The Metaverse Coming to a Web Page Near you!

Just recently there was mention of a browser based virtual space on the Google plus Opensim Virtual community which piqued my interest because such things have been promised again and again over the past ten years but nothing ever really came of it. However, a topic was posted by Nara Malone of the Opensim Greyville Writer's Colony at Nara's Nook grid where she said a member of her community, Neo Cortex has been developing a Unity based client with the goal of merging Opensim and Unity to make a hybrid system designed with a focus on storytelling. I found it really interesting but there was a comment by Magnuz Binder who let us know he too was working on a virtual web world using ThreeJS and NodeJS as his preferred coding languages. This prompted me to take a closer look and, believe it or not, from what I learnt I had my own web based world online and working in just three days from scratch. I was pretty excited!

Talla's Virtual Space on a Web Page named after her grid, Farworldz
Use mouse to pan the screen and arrow keys to move avatar

Admittedly it is a very simple portal world but my final version had basic movement, a blobby avatar that responded to keyboard controls and a simple text window for chatting. Naturally, I wanted to find out if others could access it so I gave the address to friends and to my delight some of them found it and left messages on the chat window and said it loaded quickly and was easy to use. It is still online (see above) so feel free to check it out and leave a short message. I might do more with it as I learn but in its present form it still serves as good example of what can be done using open source code snippets and learning the basics of Node and Three javascript.

Not just satisfied with my own effort I wanted to know more about other recent developments and from Selby Evans I learned that a new platform based on that same code has been developed by Evie Marie (SingingGirl) who works with Bill Bright out of the Opensim Life grid. The platform is WebWorlds3D and Selby has his own web world based on this code called CyberLounge.

3DWebWorldz.com

Opensim Life is dedicated to education and art. Bill Blight said he was not interested in selling content or offering freebies. He is content to handle the Opensim server and support Evie in her work. He said, "She is the brains behind the webworld part, it is her baby from the ground up , I just beat up the servers once in a while."

I pressed Bill a little more and he replied, "Well again, the Art and Education aspect is all SG, she is the one with the Masters. I'm a code monkey  who swings a big hammer. My grid is focused on people, not commerce, it is a passion project, something to keep me busy. So Art, Education , Entertainment, all things that bring people together is what I/we focus on here."

I liked what they have done but they still have a way to go. I visited the web world as a guest and looked around. I had no problems, the page loaded quickly and I could touch things and interact in a limited way but a whole lot more than I had managed with my version. The avatars are not that great though - a bit stiff and woody but easy enough to control and walk about. I understand there is a company behind all this which is the A2Z Smart Group LLC who are  offering to set up a platform for people with embedded code to place it on a web page. 

National Geographic offers an example of NodeJS for Mars, The Red Planet

Anyway, I also learned that Misterblue (Robert Adams), who is a core developer of Opensim focused on BulletSim which is a port of the Bullet physics engine, has also worked extensively on an infrastructure for a virtual world on the web. His projects include Convoar, an Opensim OAR file converter, Basil for displaying web worlds and Herbal3D, in which the various web world projects he is working on are pulled together.

I was interested to note from Robert Adams research that one of his aims was to build an architecture around creating a web viewer where a High Fidelity avatar can stand next to an Opensim avatar in the same space. And, from recent comments by Philip Rosedale he too spoke of the same design goals.

  

SpotOn3D steaming to a web page

Looking back though, there has been a number of notable attempts at building a web viewer and one of the first caused some controversy when SpotOn3D applied for a patent on the open source code that streamed an Open Simulator world to a web page. That, however, was never a true web viewer like Cloud Party which came later. Cloud Party was developed by some ex-Second Life developers and though it was relatively successful it was taken down when Yahoo bought it out and the developers went to work for them.

Cloud Party on the web

There were others too. Chris Collins, CEO of Tipodean Technologies developed a Canvas web-based viewer and, around the same time, others including Rezzable produced a Unity-based web viewer for Opensim and Katalabs demonstrated an HTML-5/webGL web viewer. Much later there was high expectation from German-based PixiTec who demonstrated the Pixie Viewer which functioned very well and even featured building, mesh with mirrors and 3D printing as an option. Even Kitely, at one time, said they were interested in working with other developers to build a web-based viewer but nothing ever came of any of it.


I recall also that the US Army under the MOSES group were working on a web viewer for Halcyon (the InWorldz fork of Opensim) so I asked Balpian Hammerer, a developer at Discovery Grid that had worked on Halcyon while at InWorldz and he gave a less than enthusiastic reply "They were in the design phase, and the idea was the leveraging of WEB objects to render a scene instead of using a viewer app. I am not enthusiastic that this approach will lead to anything better let alone more efficient. There is much to be said to writing performance critical code as close to the OS native graphics layers especially in limited performance devices like tablets and phones. Too many layers burn cycles which drives up the system requirements. Generic code tends to run much worse when in resource constrained environments like, for example, the 5+ year old computers typical of OpenSim users."

That said recent work by Robert Adams, Evie Marie and others like Neo Cortex and Magnuz Binder and Dahlia Trimble raise the prospect once again that a useful web viewer might be on the way where the Opensim user community can benefit and see their cherished platform's life improved and extended well into the future.

Imaging it, teleporting from an Opensim world to High Fidelity or SineSpace and all done on a web page. Now that would be my idea of what defines a true Metaverse and I think it would do justice to Neal Stephenson's definition in his 1992 Sci-fi novel "Snow Crash" where, to quote Wikipedia, humans, as avatars, interact with other avatars and software agents in a three-dimentional space that uses the metaphor of the real world to describe a virtual-reality successor to the Internet. 

Web Game: HERACLOS and the quest he never asked for

Play Fillory, a fully interactive fantasy game on a web page

FOOTNOTE: I have to confess I knew Dahlia Trimble had been working on a web viewer too and I should have asked for an update. My mistake because, while I was unaware Dahlia's work in this area was was continuing I never the less should have checked. Fact is Dahlia has a very advanced demo and posted it to Youtube very recently and, to quote, "Stress testing a WebGL/emscripten build of one of my viewers with lots and lots of prims. This is a live OpenSimulator 512x512 megaregion on my test..."

Watch the video on YouTube

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Crossing Virtual Worlds: The Elf Clan from InWorldz to OSgrid

When InWorldz grid collapsed it left a lot of residents homeless. In fact, they had just four days notice the grid would close so very little time to pack up and take what they could. Fortunately, they found plenty of welcoming Opensim grids only too pleased to take them in. Few returned to Second Life so it was of great interest to me to find out how some of them were settling in.

I had heard of the Elf Clan fantasy group before and I was aware they had been a strong supporter of InWorldz almost from its very early days. I contacted Wayfinder, an Eldar of the clan, and he told me the founders of Inworldz were friends of his and he could have joined them as a founder himself originally but he chose not to. However, Second Life was proving just too expensive for them and Inworldz would turn out to cost a lot less. He told me "While it was virtually unknown at the time, we saw potential in the grid and decided to move there."

I asked if they had considered returning to Second Life after Inworldz closed and the response was an emphatic no and he continued, "We never really considered returning to Second Life. Well, we did:  the answer was a unanimous, resounding no.  The prohibitive costs and one-sided TOS makes that platform what we consider to be a 'bad investment' for non-profit, themed groups.  Understandably Elf Clan has had enough of bad investments."

I wanted to know why they decided to move to an Opensim grid but I though it would be better to find out more of the history of the clan first and Wayfinder enlightened me, "We started out on Second Life in November 2004. At that time SL was still relatively small.  I originally intended Elf Clan to be a friendly 'small family' of Elves.  We started out with 12 people in the group.  Within a couple of weeks we hit 50.  Within a couple months we reached 500 (this was at a time when the largest fantasy group had 100 members).  We were the first fantasy group to reach 1,000 members. Elf Clan's unexpected growth was unprecedented (it surely surprised me).  It was pretty much a snowball that just kept rolling.  Before long I was the unintentional founder of the largest themed group on the grid, and I was still pretty much a newb."

When Elf Clan joined Inworldz it consisted of 14 regions, 13 of which were company-owned. Special arrangements were made with the founders to obtain "early-adopter" region discounts, for which they would help promote the grid (a common practice in the computer field). "Elf Clan came to Inworldz in May 2010 and brought their friends and those friends brought their friends.  Within 30 days Inworldz grew to 200 regions. Within 60 days 500 regions. They hit 1,000 regions by the end of the year. The snowball effect all over again." Wayfinder said.

"We hadn't really considered leaving Inworldz prior to its collapse." he went on, "While there were some significant problems, all grids have problems.  Inworldz itself was visibly declining, but Elf Clan was in the process of a membership / land push and had grown 33% in just 90 days.   We were thriving as  group when the sudden news came that Inworldz was going offline-- somewhat crushing news to all of its members (to put it mildly)."

Elven Forest

Returning to the matter of why the Clan decided to move to Opensim I asked if they knew much about it and if they were familiar with Hypergrid and he answered, "I thought we did... but we really didn't.  In a way the closing of Inworldz has been a blessing for our group in that area.  While we were doing reasonably well on Inworldz, things felt somewhat "stagnant" due to the declining population, exiting merchants and lessening active participation.   We were not well-acquainted with Hypergrid and considered it a huge security risk.   That is what I now consider 'closed wall mentality'".

"Once people open themselves up to the concept of creating and giving things to others for the joy of it (or selling, whatever one wishes)... the Hypergrid opens up a vast world of adventure." he told me, "There are still a lot of things that need to be ironed out (I am personally not a big fan of the "suitcase" concept). Both OpenSim and the Hypergrid are growing.  It is far from perfect... but then after all these years group chat on Second Life still doesn't work properly.  So in all things, one accepts the negatives along with the perks.  I am absolutely thrilled with the idea of VARs, OARs and IARs.  Moving beyond that limiting 256m postage-stamp land limit is wonderful.  (256m is fine for a personal home land, but one does like to stretch out a bit.)"

I understood Elf Clan is a group of associates rather than a particular RPG in itself so I asked about the set up and the various associated groups that do organize role play and he explained, "Elf Clan started from the beginning as a themed group rather than role-playing.   That was out of desire to provide people a more relaxed environment in which they could "dress up" but not necessarily portray a part.  We eliminated the requirement to be "in or out of character"... and just let people be who or what they chose.   This created an atmosphere where people felt more like a friendly community and have lots of fun "shape shifting"-- being whatever character they feel like at the moment.  Myself for example:  I play the part both of High Elven and a tiny dragon... depending on my mood that day.  Both parts are very different in personality and I am told I significantly "role play" both parts... but to me it's more like pretend and just having fun.  I naturally  tend to take on the personality of the avatar I am wearing, so enjoy the concept of "theme" rather than specific role play.  Many of our members feel the same-- which is part of what attracted them to Elf Clan."

DWAGONS KEEP

...Elf Clan decided on a G-rated, family-friendly mode from the start... which surprisingly attracted a lot of people.  To this day people comment on that being one of the reasons they stay with our group:  they like that kind of environment.  We started out as a Tolkien-style fantasy theme (with a bit thrown in) but over time have expanded that theme to include other areas of fantasy, science fiction and Steampunk.   Considering the nature of those genres, that gives people a lot to choose from in setting up their lands and avatars.

...We have had affiliate groups join us in the past.  Most notably is the WAAUGH!... a group of Orks (note: Orks not Orcs!!!) lead by Big Boss Schlitzie Martini.   They latched on to Elf Clan almost the moment we set up our first sim, were (by their own claim) the first inhabitant of Elf Clan lands-- made it their home land and over the years proved to be our greatest allies (Elves and Orks, who would have imagined?).   We have to date enjoyed three great wars with the Orks, during which great fun was had by all.  Of course the Orks won all three wars.  Just ask them.

...Other role playing groups have been Chanwood (medieval fantasy based to my understanding), and while not currently part of Elf Clan itself: Star Trek Experience... who have been good friends for quite some time now.   Now that Elf Clan is expanding to the Hypergrid there is the possibility of more individual groups becoming official affiliates of Elf Clan.  All that is required is to abide by the Elf Clan Charter (present on our website), and hang a banner at the landing point.  Beyond that, each land owner is sovereign over their land, as has been the way since the beginning of these virtual worlds.  They are free to choose whatever theme, role play or genre they prefer within the published family-friendly guidelines.  We even encourage special requests if a new theme is desired.

Have you started to establish a network across Hypergrid with other Elf Clan role players, I asked and he replied, "Inworldz has been offline for a bit over five weeks... so we're still just trying to set up the foundation of things.  It took us some time to research other grids and learn about OpenSim, the Hypergrid, VARs, OARs, IARs etc... which was fairly new to us in detailed concept.  Bit of a learning curve, but not bad.   However we have set up an affiliate program presented on our website (http://elfclan.spruz.com) and people are starting to join that program."

I understand you had help from Digiworldz and Kitely but what made you decide to set up in OSgrid, I asked and again I got a detailed reply, "The folks at Kitely, DigiWorldz and 3rd Rock all three have been very friendly and welcoming.  We could not have asked for warmer welcome, better assistance, or people who answered our questions with spot-on tech... not to mention just basic friendship.   We hope to have our members set up affiliate regions on all of these grids."

...Regarding OSgrid... the most unexpected thing can press the right button at the right time.   Long-time Elf Clan member Koni Lanzius had been only partially-active on Inworldz Elf Clan for quite some time.  I knew she had set up home lands on OSgrid and was spending most of her time on that project.  I had visited them from time to time, but it was in earlier days, the lands were laggy, very buggy, and I was still Inworldz-closed-grid mentality.  I honestly never paid it much attention-- although in reality she was accomplishing some amazing things there.

...After Inworldz self-destructed Koni mentioned, "You know, you could set up your own region server on OSgrid and have total control over your lands... and own a VAR as well."   That's all it took. The light went on, the bell rang, and for the first time (now that we were looking for an alternative to Inworldz)  I decided to check in to it.   I asked her to give me a tour of her lands once again (ElvenWorld).  When I saw what she had accomplished there I knew that OSgrid would work for our needs:  that of setting up Elf Clan's home lands with total control over our historic group assets.  We had a meeting of the Eldar and it was unanimously agreed.   In addition the Eldar then discussed the needs of the rest of our group.  We realized our members all had different requirements, different desires, and that we were no longer locked into one grid.  That is when we realized we could set up the Elf Clan group on multiple grids and expand everywhere.  For the first time in our history, Elf Clan is no longer "land-locked".   Our group is a concept that can exist on any grid and our members travel by means of the Hypergrid.   That has been a most liberating experience.

I was pleased to learn the Clan had settled in OSgrid which I think suits them given it is a community share and share-alike grid with plenty of Hypergrid traffic. I set out from my own personal mini grid at Farworldz to visit the new Elf Clan regions and took some great pictures as you see. Some are of Elven Forest were particularly good and I learned from Wayfinder that Elven Forest is a part of the ElvenWorld VAR owned by Koni Lanzius. "I am pleased to announce she has registered those lands as the first of our affiliates-- with the Elf Clan Welcome Banner at her landing point." he said.

I am personally thrilled that Wayfinder and the Elf Clan have settled in an Opensim grid that is open to Hypergrid and I have to pay tribute to them for their ability to keep going despite the let down's and huge expense they have had to suffered. Perhaps now they are free to control their own destiny in the open Metaverse they will flourish and go on to greater things. I'm sure they will and they certainly deserve it.

The Changing Face of the Opensim Metaverse After InWorldz Closed

What I like about the Opensim Metaverse is that it's constantly changing while Second Life, being a walled garden with an increasingly  restrictive and self-serving TOS, has begun to stagnate as it slowly declines. I would liken Second Life to a declining protectionist superstate while Opensim has become a growing collection of medium and smaller worlds with upwardly mobile populations that travel the Metaverse via Hypergrid, thus forming a greater market for virtual goods, services and entertainment. 

This has been made more evident with the sudden collapse of the walled garden InWorldz grid just recently and the displacement of a it's rather large population. What we are seeing from this exodus is that very few people are returning to Second Life or seeking out other walled garden grids like InWorldz. The vast majority are voting with their virtual feet and most are settling in the larger Opensim grids that are open to full Commerce and Hypergrid travel.

In my article at the turn of the month "Ex-InWorldz Staff to Launch New Grid" I broke the news that a new grid, Infiniti was being set up that will be run the way many of those now on the move wanted the old InWorldz to be run. Infiniti is not InWorldz II but I did report that when InWorldz closed due to financial problems, Beth Rieschel and those close to her did say they aim to set up a new world just like the old one, same management, same user data and as much inventory as they could save.

Well, the new InWorldz grid is now under construction and has the domain name, islandzvw.com. I was told it is registered in Panama but whois states it's a private registration. Beth Rieschel moved to Panama recently but anyway, the new grid will be funded by those who pledged money for the original Go Fund Me appeal that was meant to save InWorldz. The decision to use those funds to start a new grid was taken after it was clear InWorldz could not be saved and, while many withdrew their pledge complaining the money was not meant for a new grid, those close to Rieschel agreed they would support the new venture. Currently, the new grid management headed by Rieschel is beset by IP rights issues as they try to grapple with the filtering process to insure no content legally not entitled to be on the new grid is there.

Meanwhile, Infiniti is offering a limited 'alpha/beta associates' program for content creators. I've kept in touch with the planning team headed by Lecktor Hannibal and he tells me "Our technical members have been hard at work setting up the grid and making sure coding is on level for accepting new guests."  Well, it is open and will be accepting new registrations soon. The grid address is infinitigrid.com:8002/ and I visited via Hypergrid and met with Lecktor who is hard at work on the project. There was not much to see yet but a basic arrival platform and some free avatar vendors. I shall keep in touch of course.

Going back to the exodus from InWorldz, the grid that has taken the most settlers to date is DigiWorldz and, once again, I am grateful to Terry Ford (Butch Arnald)  for the information he was willing to share with me. By the August 8th 108 regions and almost 400 new users had been added to the grid since InWorldz  posted they were closing. Terry said, "Most users from InWorldz seem pleased with our grid's performance with many saying we have far less lag than InWorldz had. They are also 'Amazed' at our support with many saying they have never been helped so fast. Many are very happy with our pricing and the time it takes to have their region ready once they place their order, in most cases we have the region online in under an hour, sometimes as fast as 5-10 minutes. They are also very happy with our community and how friendly and helpful everyone is."

I wanted to know about grid performance but before moving on to that it's worth mentioning that DigiWorldz were the first to offer a money back guarantee and they still do. Also, they use both PODEX and Gloebit currency but leave it up to the individual region owners to decide which to use. Terry explained, "Some new users are confused when they have D$ (PODEX) and they visit a Gloebit region where their D$ goes to $0. That takes a bit of explaining, but once they know all they have to do is go back to a PODEX enabled region and their money will return, they are fine. We've had several of our new users ask for Gloebit instead of PODEX, but I would guess a percentage of less than 10% have chosen Gloebit." I also asked about Hypergrid and he told me, "None of our new users have asked to have Hypergrid turned off in their regions, but we will do so if asked."

So back to performance, Terry said, "We hit a 'High' for us last week as we had a total of 150 avatars online. Our system, thus far is handling the traffic and the loads just fine and we are not seeing any issues and are ready for more. We may, at some point need to upgrade our core storage to ensure we will have plenty of room for growth, but this was planned well before the closing of IW." He also told me they always keep extra servers available to use if they are needed and this practice proved itself very well with the sudden influx recently.

DigiWorldz Metrics: Standard Regions: 6395, Avatar Accounts: 7204, Traffic: 2390* 

Ilan Tochner, Co-Founder and CEO of Kitely grid, reported a 300% spike in recorded Kitely Market Sales on August 8th in a blog article that showed a sales graph. He said "Users that moved to new grids began restocking their avatar inventories. InWorldz didn't allow its residents to use Kitely Market, so for many of these users this is the first time that they've been able to buy from our marketplace." and he went on in the same article, "We saw Kitely Market sales begin to rise on July 26, a day before InWorldz shut down. The graph below compares sales from the week since InWorldz shut down, to the average weekly sales in the three weeks before that. Kitely’s own grid experienced the biggest growth in absolute numbers, but DigiWorldz and Discovery Grid experienced the most growth relative to their previous sales levels." Kitely Market can deliver automatically to all Hypergrid-enabled grids just as easily as Second Life market place can deliver in-world to it's residents.

Commenting on the same Kitely blog, Snoots Dwagon of Elf Clan, which had been big in InWorldz from it's early days, said, "We lost a BUNDLE on that grid. Wanna speak out-of-pocket: my group spent some $150,000 over 8 years with Inworldz just on land. That doesn't count for inventory and avatar purchases. So yeah, we're "out of pocket" a whole lot." And he continued, "Both Kitely and DigiWorldz have proved themselves bend-over backwards friendly in helping us get back on our feet. Kitely features privacy and web-control tools, DigiWorldz features open lands and interconnectivity. Both grids went out-of-their-way to help us learn how OpenSim and Hypergrid works, how VARs are set up, and help us figure out how to understand this (for us) totally new environment. They didn't do that just because we're "Elf Clan"... they've been doing the same thing for individual members. I'm talking about personal service, standing right there and showing you around and answering questions."


Kitely Metrics, Regions 15854, Avatar Accounts: 105087   Traffic: 1267*

(not counting the higher number of people visiting the Kitely Market website).

It has been reported in a poll on Hypergrid Business that very few refugees returned to Second Life which shows the level of commitment and, in deed, confidence the people currently on the move have in the Opensim Metaverse. Even the none-commercial grids like OSgrid and Metropolis which are the biggest community "share and share-alike" grids have taken in a small number. These grids do have a high user traffic and thriving communities with a lot of private land mostly run on home PC's so not up to handling more than a few users at a time. Most function well enough though but others are hosted on external grid services that offer greater bandwidth. That said there are some very popular venues on OSgrid such as the Maritime Club in Virtual Belfast. There is always life at the Lbsa Plaza too where people arrive when visiting for the first time or, using Hypergrid teleport, this is often where the travellers land. And look out for the Summer of Arts on Metropolis grid.

Metropolis Metrics, Regions Online: 793, Avatar Accounts: 17587, Traffic: 3440*

OSgrid Metrics: Regions Total 5482, Avatar Accounts: 123774, Traffic: 4524*

It should be noted that the way Opensim takes account of metrics is a mixed bag and it has always been difficult to try and get a total count on all the hundred's of grids in the Metaverse because some refuse to show any statistics and others show them partially and in different ways. It makes it hard to scrape the numbers too and so much of the Opensim Metaverse is hidden or "Dark", as they say. That doesn't mean anything sinister, it just means some grids exist without being known about or they are school grids behind a firewall. The big grid owned by Linden Lab has no problem with it's stats because it is all under one roof, the Second Life grid and, thanks to web services like Tyche Shepherd's Grid Survey, We get a pretty good idea of the region count. But with Opensim the grids are owned and run by many different people and companies from all over the world. So it helps to understand that traffic in Opensim Metaverse is made up of both unique logins and travelling visitors where the grid is Hypergrid enabled.

Returning to the commercial grids, Discovery grid was perhaps the first to start welcoming refugees because, as one commenter on Hypergrid Business Survey said, they chose "Discovery. Balpien Hammerer is one of the admin's. That worked for me." And, in deed, Balpien had been in InWorldz for many years and did development work there particularly on physics. His interests include sailing.

They say people go where their friends are and I think that this is well demonstrated with Discovery grid because of all the comments on the HB Survey it appears to be an often given reason to go there. For example, Lamat Lisle said "Discovery, because it is the most promising one in terms of residential use, economy, stability, development and possibilities, imo. A reliable grid, ran by professional and friendly people, a lot of folks I know from old InWorldz and all regions are connected with large waters to sail or fly. Dedicated and skilful work by the developers. Great for physics. Affordable prices for land as well."



Discovery Grid Metrics: Regions Online: 244, Avatar Accounts: 1041, Traffic: 1148*

I have written to Balpien Hammerer and he agreed to answer some questions for me but, unfortunately, I didn't get the reply in time for this article so that is something for another time. Suffice to say that Balpien left InWorldz long before it's collapse. He probably left when others appeared to start leaving when the InWorldz metrics had been showing signs of decline as reported on Hypergrid Business. Looking back I recall Beth Rieschel caused something of a stir on HB at that time when she stopped publishing the active user stats on the grid's splash page. This lead to some copycat reactions especially from Great Canadian grid who's owner also pulled their active user stats and complained of HB bias. But, whatever, InWorldz decline was probably not that great anyway and, as we have seen, the user base still appears to be substantial given the numbers of people re-settling in other grids.

In a discussion with Mike Chase, an ex-InWorldz resident involved with the Golden Touch Dance Troupe, I mentioned that in Opensim grids land is cheap and plentiful - too plentiful perhaps, I would add, because it leaves so much empty space that may be great to explore until you get bored and then you have to find the places where most people gather, or role play or whatever and that means often one has to travel via Hypergrid to the grids with some of the busy regions. The problem for all grid owners is getting enough traffic to get people together so they discover mutual interests and form friendships. And friendships are like glue because, as I said before, people go where their friends are!

Too much empty land is not just wasteful but it is off-putting in my view. Better to have fewer well-developed themed regions that keep people coming back to than have them get lost in the vast wilderness of the good and the bad in region building and design - it wont impress anyone for long. I recall someone telling me in Second Life they liked InWorldz and it had lots of nicely built Game of Thrones regions to explore but she is a role player and never met anyone to role play with. At least, in Second Life, there is still a well established large role play community. And, like it or not, Linden lab's high land pricing actually serve to keep RP land in regular use. There is empty land in Second Life too, of course, on Mainland particularly but most islands are in use. 

Courtesy, Linden Lad Sansar

Linden Lab maintain high land prices which makes it difficult for anyone to own more than a single region. Land Barons capitalize on this and offer regions and smaller parcels. Many Europeans rent because they avoid 20% VAT they would have to pay on top of the tier if they buy land directly from Linden Lab, and that is not to mention the high setup fees they charge. A lot of people just can't afford full sims anyway so it works well for the Land Barons and Linden Lab sits back raking in the money with little effort, given the Barons are always paying whether land is rented out or not. The key here is land scarccity because it is over priced but in Opensim land is cheap and the grid owners are, in effect, the Land Barons. However, it is not hard to run your own instance so this pushes Opensim land value down further and the free Metaverse ends up with a vast number of virtually empty sims as I said above.

Courtesy, SineSpace, Earthquake

Partly for that reason Linden Lab will always be ahead of the game. They had years to build a large user base when SL was new and exciting. Content creators had years to make all manner of content to share or sell and the users had time to grow their personal inventory they are loathed to part with after so many years of collecting and spending their money. Opensim has never had that kind of advantage. Today the free Metaverse has to make the most of Hypergrid, low cost and more freedom. There is no scarcity advantage because land is so cheap.

However, Second Life is still declining slowly while Opensim goes on expanding in terms of land area, and this despite all the new next generation VR platforms like High Fidelity, SineSpace and Linden Lab's Sansar desperate to build a user base, which so far they seem to be failing to do. In deed, it appears they all share many of the same people and those same people turn up in Opensim grids and in Second Life as well. I think it is going to be a long time before a critical mass of people desert SL and Opensim to make a difference.

High Fidelity Reaches a New Record! Over 250 Avatars in One Domain

But, regardless, I still think Opensim can be improved and that will help it survive many more years yet. In my view Opensim needs innovation and, hopefully, some of the people coming from InWorldz will help breathe new life into it and get it on a new development curve that will see serious improvements in speed and features so that Opensim too can be a platform for VR as well as desktop. I asked Mike Chase are there some serious problems porting Halcyon code to Opensim and he said, "Most of the changes would come over fairly easily. In spite of some of the public comments made in the past Halcyon is still basically OpenSim. Much of the internal structure is the same.  There are a few things I’ll touch on in other questions that are more work.  But I think there are some quick wins for assets, inventory, mesh and materials. etc. that might be useful especially for grids trying to scale."

I am leaving the rest of my interview with Mike Chase for another article after I hear from Balpien Hammerer hopefully but my point about creating value added features would give some grids the edge in renting out land and justify higher prices because feature-rich land would be scare in Opensim. Value-added proprietary features will make some grids more inviting too but in-house or paid developers are needed for that and it could prove expensive. Kitely has done this already I might add in the form of its own version of improved var regions and better asset storage as well as numerous code fixes and improvements where some have been contributed back to core and others kept as value-added features unique to Kitely.

Anyone can run a standard instance of Opensim and it is fairly easy to set up but, for the most part, they lack the power and expert maintenance that the bigger grids can provide. I have a basic personal grid and I run it on a VPS with commercial grade bandwidth so it is great for personal use and as a workshop to experiment and script. But I would not expect it to handle sim rentals as well so, in my view, if you want to run a store, entertainment or role play I think it better to go with a leading grid like those mentioned above.

*(logins for last 30 days + Hypergrid visitors)
(technically private remote VarRegion estates on the Kitely grid are Worlds and the Region equivalent of 15854 in land size is 17651)

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Exodus from InWorldz As Diehard Remainers Promise New World

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

InWorldz II is now being actively worked on and those close to Beth Reischl are fully behind the move now the GoFundMe appeal has been stopped after fierce accusations of bad dealing and bait and switch tactics which some claim amounts to fraud. The community is hopelessly split between those that have faith in Reischl and those that have had enough. There is already an exodus from InWorldz under way where residents and merchants are frantically packaging up all they can before the servers shutdown today, Friday 27th. They are moving onto other grids in sizable numbers so I am being told. Meanwhile, the tech-heads among the Remainers are busy setting up new servers and migrating data across including avatar registrations, groups and filtered inventory for those not objecting to the transfer of content to the new grid.

No date has been mentioned for InWorldz II to open but it will probably be several weeks given the amount of work to do. When it does open some may well return so for some of the departing refugees it might be a two-way tip - hard to say really. But there is a lot of bad feeling and people feel put out losing stuff and having to move anyway. The longer it takes to rebuild will also play a part in determining how many will return. But there is plenty of places to go anyway and some grids are already welcoming the new comers and doing all they can to help them.

In a comment on Hypergrid Business, Rene said "We are receiving a goodly influx of IW immigrants in DiscoveryGrid - Most of the IW people coming here marvel at Hypergrid and the ability to traverse the greater Metaverse. I'm sure other grids are receiving IW people, so lets help out the people who chose to move onto OpenSim, show them the places to get started, explain large regions, good crossings, and more. Let's get the welcome wagons happening."

One of several DigiWorldz promotional images for affiliates.

This made me wonder if any of the bigger commercial grids like Kitely Virtual and DigiWorldz were seeing a similar influx so I sent an email to Terry (Butch Arnold) of DigiWorldz asking and he replied, "We have received many new InWorldz users over the past few days. We've added approx. 150 new users to our system since 7/24/2018 and we've also added approx. 42 new regions in that same period." I was quite surprised by the numbers but it may well reflect the extent of the bad feeling amongst IW refugees. Anyway, I also asked Ilan Tochner at Kitely grid, which is well known for it's unique cloud-based worlds on demand, to see if they were experiencing a similar influx.

Ilan Tochner replied, "We've seen a significant number of people migrate into Kitely as a result of Inworldz's pending shutdown. Many of them have been ordering new Kitely worlds and buying items from Kitely Market to start building up their new avatar's inventories. We've also seen an increased number of content creators opening new Kitely Market stores."

Welcome to Kitely Virtual

Opensim code has come on leaps and bounds in recent years and there is a lot more security offered. Kitely has added code of their own too such as proprietary cloud-based Inventory and Asset systems that work significantly better than the ones that come with OpenSim and backup content to multiple datacenters across the world to prevent data loss.  Ilan told me, "Kitely has been open to business since March 2011 and offers 16-region sized private estates (VarRegions) that allow for up to 120,000 prims and 80 avatars for just $39.95/month. We've implemented export controls to protect content creators creations while at the same time enabling people to easily export their worlds to filtered OAR files on-demand." See: https://www.kitely.com/virtual-world-news/2013/06/12/export-permission-implemented/ "I think it's important," Tochner said, "for people searching for a new virtual home to consider the stability and performance of the grid they select for storing their avatar and their land. Almost all OpenSim grids worth visiting are now open to the Hypergrid thus making it less important to select the same provider as your friends as you'll be able to use the Hypergrid to visit them no matter what grid they have chosen themselves."

I asked Terry how he felt about the situation with InWorldz and what he could do for the refugees. He said "It's a sad situation when any grid closes, but especially one with the reputation and history Inworldz has. We are pleased many of the Inworldz users have chosen to try DigiWorldz and we welcome them with open arms. We'll work hard to make sure their experience in DigiWorldz is the best it can be and by all means, we'll continue our tradition of doing whatever we can to help protect the rights of not only our residents/creators, but any resident in any grid."

Kitely Market online & can deliver to any grid!

Kitely also has a very popular Market Place. Here is what Ilan Tochner said of it, "One thing that is important to keep in mind is that if someone wishes to sell in Kitely Market they'll need to have a Kitely avatar to be able to do so as items are added to Kitely Market product listings via direct access to the uploading avatar's inventory and that only works with Kitely avatars. Kitely avatars are also the only ones that get direct deliveries of their Kitely Market purchases into their inventories. Avatars on other grids need to use our Hypergrid delivery system which is less robust." 

See:https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/doc/pages/6914050/Kitely+Market+Delivery+to+Other+Grids .

There are other options too depending on one's desire to do business or settle into one of the community grids such as OSgrid and Metropolis. These grids are well known for their share and share alike culture which others say amounts to tolerance of copybotting and even Communism! It is true they don't have grid currency either but not everyone on those grids thinks or behaves like a Marxist and some do run businesses and sell products for Gloebits which is a universal currency and given that people connect their own instances to the grids they can indeed set up a currency like Gloebit on the server running their simulator. It only takes a viewer with Gloebit enabled to spend money in enabled regions.

Upgrade your viewer for an improved commerce experience.

Outworldz Dreamworld

Anyone can set up an Opensim instance at home or on a VPS server. It is less complicated than setting up Halcyon even. In fact, the Outworldz DreamWorld is a free, pre-packaged Windows-compatible virtual reality Opensimulator system that is easy to install, easy to run, and powerful. It is free and open source. 

You can download it from https://www.outworldz.com/outworldz_installer/

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Zangrid Opens Up Shopping To Hypergrid...

I was interested to learn Zangrid has opened a shopping mall region that is Hypergrid enabled. You can reach it using this address: hg.zangrid.ch:8002:HyperShopping

Arriving at the HyperShopping Mall at Zangrid

According to Rique Giano, speaking on Google plus, Zangrid now has Gloebits currency installed which their host Zetamex Virtual Service Network is supporting. Gloebits were first mentioned by Maria Korolov in a series of articles here & here in Hypergrid Business last year although one article did say hosting firms were split on adopting the token currency at that time. However, it now appears the Gloebits team headed by Seth Alves who spent seven years developing and administering cutting edge systems for Linden Lab's Second Life Virtual World is testing a new module on Zangrid which permits direct purchases, allows cash out for merchants and offers full online accounting for users. I understand Zangrid merchants are giving full permissions on content bought at the mall so visitors from the Hypergrid who buy virtual goods for personal use can take their purchases away with them when they leave.

I visited the shopping mall at Zangrid and took some pictures but I didn't sign up for Gloebits yet. It's hard to say at the moment if it offers a better or comparable service to Podex Exchange and Kitely but it is to be welcomed of course and I hope more grids consider adopting it to help stimulate trade across the Hypergrid. I like shopping at the Kitely online market and having the goods sent to my grid at Farworldz but I also love to browse in shops at Hypergrid destinations when I travel so I'm sure the experience of in-world shopping will be given a powerful boost with Gloebits and it would be nice to have a universal currency rather than having to buy local currency.

I did wonder if a serious currency trader might bring out a universal coin and it seemed to me that Podex who is well established might be the one to do it. I even dedicated a plot on my Welcome region at Farworldz ready to invite Podex to serve my currency requirements which would have left me free from legal worries and all. So, I am interested in Gloebits but more than likely I will still take Podex who have a good reputation anyway. They've been a virtual coin trader in Second Life since 2007 and serving Opensim grids  in recent years. They offer both their own currency and they trade in local currencies so exchanging one local coin for another struck me as quite handy. The only drawback now is they can't exchange Linden dollars any more since Linden Lab imposed a ban on thrid party exchanges effectively cutting off a big part of their business. Podex also deal in Bitcoins which gambling venues like YrGrid offer. However, Gloebits is offered as a universal, or global (as in the name) currency, they hope will be adopted across many grids. Opensim has been growing steadily and the growth is largely Hypergrid traffic so a universal currency might well become big business. Of course, if it becomes big, then I'm sure it may encourage some of the banking and share dealing that Linden Lab allowed in the early years before taking a tougher approach to be sure of satisfying financial regulatory laws in the real world. 

None the less, having a universal and easy to use currency has got to be the way to go if the Hypergrid is to continue to grow. There really isn't anything quite like Hypergrid out there yet although High Fidelity is a possible contender for the crown and what with Kitely market possibly selling to HF worlds in the near future then a universal currency like Gloebits can prove itself in Opensim and expand beyond as time goes by.

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ZanGrid to join the Hypergrid And Other Metaverse News

On the 1st February, Zandramas becomes ZanGrid and the Club region will open to Hypergrid visitors so ZanGrid is set to join the open Metaverse and start welcoming a whole new bunch of visitors. 3rd Rock Grid showed the way last year and, after many months of agonizing on the merits and risks of Hypergrid, and working to persuade their residents that it would benefit the grid, they opened up a number of regions and gave their residents the option to be open or remain closed on an individual basis.

Butch Arnold, CEO of 3rd Rock, said their grid is seeing more traffic since they opened HG and some visitors have registered accounts with us. I told Butch I see your traffic is up some and he replied, "it is indeed.. almost doubled since October." The grid uses partial Hypergrid which blocks most content leaving the grid other than note cards and landmarks. Anything can be brought in of course so that includes deliveries from Kitely Market but Butch told me they are still working on their system.

ZanGrid has the benefit of seeing the success 3rd Rock is making of its entry into connected worlds of Hypergrid and, no doubt, they will look closely at their achievements. In any event, I am certain ZanGrid will see a boost in visitor traffic.

Opensim Virtual Crowdfund Meeting...
 
OV will be holding a meeting for the pledge makers to discuss the current Crowdfunding project to have llLookAt and llMoveTo fixed. 3rd Rock Grid  was chosen by me to hold the first meeting and Butch Arnold said he was happy to offer a venue and any help they can give. I'm drawing up a policy (or charter) to present to the pledge makers which sets out how we will operate the fund. 

Fred Beckhusen’s flying bee. (Image courtesy Fred Beckhusen.)

Everyone is welcome to attend the meeting though but the first part will not be open for general discussion. I want to make sure the pledge makers have their say and get to decide how we proceed. Once that is out of the way then I'll invite the audience to ask questions and engage each other in debate if they wish to.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 9 PM which is 8 pm UK, 3 PM EST and noon PST on Sunday 1st February 2015.

The pledge makers who have confirmed by email are as follows...


Talla Adam (Kitely Grid) $200
Shin Ingen (Ingen Lab Grid) $200
Fred Beckhusen (Outworldz Grid) $500
Selby Evans (Virtualoutworlding blog) $500
Geir Nøklebye (Xmir Grid) $50
Butch Arnold (3rd Rock Grid) $100
Michael Sietz (Digital Worlds Group LLC) $100
Alex Ferraris (Avi-Labs Grid) $100

That makes a total so far of $1750 confirmed pledges and the target is $2000.

Update (2nd Feb 2015): Crowdfund Meeting at 3rd Rock grid 

The meeting at 3rd Rock grid was fruitful and went well. Turnout was about 20 from other grids including all but one of the Pledge makers. They all teleported in successfully via Hypergrid. Apart from the loss of some attachments like hair everything seemed normal and relatively lag free. There is a log of the meeting posted here on it's own page together with a video from Fred Beckhusen illustrating the issues the Crowdfund is being raised to try and address. Opensim United also posted the log and pictures. 

Michael Sietz (Digital Worlds Group LLC) has also raised his pledge to $350 bringing the fund up to the target sum of $2000. I regret no more pledges can be accepted now.

Follow-up news on the Crowdfunding progress will be posted to the Crowdfund-log page on this site so please stay tuned!

 Closed Grids & Hypergrid traffic neck & neck but every way is up!
 
Ever since Maria Korolov published last month's traffic metrics on Hypergrid Business and declared that the Hypergrid worlds now were leading in total visitor traffic I have been watching our own Grid Search metrics closely. Our search engine updates all the metrics twice a week presently and displays a breakdown of which part of the Metaverse is getting the most traffic. Last month, according to HB, the combined closed grids figure was down below that for the combined Hypergrid worlds. But according to Grid Search, which tracks the most active grids, the none-Hypergrid worlds are still leading. In fact I have noticed a recent surge in Inworldz traffic which is helping to keep the none-HG grids up above the enabled grids.

The value of these metrics is questionable however and it has been pointed out that the closed grids display only unique logins while the open grids display both unique logins and Hypergrid visits which skew the figures. What they say is the same person might login at their own grid then visit other grids via Hypergrid thus pushing up the numbers if they get around a lot of them. On the other hand, people say the closed grid owners create large numbers of alternative name accounts and log them in just once a month which also skews their figures too. Other's just ignore all this and look at the trend which is generally positive in any event.

But today's figures were amazingly close regardless. They are as follows...
Total Active Grids: 188

Distributed Regions: 34879
Registered Users: 415096
Monthly Active Traffic: 24802
Est' Daily Peak Traffic: 886
Hypergrid Traffic: 12400
Closed Grid Traffic: 12402

You can take these numbers any way you like but they are drawn from the grid splash pages either manually or by our scraper program. incidentally, I recently made some code improvements so I could start to display individual regions of interest too and I will be looking at the code again with a view to increasing the number of splash pages the scraper can read so we can run it daily. Not only will that save me a lot of work it should be possible to show which grids are online or not.


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