall Slade, start to code what we had on plans and create a starting meter, and that is what RPX is atm."

He continued, "now Rpx is not going to be like the meters the users are used on SL, given the fact that we can manipulate the servers and merge it with the platform itself. Lot of things will be managed by the meter, not just combat."

I now asked if they supported the basic idea of a hypergrid with connecting worlds. "aye we do, that's the future of the virtual worlds" he replied, and went on, "We have plans for some Sims to be HG so people can come to rp from any grid they reside. You should see how we are building the continent, so you can have a better idea of the concept we are managing for Gor, and the future worlds. Several good things are on develop and will be release soon, and we know for sure, the community will love it."

Gor in Second Life is noted for it's inter-sim raids, stealing of slaves and trading. I though how fantastic it would be if there was raiding from one grid to another and I'm sure it will happen because I already know that there are start-up Gorean sims elsewhere across the hypergrid.

At this point I wondered if they might be developing some special features. I was thinking of RLV which is Retrained Life Viewer used with Open Collar LSL code in SL and the fact there are slaves here I thought about the restraining collar they might wear. so I asked, "Do you plan to promote a particular viewer with special features. I am thinking perhaps RLV and Open Collar?"

Aramil answered, "Yes Open Collar is on Role play worlds, Tessa can give you more details about it, as she has been with the developer of the collar testing it but so far i can remember, some RLV features work and others still don't. (But) we recommend the Hippo viewer cause is pretty light, don't have prims size restriction, etc."

Tessa Mureaux explained it all to me, "We're still modifying the scripts to get them all working and for now, we need the girls to put them on here, first in the non-script area, for attachment and adjusting.... then to a full script area to recompile the scripts and sync the database. From there, they can go on about their business as normal. As we do more upgrades of both sims and servers, the grid itself, and the collars... then it will be a whole lot simpler. It's matching the right code to the LSL grid for a better sync and communication. For now, the couple animations in the collars do not work but as most of the owners were primarily wanting the leashing option to work, and some RLV functions, so we went ahead and released this rough version."

I smiled and then decided to ask about Role Play Worlds and I put it to Aramil as almost a challenge, "I see you recently branched out to cover role play in general. Is this because Gor is not working out so well?"

Aramil had no doubts that their Gorean venture would succeed and said, "aye, in fact we start to plan and build the vampire and fantasy world. Mostly cause the environment help us to build it quick but our goal is to manage several themes and build them planned and organized."

"But then the question I have to ask is, with all the work involved running the grid, new releases of OpenSim and trying to manage many themes, will the Gorean part suffer?"

"oh not at all," he insisted. "Our baby is the Gor world."

See Role Play Worlds home page here

Sim Pricing:

Slave Sim (3750 prims) =30$ setup fee + 30$ monthly tier
Master Sim (15000 prims) = 30$ setup fee + 100$ monthly tier
Slave Package (2 slave sims) = 30 $ setup fee + 50$ monthly tier
Peasant Package (4 slave sims) = 60$ setup + 90$ monthly tier
Homestone Package (1 Master sim + 8 slave sims) = 100$ setup + 300$ monthly tier
Merchant Package (2 Master sim + 7 slave sims) = 100$ setup + 350$ monthly tier

As I took my leave I couldn't help feeling a fondness already for these intrepid builders of Gor. I wasn't sure about the other role play worlds they had in mind to create. I figured it was best left to another time when they had got a new theme going but none the less I was convinced they would make the best of Gor. In Second Life Gor is big but fragmented with many Sim owners imposing their own interpretation of the books which is a constant source of dissent and drama. Here in RPW there is but one rule book and one meter and, moreover, the world is laid out according the map of Gor. There is no duplication of Sims either as found in SL. You can rent one of the cities here or, if you can't afford to, then there is nothing to stop you getting together with friends and forming a clan of Panthers, Outlaws or Mercenaries and using your RP and combat skills to capture and hold a Sim for free. That, in itself is a unique concept.

I really believed in what they are doing and given that Linden Labs have in the past snuffed out this kind of creativity with their erratic pricing policy it was good to see people building like this, and knowing they have the chance to do it better and bigger than can be done in SL.

I was invited back to role play and you know what? I am tempted. I think Aramil and his team are here on the free Metaverse to stay.

RPW Gor

Radegast and the A.L.I.C.E. bot

2010-07-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

I wrote about the Radegast text chat client for Second Life and Opensim way back at the start of the year and it was pusblished on the Chaper & Metaverse Blog but now I am re-pubishing it here so I can pick up on recent developments I has a small hand in.

Radegast is a light weight text client that can connect to Second Life and Opensim grids. I have tried out a number of these clients but this one grabbed my attention because it is rock solid stable, packed with features quite apart from chat handling, and something extra which has proved to be a very useful tool. It has a plugin for the A.L.I.C.E. bot.

I was able to turn an avatar into an AI bot very easily which I thought might be useful on my Second Life sim as a greeter. More especially I wanted to program my bot to help and inform new arrivals. To this end I have to find the AIML files in the Radegast directory on my hard drive and edit them with what I want my bot to say. AIML script is actually a derivative of XML and is not hard to learn. Basically, I need to edit the definitions in the file's paterns (what the user might say) and templates (how the bot might respond). For example:

{category}
{pattern}TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF{/pattern}
{template}{/template}
{/category}

I have read elsewhere that people have actually used the bot for other purposes and scripted LSL attachments to control the avatar which will be my next task. I would say the bot could do a lot more and certainly I would use it in my Opensim grid when I eventually set one up (maybe). In practice I found the bot can only respond to a visitor if they use the bot's name but if they IM the bot then it will engage in conversation without the name.

Given that Radegast is a light weight with no view of the 3D world, it certainly has more features than any others of this type I have seen. Here is a list:

Chat (local, IM, group, friends conference and voice in version 1.12)
Inventory (allows manipulation, deletion of the items, moving them around, sending to other people by dropping item on their profile)
Ability to wear/take off clothes and attachments from the inventory
Backup of all scripts and notecards from the inventory
World map (very fast implementation using Google maps)
Object finder - list objects nearby, sort them by distance, name, see details
List of all avatars in a region (radar), and those within 300m in nearby regions
Movement controls via arrow keys
Support for activating gestures from the inventory
Avatar appearance - others using 3D client will see you appear correctly, and will not be able to tell that you're using a text client
Streaming music

The fact it has a plugins button opens it up to more tools and features. One I suggested on the forums could be an AIML editor so the bot definitions could be worked on directly in the client and tested but I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. I did actually speak to Grant, the creator of MakeAiml, via his forum and he said he was interested in making a plugin and will look into it. MakeAiml can be downloaded from http://makeaiml.aihub.org/tutorials.php. Radegast can also run the Looking Glass viewer from the tools menu if you download it. The client actually provides the chat and all the other features while Looking Glass renders the 3D world using Orge (see review of Orge elsewhere in this blog). Looking Glass is in alpha state and personally I see no use for it. For me Radegast's strong point is the bot which really doesn't need a full view of the world but it is interesting and yet another example of open source creativity in the free Metaverse community.

Images of Looking Glass with Radegast

Time to re-visit my Blog...

2010-07-14T09:32:00.000-07:00

I have been to busy with other projects to post here recently and the writing I have done was actually posted on the Chapter & Metaverse blog. I wrote about Radegast, Role Play Worlds and posted a rant about those who would patent code that should be contributed to the Open Simulator Project. Well. I don't want to neglect this blog too much so I will be re-posting my articles here as well to bring the blog back up to speed.

As it happens I have a lot to say about Radegast since I originally posted about it. I suggested to the creator of MakeAMIL that he might code a plugin for Radegast to allow a user to write their own Bot files. To my delight, this was taken up by Grant at MakeAMIL and with the help of the Radegast developer he did do everything I suggested and it was a fine result. So, I am going to review Radegast and MakeAMIl again as soon as I can.

For now, as I said, I will start to post my set of articles from C&M.

Stay tuned...

Getting Around...

2010-02-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

At the start of last week I came across an article published on Diva Canto's Blog where she appeals to those who build on top of Open Sim to not patent their code. I learnt from the article that the core infrastructure of Open Sim is being put in jeopardy and could lead to it being strangled at birth. I was sufficiently troubled by this to write a piece on it and submit it to Chapter & Metaverse for publication. Well, it caused quite a stir which, to put it mildly, I was too ill-informed to deal with. However, I am used to dealing with rude people so I carefully worded my response but the brunt of the attack came from someone that was only too willing to give me more information to arm myself with. In fact I was prompted to dig deeper and found out quite a bit about this person and their involvement with OpenSim, In Worldz and Open Life. I am tempted to write about it but not without more research. Anyway, see the article, Free Metaverse vs Patented Monopoly You might find the comments interesting.

Moving on from that, Rock (the blog owner of Chapter & Metaverse) agreed I should go off and review Role Play Worlds which was right up my street. So I set off into the hypergrid and landed at RPW which I already knew was the home of the Gor Grid. In fact I had been there a while ago. Anyway, I enjoyed that visit and got all the gen so look out for a major review from me on C&M.

I actually wrote a long piece and edited it back a lot but I did get all that needed to be said down and some great pictures. I was particularly struck by the city of Ar which, in the books of Gor, is described as the leading city of Gor and famous for it many cylindrical towers. I did dwell on it some and when I was shown pictures of the old city that this new build was replacing I actually preferred it and wish I had seen it when I first visited. The old city reminded me of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. It had suspended walkways high up in the mist spanning between the cylindrical towers and the colours were not so bright as the new build. To me it had a Steam Punk feel to it, slightly Victorian and I could imagine Tarn war birds flying over and landing on the tower perches.

I couldn't add too many old Ar pictures to the C&M article so I have put the remainder here...

Fritz Lang's Metropolis

RPW Gor

Hitch Hiking in the Metaverse

2010-01-31T19:09:00.000-08:00

What? I haven't written anything for my blog in days,,, erm, over a week! I must try harder but actually darlings I have been writing. I wrote a piece for someone else's blog,,, actually.

The blog in question is Chapter & Metaverse and I wrote about Radegast, the light wieght text client that can connect with either Second Life or Opensim grids. You see I was fascinated by a certain plugin it sports and got all fired up with the idea it might serve as a greeter for my Second Life holdings. But do check the article because I wont go into it now. I will cover Radegast again later when I have had time to learn how to program the bot to say what I want it to say.

I have been getting around the forums some too when I was not busy scripting in SL and have been trying to educate myself on the in's and out's of Open Simulator and have fired off a few questions to forums in my wake. I found out there is no longer active support for MeerKat viewer which is a shame for it has some unique features I haven't seen in other viewers. I was intrigued by MeerKat's inter-grid teleporting method that actually makes it possible to TP straight from SL to an OS grid and back provided you have an avatar registered with the destination world. It strikes me as not just a useful feature but actually quite an important one if the free Metaverse is to expand and draw people from SL.

MeerKat features

It is hard to keep up with home life and waltz around the Metaverse at every given opportunity. Not to mention the fact I am actively engaged in scripting a role play and combat meter for my SL sims but somehow I manage it. I will go into meter project along the way but the main thing on my mind currently is shall I or shan't I invest in an Opensim holding. I have come a long way from my days in chat rooms and I really do want to make something in the Metaverse and, given that Second Life is grossly over priced for what is, after all, a hosting service, Opensim would give paupers like me the chance to build something much better. I mean, in SL I can only afford a Homestead with a meager 3750 prims, 20 avatars max' and limits on scripting. I need a full sim and the fact is I can get one hosted in OS for a fraction of the cost in SL. The down side, of course, is that OS is still beta and is likely to remain so through 2010 and beyond. But it has come a long way from my original splash in the pool eighteen months ago.

When I first went to OSgrid I found I couldn't get hardly any of my scripts to work and, while I could build okay, I really felt it was not ready to invite friends to come join me there. I did manage to get a door to open and one or two other things but, at the time, getting an AO to work would have been a luxury, and, I tell you what; I am so damn vain there is no way I was going to waddle around like a duck!

Fortunately, The AO problem is now solved since more functions have been added to the LSL programming and I can walk with grace again. And nice little wiggle too.

Talking of wiggles that brings me to the Emerald viewer and bouncing boobs and I am glad to see more and more functions are being added to the open source viewers. Particularly things that help reduce lag in the 3D world. Radar for example. I am a whore for viewer and I have to try than all but, while I still have a love affair with the very unstable MeerKat, currently I have found Rainbow viewer, Imprudence and Hippo are my mainstays. Imprudence may have inter-grid teleports in the next version but I am not holding my breath. Jacek, a dev at Imprudence did answer my question on the subject and did offer some hope it will be 1.3 but at least she didn't say no to it ever appearing. Seems there are some technical problems that need to be dealt with and just taking it from MeerKat as is can not happen. Fingers crossed!

Back to Chapter & Metaverse I will write for Rock's blog again and there are a few Opensim grids I would like to visit and review so I will probably write about those as I continue to hitch hike my way around the free Metaverse. Stay tuned.

Making Avatars

2010-01-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

After reading about Evolver on Rock Viscara's blog, Chapter & Metaverse I could not resist taking a look and I was thrilled to find I could create an avatar for free and bring gifs images here to my blog to show off.

I could have used a life pic of myself to which the software can model a likeness of me if I wanted but I was happy to have a quick play and create the animated avatar you see above. Evolver can be used free or you can buy the software to do much more and export it to a format that will be used in your prefered 3D world.

Journey into the Metaverse

2010-01-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

It must be 10 years or more now since I started using the internet, probably a little longer since I can't remember now how I got started. I think I saw it demonstrated in a mall. But, whatever, something prompted me and I signed on with AOL using my old Win95 PC. I do remember in those days you had to pay for every minute online so I didn't use it much and too often I couldn't get a page downloaded even when I did surf the web. But, eventually, I did find something I really wanted to use but for the cost of being online too long. Yahoo chat rooms.

I am a social animal so I quickly found myself wandering around the various chat rooms making friends and generally having a little fun gossiping and hurling abuse at trolls that never seemed to say anything but "ASL" (Age, sex and location for the un-initiated). My ignore list grew rapidly.

Soon enough I had made a social network but something was missing while all the time I was actually practicing exactly what it was that was missing from my experience. Role play.

In lots of ways I was role playing and generally being silly but at the time I didn't see it as role play. I saw it more as light fun and doing something while saying something. I might have picked up a rock and aimed it at some trolls head just before he got the iggy from me. I might have entered the chat room and pounced some friend or emoted hugging them. So there was lots of ways I was role playing but it was not exactly a game; not a role play game with a back story to it and rules that is, but I was acting out what I was imagining doing while I spoke to people. And, in that sense, I was already travelling in the Metaverse.

For quite some time I remained in Yahoo chat and eventually looked at the Arts and Entertainment rooms where I discovered 'real' role play going on. Indeed, there were many user rooms titled with such names as the 'Scarlet tavern', 'Golden Dragon's lair' and some more sexually orientated rooms like the 'Slave Auction.' Well I checked it all out of course. How could I resist?

What I had discovered was 'Aynee' (an abbreviation on Arts & Entertainment). It was incredibly popular with a huge number of chatters and I, with my vivid imagination, could experience the atmosphere of the rooms from some of the brilliant descriptions chatters added to their stories. I really did have a sense of being there in the setting. There were Elfs and Drow, Vampires and Werewolves. Pixies and Wizards. I was lost in a fantasy world of the most incredible make believe.

Eventually, I was drawn to the Adult rooms in another section of Yahoo and discovered Gor and BDSM. Well, I was not turned on in the least by BDSM and some of the rooms I did find really quite disgusting. But there were rooms that actually should perhaps have been in Aynee since they were much more given to wide rage of role play scenarios. Gor can be seen as BDSM but it is based on the SFI books written by John Norman about a fantasy world on the other side of the sun and never seen from Earth because it moves round the sun at the same speed as Earth. Well, the basic story is that Aliens abduct young girls from Earth and take them back to Gor where the aliens permit human Earthlings to live out their lives in a backward culture where survival of the fittest is all that counts. It is a male dominated world where women are seen as slaves just by virtue of their gender. You would read that those women that are free, are so because the men allow it and it is too easy for a woman to lose her freedom for any number of reasons.

I ventured to Gor and very soon I was captured and made a slave, or Kajira, as they are called (Yes, Gor has its own language drawn from the books). But the reason I site Gor is that it has a rather beautiful side to it's culture. The settings or cities are always incredibly exotic with beautiful architecture and gardens. The Goreans call their homes and, indeed, their cities, Homestones. So it was that I found myself in a chat room of a group of Gorean males which we called Master,,, always Master, and suffered assorted punishments for the most minor breaches of slave etiquette. I guess I discovered the submissive in me at that time yet I can't deny how intrigued I was. The posting and descriptions were really quite exceptional. Anyone that has read the text of a Kajira dancing for her Master will know what I mean.

But I also played other roles as I gradually learned how to role play and this continued for a year or two until I discovered 3d chat rooms like 'Active Worlds.' Naturally I had to try it and it was my next step into the Metaverse. Now it was not just words and descriptions but actual immersion into a 3d environment. I had an avatar to represent myself and wandered around blocky landscapes and equally blocky buildings that seemed to take forever to load into my screen. Blocky it might of been but I was addicted to it.

In time I got DSL and a better computer with win98 which improved the experience no end and then I discovered Second Life which my graphics card couldn't handle very well. I upgraded but it was still hopelessly poor and yet I knew something was there for me that I really wanted. I had been reading Necromancer by William Gibson and had a hankering to play cyberpunk so there was no way out. I had to get a new PC with XP and a decent graphics card.

Now I was really on the path to the Metaverse. I have to say though, I didn't find much Cyberpunk, least not in the way I imagined it. It had moved on and become Steampunk but I did find Gor was already well established in Second Life. I was drawn to it of course because their world was exactly what I expected, harsh, exotic and highly active. And I knew Gor well so it was a good starting place for my role play.

In time I learned to make clothes and even build. I even learned to script so I spent a lot of time in SL and probably spent far too much money. But, you can't get enough of what you really enjoy so, for me, it was worth it even if Linden Labs rightly deserves the name of money grabbing profiteers that has very poor customer service and charges the earth for what is, after all, a hosting service that, in any other sphere or activity, would cost you much less. But Second Life was and still is a captive market since they have a well developed economy, huge content and massive traffic. Indeed, SL is a virtual monopoly.

I have been in SL for over three years now and I guess I know it as well as most and better than many. I don't think I am or could ever be tired of it but new things are on the horizon and as I take my first steps into the expanding Metaverse I want to write about it and take others with me on my journey. I will learn as I go and what I learn I will pass on in these pages. I don't intend to get all techie either. That's not my way. I will write about my role play experiences just as much as my discoveries in the Metaverse. I want to let my imagination run riot and absorb everything that will fire it. I will write about the means as well as the experience.

So, fellow travellers, come let us venture into the Metaverse.