Teapot Test Viewer 1.5 For Opensim Release

Today Armin Weatherwax released test viewer 1.5 which is based on LL viewer 3.3 code and, although this is Armin's personal viewer, he is testing new features that squarely benefit Opensim. In particular the grid manager is being re-worked to dynamically update as new grids come on line and it is hoped eventually the list will be searchable too with some kind of filtering to pull up the grids of interest to you quickly.

Here is the list for changes, features and fixes in this release as published in Armin's release notes...

The coordinates are now shown after the region name which is a feature that will be helpful to Opensim users when deciding where to locate their sims when they connect to a larger grid like OSgrid.

Changes

Armin has added SoaS for Sim on a Stick users at the top

Show the actual grid name in the grid combo (that is the "old" one). Entries now look like "My Wonderful Grid (my.wonderfulgrid.net)", so that you know where you are going to connect to. Sim On A Stick now has an entry in the grid combo. Obviously this will only work if SOAS is up and running :) the whisper/mumble voice module is rebased on mumble 1.2.3 now, which gives better voice quality (but only if all participants are using it) and even less latency. However the Linux versions may not work on any other distro than *buntu 10.04/Debian Squeeze (especially newer ones). I'm working on it (see Upcoming). In the worldmap clicking "copy slurl" on Linux now copies the slurl also to the primary selection, so you can middle-mouse-button-paste it.

Features

Option to show region coordinates in units of regions in the world map. There is a checkbox on the bottom of the map floater to toggle it on and of. However it does't show the coordinates if they are not are not known (returned by the siminfo). Support of the gatekeeper url of the get_grid_info service of a grid. If present teleports to a different grid are performed as hypegrid jump rather than a relog. Note: This needs support on OpenSim side which is still under development, please be prepared that details may change. The UI preview now has a date column, though the formatting of the date is not ideal yet. However it already helps to find recently changed entries faster.

Fixes

Huge memleak in the "About Teapot" floater, which made the viewer crash if the region doesn't have the "ServerReleaseNotesUrl" capability. The Linux 64bit viewer crashed trying to upload some meshes (e.g. the "Seymour.dae" example file of the colladadom library). Note these meshes (collada 1.5) are not supported, just the viewer doesn't crash trying to upload them.
   
Linden Labs TPV Policy

One particular clause in the latest TPV policy statement seems to be saying third party viewer developers must choose between working on Second Life only features or Opensim. This would probably also include grid list and further support for hypergrid and Aurora sim. In view of this, which is by no means certain yet, developers might be force to do one of perhaps three things...

1. Develop for Second Life alone.
2. Develop for Opensim alone.
3. Develop a new two-mode viewer that can switch between both so that each is masked from the other.

Whatever happens Opensim dose need features that support where it's going and the days of following what Linden Lab rolls out for Second Life are probably coming to an end. Personally, I think that might be a good thing but I can see it wont be an easy transition for a lot of people who currently enjoy switching grids on the same viewer. The mode button might turn out a good solution but it will be a lot of work no doubt and Linden Labs may still say no to it. Let's face it they are a big business with huge profits at stake and this Opensim is getting too big for its boots. They have something here they can do to stop it progressing so why wouldn't they use it?

But, ultimately, will it do them any good?

If Opensim has to have it's own viewer then the work Armin is doing on Teapot can't come a moment too soon.

Download Teapot 1.5 here

28th April 2012: UPDATE NOW AVAILABLE. Find Teapot 1.6 on link above.

Teapot Viewer: Developer Working to build New Grid List

  I was please to learn Armin Weatherwax - an Imprudence/Kokua developer - has been working on the grid list. I was given a first look at the experimental grid list functions which Armin has added to his personal Teapot viewer which is based on Second Life 3.3 viewer code. The grid list in the viewer has been replaced with a list populated from the list maintained at Hypergrid Business. Armin said, "The list is converted from the list at hypergrid business. Initially I had the plan to make it more fancy by adding thumbnail pics of the login screens and some css magic. However that's rather not my domain of coding, and the plain list as it is now is a start."

I downloaded the viewer and on the footer is a familiar drop-menu of grids and also a "New Grids" button which I clicked and a small window opened with the full grid list and a note at the top stating 141 grids were found and a warning notice "Note: some of these grids, especially smaller ones, might be not online all day, or, at all." Anyway, I proceeded to click on the grid names from the popup window and the splash screens appeared in the main window displaying each active grid in turn as usual. Some failed with a popup saying address was wrong or the site could not be found. I found a few of those so Hypergrid Business list needs updating or some of the grids were off line. However, OSgrid failed too and I knew it was online so I guess the address on HB is out of date.

It was great to have so many grids to choose from without finding and entering every one myself. I still could add to the list for personal use anyway by entering an address on the footer drop-menu. I entered the correct address for OSgrid and it came up fine but this is just a start and entering addresses wont update the database so if HB list is going to be used in the future grid owners will have to make sure they get listed on that site by contacting Maria.

The list will get longer as more grids come on line and the owners add them to the database. Eventually, the list could get so long it becomes a chore to wade through trying to find a grid of interest. In fact, if the Metaverse keeps growing the list could get impossibly long! There is also the problem that grids are listed by their name which may or may not give any indication what kind of grid it is. Some are obvious like Universities or small clubs and games but commercial grids just use an interesting name as branding like InWorldz, Kitely and Avination. But what does the name say? This is where a Search option could be developed where users can enter keywords to get a shortened list of grids that fit their search words. For example; entering "roleplay" in a search box will filter out grids that don't have roleplay. I would suggest limiting the number of keywords anyway to a maximum of five that describes a particular grid. It would be up to the owners to state those five keywords. If Maria's list continues to be used then it will probably need further development. It does already carry active users stats so the search function could use those to place the most active grids to the top of the list in the menu.

However, Armin has said he would like to develop the login screen something like hgdirectory but a little less playful. Currently it's a static html page and to develop a search function he would need hosting with cgi. Well, that is something I would be willing to talk to him about since I already have a number of servers in use.

I have campaigned for a grid search function for several years so I am more than pleased there is some movement. I think here we have a good start thanks to Armin and I hope others will contribute to the development. I wrote about this issue recently here and I was pleased ZitZat of the Imp/Kokua team took up the matter and has got it on the work bench. Opensim and the open Metaverse needs it's own viewer or at least a greater focus on it's needs. Many are agreed on that and I am convinced the grid search will benefit users and grid owners alike.

Armin's Teapot viewer can be downloaded from here but please be aware that it is not listed by Linden Labs on their authorized TPV site although Armin says it complies with Linden Policy as far as he knows.

Opensim: Building Epic Role Play Environments

After reading Ener Hax's blog article, "building in OpenSim making a rough draft" and looking at one of the pictures I realized I use the same techniques for my own town and city building. Ener wrote, "I need a neighbourhood for Enclave Harbour so that we can talk about environmental science as it applies to homes." As I read on I started to think about my builds in SecondLife when I created several Moroccan style ports to represent the slave ports of the old North African Barbary coast. These were built on Homestead regions so prims were in short supply and I needed to cut corners without spoiling the view. What I did is very similar to what Ener has done in Enclave Harbour. Parts of the build were block houses with no internal structure and just the use of low rez textures which was pretty easy given the sandstone materials used in North Africa. Those buildings that did have internal structure where fairly colourful to reflect the Moroccan style.

Ener's rough street plan

Gaga's rough street plan

When I started building in Opensim primitives were no longer such an issue but what I had learnt in SL about prim would be still applied but it was so good to have more bricks, so to speak, where they were needed. Ener went on in her post, "i only need to worry about making one detailed house. the model home can be different looking and have taller camera-friendly ceilings too. since it’s supposed to feel like suburbia, why not make all the regular houses identical and just change the paint colour on a few? I borrowed Ener's picture which I am sure she wont mind to illustrate the rough plan. Below that is a recent layout of a build I am working on in OSgrid which represents a small part of the American port town of Boston around 1779.

What I am doing with Boston is not exactly to scale or totally authentic but I am building fairly accurate versions of important historical buildings such as the old state house where the Declaration of Independence was read out. Included too is a part of the waterfront seen from and old King street leading from the long wharf of Boston Tea Party fame right up to the old state house. Many of the buildings will be basically shells or even block houses and it is the exterior that is important here especially round the old state house which, in itself, is the most detailed and accurate building including the interior and the spiral staircase.

Seen here a view across the harbour at the rough building layout. The map used stands at the back with many old pictures dotted around for historical reference.

The build is essentially a role play environment meant to offer a base for Continental Revolutionaries from the period. The region, once completed, will be moved as an OAR file to a position in a 25 region mega sim for sailing ( I would love to be able to have done that in Second Life!). Boston will be in the North West and another build I haven't started yet will represent old Plymouth harbour for the British to go in the far North East region of the mega. The objective is to provide a vast seascape representing the North Atlantic where sea battles might take place between the British and Americans.

Still under construction the old state house takes shape and more buildings are starting to rise up around it.

Gaga poses with her handiwork inside the old state house. Here you see her working on the magnificent spiral staircase working from current photos. There remains lots of work on the rest of the Georgian interior too.

View in front of the old state house
about 1779 from which other
buildings can be recreated.

But more is planned since I have already set up one standalone mega on the hypergrid with walk through portals (blamgates) set up on moored ships at the major ports. So, you want to set sail for Gibraltar en route to the Barbary coast then just board a ship and arrive via hypergrid all conveniently arranged. You, in effect, teleport to another grid and can return the same way. This makes vast epic role play enactments possible and could easily be applied to a variety of themes including Sci-fi and fantasy worlds.

Here is the prim built version of the
Paul Revere medieval house typical
of many working class houses down
on the waterfront. Pictured below
you see the original house still standing
and preserved

Boston and Plymouth will remain as part of the Atlantic mega on OSgrid and include pirate islands in the south to represent the old Caribbean sea but, while it offers ample opportunities for role play in bygone times I want to include some fantasy elements in the form of Steampunk so Boston will have a steam pump house in Georgian style and a flying airship that doubles as a portal to yet another mega region representjng Mars in 1779. Yes, sounds strange, and Steampunk generally covers the Victorian period around 1889, but I figured steam and airships were already invented and the science of electricity was starting to be understood - I mean, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein monster (the novel) was not far off and electricity played a huge part in that so why not 

engage some alternative technology to enhance the role play? Besides, the Mars environment is completely separated on its own mega region so players can do both historical Georgian and Steampunk or simply stick with one or the other.

I will write more about this build and its environment as it progresses' and eventually I expect to open it all up to role players. It's a wonderful opportunity that would never have been possible in Second Life on cost alone but even on the technical level Opensim and hypergrid offer so much more to work with. I may even make some of the buildings available to schools that use Opensim for history projects.

I will join Kitely soon too now they have Twitter logins and it's probable I will bring some oars to that grid - Maybe even build Steampunk Venus or Mercury there once they have linked regions that handle border crossings well and/or mega regions at least. They need hypergrid too in order to seriously interest me of course. Anyway, stay tuned griders and travelers!

Here is a market screen - probably lower King Street - that fascinates me for its atmospheric bleakness.

An old commercial building long since gone but typical of buildings that existed around 1779. The traders usually lived above their premises in cramped conditions raising large families

This map which I used is the part of a British Survey map from 1775

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Second Life shrinks as the Hidden Metaverse expands!

Since this time last year Second Life lost 1,384 regions according to Grid Survey but, more worrying for Linden Labs, is the loss of 858 sims in the past two months alone. Now consider concurrency hovering around 60k peak daily traffic which has remained static for several years leaving the grid with no growth despite Linden Lab's claims of over 10,000 new sign-up's per day.  It is clear that people are leaving as fast as they are joining and it is the  creative people, enterprise and educational institutions who are leading the exodus (for example; Rivers Run Red, a virtual design company closed 30 sims and left to join Kitely in the past month). Moreover, if the current rate of loss continues Second Life will loose over 4,000 regions by the end of 2012. In contrast the open Metaverse has seen another sharp rise in regions and traffic according to a Hypergrid Business report "OpenSim exceeds Second Life private regions"

Whatever happens it is clear that the slow decline appears to be gaining momentum and the reasons are not hard to fathom. Linden Lab seems to have been dithering with uncertain priorities since the rot set in back in 2008 during the Open spaces fiasco when the Lab's reputation took a dive they have never really recovered from. Since that time they have consistently failed the residents with exceptionally poor customer services, consistently faltering platform software and the gradual, and to my mind, deceitful undermining of the very premise on which Second Life was built - user participation.

Originally, Linden Labs sold Second Life on the slogan "Your World, Your Imagination" and they built into the system the means to create content and easily capitalize on it by distributing it to a growing population pursuing their own varied gaming and social themes. The Lab provided an economy with token currency and users found they could make money and build business' from selling content, offering services and renting out land. It proved to be a successful business model and the platform thrived.

In recent times, however, Linden Lab's managers appear to have taken a very blinkered course in the pursuit of greater profitability. They don't appear happy to rely on the high land-pricing structure they have in place for sim hosting, nor are they content to earn money off of uploads and other services. The Lab has blundered from one bad decision to another which has left the in-world markets and stores empty while they reap a profit from their web marketplace and they undermine their land market with free homes to gain more premium memberships. What the residents want is a well maintained grid to pursue their dreams and businesses. What they get is instability, uncertainty, profit grabbing and the feeling the Lab could not care less about the residents wishes and needs.

The Hidden Metaverse

The core business of all virtual world operators is the sale and renting of virtual land. Linden Labs earns the balk of it's money operating a vast server farm to run all the sims on their grid and, for the most part, this is how Opensim grid operators make their money too. The operators are all essentially server hosts regardless whether they call their setup platform a grid or admit to being nothing more than a host connecting sims to other grids.

In fact there are a lot of hosts that will set you up in a Hypergrid enabled standalone or connect you directly to some other grid like OSgrid which allows anyone to connect and take part in it's community. Hypergrid Business blog has a good list but, anyway, in the past year OSgrid has grown in leaps and bounds (currently exceeding 11,000 regions) despite periodic culling of unused or abandoned slots (grid coordinates). But, regardless of the culling, OSgrid dose appear to go through periods of growth and decline anyway as communities sprout up then branch out as the owners learn the platform technicalities. Often, after a short "learning" spell in OSgrid we see some create hypergrid enabled standalone worlds while retaining one sim in OSgrid as a gateway. Small satellite worlds have been quietly growing in number in recent years and an example of this would be United Federated Starfleet, a Trekie community.

UFS now supports a grid of 29 regions and a user base of over 700. The Trekies hail from Second Life of course where they still have a community and sell clothes and other merchandise. They branched out to OSgrid a few years back then went on to developed their own grid which appears mildly active. I regularly see traffic of 15 or more on the grid and, of course, these numbers are not recorded anywhere other than the grid itself.

There are many small grids or standalone sims like this - probably in the hundreds if not a thousand or more given the number of downloads of Diva Distro, Sim on a Stick and the core platform code itself. The platform code has been downloaded thousands of times so it is reasonable to suggest that there are thousands of small virtual worlds that quietly make up the hidden Metaverse. Certainly, when you go looking you find them if you search hard enough. The best way to find the hidden Metaverse is to teleport to them via Hypergates and many regions in OSgrid offer stargates (teleporters) that help you on your way but you can type in a grid address anyway and do some traveling. Even better are the type of gate you just walk through and it teleports you to a pre-selected grid. Linda Kellie, the well known content creator who gives her stuff away free has a building on her Airy Bay region which is kinda of like Alice in Wonderland where there are many doors round the room leading to the worlds she has selected for you. All you do is walk right through.

Gaga tries another door at Airy Bay wondering what world she will be teleported to if she dare enter.

In my own travels I came upon Lani Global's world of Dune on OSgrid where those amazing giant sand worms slither across the surface then burst up from the sands with gapping jaws. Lani runs a Sci-Fi role play based on Dune and supporters have built up their own sims in the same cluster. In deed, being something of a Sci-Fi fan myself, I recently added a sim which represents an asteroid on which my spaceship crash landed. Lani's graphic designs are something of a Must-see marvel and there is a freebie store in the Pyramid offering lots of Sci-Fi related content including the LGS combat meter.

Gaga braves the Dune world created by Lani Global

The hosted estates in OSgrid are generally the best resourced and least laggy. Often too, this is where you will find stores selling content for real money using something like Paypal or OMC. OSgrid is serving a growing Adult community too and the managers seem to have become more tolerant to it. In the early days of the grid the managers where more cautious but times have change. I don't know of any gambling sims on the grid although I have seen a few Zyngo type slot machines but the BDSM and Gor communities do seem well

Shock horror as giant spice worm bursts from the sand

 catered for and attracting residents. It's hard to say exactly how OSgrid is going to develop but my guess is that it has a bright future continuing on it's present course. It certainly works as a HUB for the hidden Metaverse and as a learning platform for all those budding builders that come after. I regularly see OSgrid traffic peeking around 200 plus these days and though the community is somewhat floating unlike InWorldz, which has a more stayed community, there is enough support, mentors and help at the Plaza sims to assist noobs settle in. There may even be two factions in OSgrid such as those who encourage the freebie culture and the professional hosting estates, often built on ethic, cultural and language lines. They tend to build their own communities similar to mainland in Second Life then rent out land plots and sims around their islands which often look like their real homeland. The Dutch and Germans seem well represented both on OSgrid and amongst the satellite hypergrid sims.

W.A Fashions at Littlefield.  Gaga shops here for her boots!

The Open Metaverse in general is maturing and Opensim in particular is becoming more stable and feature-rich. There is great opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to build mods or applications for gaming similar to puzzle games and quests as Lani Global has done. Some functions in the German-language Metropolis Grid have been optimized for use on mobile devices like iPhones and SmartPhones. Currently the following functions for smart phones are supported: Grid Status displays online users, News is covered in Metro News and the Metropolis Forum is accessible on the phones too. In the future there are plans to run Metropolis itself on a phone too.

M.A Rentals. One of the vast hosting estates on OSgrid

In the rest of the Metaverse, the walled garden grids which don't allow hypergrid teleports or content to leave their grids continue to gain residents but fortunes are shifting like the sands of time. Avination has seen a decline in the last half of 2011 after it's meteoric rise to leading grid at the start of the year when it had over 1,000 sims and daily peaks in traffic of 300 plus. Since then it has lost over 500 sims and traffic has dropped to peaks around 100. It has been said Avination had more casinos at one time than users to fill them but clearly there were some successful clubs. Many have since closed. InWorldz on the other hand has worked it's way back into the lead gaining sims and user traffic peaking in excess of 200 a day. Both grids are closed worlds for content security reasons so play no part in hypergrid travel and don't enjoy visitors via HG teleports which is unfortunate for their vendors but it is perfectly understandable since they want to attract top class content sellers who don't want their virtual goods copied and resold in Second Life.

Gaga visits the beautiful 1001 Arabian Nights

Infinity Lights Art Gallery

Content security remains an important issue in the development of the open Metaverse and the developers continue to work on solutions. However, It may still be a long time before we see the walls come down and the barriers lifted on the free flow of traffic and content across the whole Metaverse but I believe, ultimately, it must happen and a greater market will open up. Second Life is in slow decline anyway because it's a closed grid and the alternative technology is improving to the point of opening up the Metaverse just as the world wide web was opened up 20 years ago. OSgrid is in a unique position as the test bed for the developers who generously allowed anyone and everyone to connect their sims to it. In my view it has come to represent more than just another grid. I would describe OSgrid as a microcosm of both the visible and the hidden Metaverse in fact since so much of it originates there before branching out. And, mores the point, most of the branching simulators link back just as if all roads lead to Rome.

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Aurora Based Nova Grid Shuts Down

Without warning Nova Grid has suddenly closed and the owner Enrico Ranucci has made no statement as to the reason why. Everyone appears to be left in the dark and I have asked many who might know something. They all say you know as much as I do so, on the face of it, it is looking like a silent closure although I have not heard of anyone losing money yet.

Nova was built up on the Aurora server code and some might have said this was premature given the highly experimental nature of the software. The developers still call it pre-alpha even but that's not to say the platform was not functional. Aurora sim is very advanced and fast. In many ways it is better than Opensim core, on which it is based. But it probably was too unstable for running a grid selling virtual land at this time. One source did say to me that Enrico was tired of the slow progress in Aurora sim development and it's true since Revolution Smythe took time out for his education that the project did seem to loose some of it's focus and momentum.

Personally. I still have a lot of faith in the Aurora project although I am now concentrating more of my time in OSgrid and developing a standalone with hypergrid connection to OSgrid. I still have a server running an Aurora instance but I am a bit disappointed myself too with the lack progress on the ODE physics engine. Currently, Revolution Smythe's improvements to ODE have improved motorized vehicles and aircraft a lot and they work far better than in Opensim but this, in turn, has broken wind sailing which was important to my role play game development involving Pirates and sea battles. Opensim ODE still functions better for wind sailing so in the face of slow progress in Aurora I have switched to working with Opensim again and I will wait to see how Aurora sim progresses. It must be said though, that, from what I have seen on Twitter recently, plenty of code commits are being made to Aurora sim at the present time so the closure of Nova in no way reflects on Aurora or puts that project in doubt.

Here is one of my sailing ships on my Auroroa-based standalone. On first linking the ship together and scripting it she sails fine but soon as I stand up and try again or take it to inventory and re-rez then she delinks herself as you see in the picture while she sail basically ok. On the other hand motor boats and helecopters fly brilliantly! Now, the trick will be to fix wind sailing too.

Enrico started out in Second Life then began renting sims in OSgrid through his company, New Voice. He launched Nova Grid very soon after the Aurora project began and probably relied on the rapid development promise coming from the team. Nova functioned much like OSgrid and anyone could connect their Aurora based standalone sims if they wanted to so a small community had started to develop although I do recall a serious loss of renters when there was a mishap with the asset storage code and a lot of inventories were wiped out - exactly the kind of thing that can happen with alpha software! Enrico was also a contributor and provided a sim on the Nova grid serving as a meeting place and HQ for Aurora devs. There were regular meetings at one time but this stopped back in September. More recently Enrico announced a 2012 offer of a cloud based sim for one year free and had previously reduced sim hosting to as little as $6 a month.

Without any facts I don't want to speculate what went wrong but I sure do think Enrico took on a huge challenge and appears to have been broken by it.

Kokua Imprudence Viewers: Where to Now?

The Kokua developer team has just posted an announcement stating what they now plan to focus on. Here is the list they published...

1. Focus on the next generation Kokua client rather than Kokua & Imprudence

2. Continue to support Linux 64 bit

3. Keep it easy to explore alternative grids (ie not Second Life proper)

4. Mesh support in Second Life and OpenSim

5. Support older hardware

6. Experimental builds

I was, in fact, beginning to wonder if the Imp/Kokua team was on the point of breaking up so it was a pleasant surprise to read the latest news. To be fair they did ask for user comments on what they thought the team should concentrate on at the start of the month but I was very late seeing it which probably reflects how far down in my consciousness they had sunk. Well, I did have high hopes at one time that the Imprudence team would come up with a solution to a pet wish of mine - improved grid manager - and, to date, it has never happened despite some noises during the past two years that alluded to the possibility it was being worked on - maybe.

Regardless of all other options I think it is vital that the Imp/Kokua team maintains and even increases their support for the Opensim and Aurora-based grids. The open Metaverse is expanding steadily and hypergrid travel is on the increase so we need a viewer that gives maximum support. Second Life is well catered for with something like 10 TPVs and the V3 official viewer but the open Metaverse is reliant on just few usable viewers including Imprudence which is probably the most widely used for Opensim. Personally, I think we have to move on now and Kokua is perhaps the best way to go if, and ONLY if, it puts a renewed focus on Opensim apart from support for many of the things expected of a V3-based viewer such as Mesh, Mesh upload, Moap, multi attachments etc. Making it possible for users to configure the UI windows, buttons and menus goes without saying but the kind of support that the viewer can give the open Metaverse should, MUST, include a Grid Search function to replace grid manager where grid owners can add their own grid address, info and logo/image. Currently, all the grid owners have to explain to noobs on their web sites how to add an address and it is probably a serious stumbling block to recruitment.

Here I doctored an image of Astra viewer to include the Grid Hop page open at OSgrid. Imagine entering a search term or key word in the search box I added to the footer bar and pressing the search button brings up the grid manager window with a list of possible grids and sims very similar to in-world search. In this case though it is not a localized search of the grid but search of the whole Metaverse. It doesn't have to be Grid Hop in the window which I used here by way of an example. It can be a completely new search engine that could even collect usage and traffic statistics for display. The viewer could, in effect, bring the open Metaverse together for statistical analysis which it surely needs.

What I would like to see is an improved grid manager with a search function and method for grid owners to add their own grids and standalone sims so new users don't have to add grid addresses themselves which a lot wont have a clue about but rather they can simply enter some key words to find grids of their choice. You need a registered name to login of course but why not allow logins to hg-enabled grids by adding the hg info to the user name regardless? That is, for my name, Gaga Gracious@hg.osgrid:80 for example. The grid manager could do this and I would log into OSgrid at a Plaza without having my name actually registered there (technically, I realize there are problems to solve in this method like obtaining login authorization via a back end data server but I feel sure it can be done). I think this could be the single most helpful feature that would benefit Opensim users and grid owners as a whole. By this method the grid list would always be up to date and noobs would never need to enter an address. I believe grid owners would welcome this feature and promote the viewer since they would be able to direct their new sign-ups to it knowing their grid is already featured and set up to go. No more need for grid owners to get someone to tweak the grid list and release a cloned viewer that does nothing for the Metaverse as a whole but is doing exactly what I am saying - only just for their own recruits. The sort of thing that would suit a grid Like SpotON3D that has no interest in supporting the rest of the open Metaverse unless they are in overall charge and profiting by it.

For the rest of us who believe in a free and open Metaverse where there is room for commercial interests and those who prefer mutual sharing then we need a viewer that is built with features that support multiple grids. The problem is, of course, the developers have their own preferences and ideas about what makes a useful viewer and not every developer is capable of delivering workable solutions to the huge wish list out there anyway. Even worse is that all to often we find that some, not all, but some developers suffer bouts of egotism especially when dealing with one another and cause projects to go awry and even fail possibly leading to a break up of the team. Some have even used their coding skills to hack and do bad things - Emerald Viewer being a case in point. But, with those cautionary words said I do think the Imprudence team genuinely want to work on solutions their users really want.

I have been plugging away at the grid search idea for a long time. Two years ago I asked for it on the Imprudence forum and the response was positive yet nothing has happened to date. In the last year I became involved some with the Aurora development team and the lead developer, Revolution Smythe did actually agree with me and went so far as to recommend work be done on Astra viewer to explore the grid search idea. Rev thought Grid Hop could be used and actually did some work changing the grid manager window in preparation but adding Mesh support seems to have occupied the developers since that time and, while I still get promises that the grid search feature is on the work bench, still nothing has happened to date. So that is where we stand and I can only hope the Imp/Kokua team do actually revisit these ideas.

The open Metaverse needs it's own viewer. That's what I think and sure it can be compatible with SL but the focus needs to be on Opensim grids. Too many developers, and I think some members of the Opensim team are guilty of this too, slavishly follow developments in Second Life as if they were the benchmark for virtual worlds. The grid manager and search would benefit the whole community and be a highly visible statement that Opensim can stand on it's own and become the prefered platform of the free Metaverse.

Track back to Friday, 29 April 2011...

Opensim: Finding open metaverse grids

Second Life Residents Vote to Ban None-Mesh Viewers

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