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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Walking With Avatars in Virtual Reality

Recently I posted a topic about virtual reality headsets and glasses to Opensim Virtual, the Google Plus community pages for sharing information about the free Metaverse and said I would certainly prefer these rather more stylish glasses illustrated on the cover of Clyde DeSouza book, MAYA  than the

present Oculus Rift head set, and wouldn't it be nice, I added, if it was equipped to read the wearer 's brain wave patterns to enable hands free keyboard and mouse functions? Well, it so happens that brain wave readers, or Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been around as long as those old cumbersome head sets used from the 1980's onward to explore virtual reality. Even back then great big expensive embedded electroencephalograph (EEG) readers were used in the laboratory to send neurofeedback to equally expensive mainframe computers for analysis. But now there are relatively cheap head sensors and software that could be adapted to work with the Oculus Rift and the other new headsets in development.

Emotiv Insight, developed by Vietnamese emigre, Tan Lee and funded by a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign raising $1,643,117 recently, is a "sleek, multi-channel, wireless headset that monitors your brain activity and translates EEG into meaningful data you can understand" according to the makers. It is expected to start shipping in early 2014 and will be compatible with Android, iOS, Mac, Linux and Windows Platforms. The company will also be supplying an API and SDK for developers and researchers.

Picture Credit: Emotiv Insight

Basically, the Emotiv Insight can do exactly what I thought would solve the problem of hands free control while experiencing virtual reality. You just train the Emotiv Insight by thinking and making facial movements. The makers say, "the brainwear can understand and decipher basic mental commands. It can detect commands such as push, pull, levitate, rotate and even commands that are harder to visualize such as disappear. It also detects facial expressions such as blinks, winks, frown, surprise, clench and smile."

Couple all this with advanced haptic devices such as Fundawear, the high-tech vibrating underwear developed by the Condom manufacturer Durex which stimulates intimate parts of the body at the touch of a button, and you have all that is needed to engage in long-distance relationships over the Internet in a shared virtual setting.

In the novel mentioned above, MAYA, the author refers to Dirrogates, or Mesh-clad digital surrogates inhabiting a virtual space. They are not really the same as the characters from Neuromancer by William Gibson who where cybernetically enhanced humans that could "jack in" to cyberspace and when you consider some of the technology I am discussing here you can't escape the cross over between what is real and what is virtual. I mean, some of the headsets do actually allow one to mix realities in that the real world is overlayed on the virtual to whatever degree the wearer chooses and we, as 

Movie: Neuromancer. Credit: Interplay

users of the technology, will be closer to Molly Millions of Neuromancer fame than the Dirrogates of MAYA. We are perhaps more familiar with the term "avatar" though which we use to represents ourselves when we don a Rift and an Insight sensor to experience virtual reality. Whether we are able or disabled we would now be able to interact on equal terms with anyone, anywhere in the world. We could work, live and play and even experience sexual pleasures with the aid of devices like Fundawear and, to some degree, a certain level of danger and shock horror too. With mind control, advanced visuals and haptic devices we can indeed sit back and inhabit the Matrix.

This all holds out exciting possibilities for virtual worlds like Open Simulator or the many others. Opensim is, in my view, well placed and already feature rich enough to take full advantage of the virtual reality equipment that is fast becoming available and, moreover, anyone can pick it up and start to use it in anyway they want. No doubt, the online sex industry will take a lead and why not? Second Life was built on Adult themes. Educationalist that have flocked to Opensim since Linden Lab canceled the discounts they enjoyed may not approve of adult entertainment in Opensim grids but they lived with it in Second Life for years and had no control at all. At least with Opensim they can exercise a level of control unheard of in Second Life so they can isolate themselves much easier from it.

The future looks exciting!

The march of technological advancement is relentless and, judging by the truly amazing stuff in development mentioned above it remains only for me to list some of the headsets starting with the one's I think hold out the most promise...

Former Valve engineers Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson have launched a KICKSTARTER campaign to fund development of the castAR, a 3D augmented and virtual reality headset. The castAR system bridges the gap between the physical world and the virtual world. The final retail glasses are expected to weigh less than 100 grams, which is only slightly heavier than a pair of 

Credit: Technical Illusions

sunglasses, and requires no calibration or adjustment. If you wear prescription glasses, castAR is designed to sit easily on the outside of them. The aim of the designers is to make castAR the most versatile head-mounted display available. They also offer an attachment that transforms castAR into a true virtual reality system as well as a true augmented reality system. Whichever reality you prefer, there is now a single system capable of taking you there, they claim. The company, Technical Illusions, launched the KICKSTARTER campaign to raise $400,000 and it has already gained 1,086 backers pledging $260,821 with 30 days still to go at the time of writing this.

The castAR system has been quietly in development for the past 18 months while Oculus Rift has enjoyed the limelight. However, castAR looks more sophisticated and, together with other headsets about to come onto the market in the new year the Oculus Rift team might be hard pushed to maintain their present lead. In any event I should watch this space because Linden Lab, owners of the Second Life virtual world, are keen to support Oculus Rift according to CEO Rod Humble and maybe are looking for a project to buy up themselves. Linden Lab has been busy diversify their product range in the past few years since Humble took over and has released a number of video games as well as adding video game development features to Second Life. They have also bought up Desura, the game distribution site and my guess is they would surely like a virtual reality headset to add to their product range as well.


Not to be out done a bunch of students have demonstrated yet another virtual reality system which uses Oculus Rift together with PlayStation Move for positional tracking and Razer Hydra for in-game control. However, the weight load is high as demonstrated by Richard Mitchell at IndieCade 2013. "All the components are self-contained with a backpack and a helmet," he said,

Credit: Richard Mitchell

posting to joystiq, "meaning there are no wires to trip you up, allowing you to actually 'walk' inside of virtual space. I took Project Holodeck for a spin," he went on, "trying my hand at some virtual zombie slaying, and the experience was certainly unique." So, the system needs a backpack, a helmet with huge post device on top which I'm sure dirty minds out there will find amusing, and finally Oculus Rift to provide the viewer experience.

However, as I said, there are more headsets in the running now and Maria Korolov, writing in Hypergrid Business, has listed a number including Durovis Dive, which offers 3D Virtual Reality Gaming on a Smartphone, Eyedak vrAse who also ran a KICKSTARTER campaign to raise $55,000 back in August.

 

Avegant which, they say, "your eyes no longer have to focus for themselves the gadget does it all for you." According to Avegant CEO Ed Tang, this effectively mitigates the problem of eye strain, and makes the device easier to wear for extended periods of time.

Credit: VUZIX

Finally, Maria lists three others which are aesthetically more pleasing but appear to lack the functionality that makes a true virtual reality headset. These include Sony HMZ-T3 Personal Viewer, Vuzix Wrap 1200AR, and the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED.


 




If the free Metaverse takes your interest then find out more at Google Plus Opensim Virtual

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Extreme Adult Virtual Reality, Oculus Rift & Opensim

It would appear that Oculus Rift has attracted the adult sex industry, which could be taken as a sign that this new technology is definitely going to become big. Sex sells and without it Second Life would probably not have done so well as it did. In fact, the adult section of SL still does appear to be the grid's main growth area while it steadily loses regions otherwise. On the other hand the free Metaverse is not attracting much in the way of adult grids yet but maybe Oculus Rift will help change all that in the near future as Opensim develops further and wily entrepreneurs realize the low cost and other advantages of Opensim to bring immersive virtual sex games to the adult market online.

Sinful Robot, which has become Wicked Paradise for Oculus Rift is one such game and is set in a world where all erotic fantasies are lived in the virtual at a much deeper physiological level due to the highly immersive nature of the technology. Opensim has features which, if properly exploited, could serve the adult trade in a variety of useful ways. Opensim has NPC (none-player characters) for example which are actually proving to be very effective with scripted AI giving them a life of their own. They are cloned from existing avatars so are indistinguishable from other avatars in the scene and, as sexual partners in an erotic fantasy,  NPC's could be adapted for erotic purposes with very little extra work. In deed, NPC avatars might actually be more appealing to guys who worry over the true gender of the online partner they just met in a virtual world. They know, at least, the NPC words and actions are just pre-coded responses to what the user is saying and doing.

Oculus Rift is funded by a very successful KickStarter campaign
to the tune of $2,437,429 when the original
goal was just $250,000.

Van den Bosch, the man behind Wicked Paradise has said Storyline is very important. he told Oculus-Rift blog "We want to generate erotic tension between the player and the virtual characters. You need a solid storyline in order to achieve that. It will be a modern day setting, I think the best way to describe is like an adult version of Heavy Rain but completely designed for virtual reality." Van den Bosch let it be known he has wanted to bring an adult game to the market for a long time "but in the past playing strip poker with Japanese robots was as good as it got." he said. He noticed that there is a lot of fantastically crafted shooters so why not a well-designed adult video game? he thought, and it was when he got to test a very early prototype of the Oculus Rift which, he told OculusRift blog, "blew me away. I immediately realized that Virtual Reality is the perfect medium for a highly immersive adult videogame."

Linden Lab let it be known earlier this year they want to support the Rift and enable the technology in their viewer which might happen later but CtrlAltStudio’s David Rowe, an independent virtual worlds developer, has already released a forked version of Firestorm viewer for owners of the per-release development Kits to experience Second Life and Opensim worlds. However, Rowe told Hypergrid Business blog there are presently some limitations to overcome. "because users are wearing a headset," he said, "they can’t see their keyboard. Asking them to use arrow keys to move around is simple enough, but if they need to type, or enter keyboard shortcuts, it can be hard to do blind." Touching objects is also an issue and, because the viewer uses arrow keys to move, this presents some slight difficulty with the Rift which uses mouselook to change the viewing direction.

Whether the adult use of Rift will find serious use in Opensim worlds is impossible to say at this stage but a lot also hangs on the quality of scripted objects in Opensim like sex beds and toys, and also personal wearables like slave collars, leashes and cuffs which form such a huge part of adult activity in Second Life. Up until recently scripted sex objects in Opensim were still troublesome and lacking the polish found on the Linden grid but there has been a lot or improvements in Opensim in the last year or so and the LSL functions are pretty much complete while Opensim also has it's own scripting functions in the form, OSSL scripting and more specialized functions for NPC's in the form OSSLNPC. In fact, Opensim NPC's are arguably more advanced than anything that Second Life has and users are making considerable headway with AI and ALICE bot to give the NPC'very life-like responses. I have bot's that dance on request and will hold a limited conversation and even recognize your avatar's gender provided you wear a simple HUD which the NPC can communicate with to obtain basic information. It will even remember you and your name if you tell it to the bot. It will also recognize some or your actions provided you use the "/me" function to describe them. I have one bot serving at a bar and another at a table who can actually activate a table function so a drink of choice - the drink you asked for -  will appear. When the drink appears it can be touched and a copy is delivered to your inventory so you can wear it on the hand to simulate drinking, thus completing the picture. It doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to envisage much more sexual activity or even something like a casino croupier dealing the cards and taking bets.

Wicked Paradise will be heavily influenced
by the erotic nature of the
Mass Effect videogame series.

Van den Bosch is developing an adult video game which has predefined aims and goals to arrive at some form of sexual gratification for the user and undoubtedly Opensim NPC bot's could do all that and look good too with mesh skins and clothes but Opensim, like Second Life, is much closer to social media than a video game. Generally, there are no predefined goals in virtual worlds and most things happen on the fly. People meet, socialize, possibly role play, then might engage in cyber sexual activity for which the Rift can add a deeper, more immersive experience. Presumably, some individuals can get close to a pretty NPC bot too. However, to date, attempts to get adult grids going in the Opensim worlds has not been greatly successful. Some have come and gone and most recently at least one Gay community opened Virtual Gay Kingdom and a femdom community, Avalonia Estate Grid where strong women dominate willing male slaves. There is also the moderately successful, Littlefield Grid  which started out in OSgrid and the owner, Walter Balazic still has portal regions there. Littlefield is a BDSM community and stands as an example of development by getting involved with the wider Metaverse community. This is how you get more traffic and, while Second Life can and does provide a steady trickle of the curious which helps to swell the numbers, it would probably help a new adult grid to spend money on serious advertising on the net with targeted Google adds and advertising on the forums and social media that virtual worlds users tend to frequent.


Opensim is open source and so it is completely free to use but traffic will not come to your grid without you expend considerable effort in promotion and expense in advertising. But there are clear advantages in using Opensim and not just it's low cost. It is free from Linden Lab's Terms & Conditions which rule Second Life and has become increasingly restrictive. You set your own Terms or TOS and if you enable Hypergrid access the latest Opensim server code ensures avatars can travel from one grid to another with their full appearance. You will gain visitors and you don't even need to force everyone to registers. In fact, controlling registration while having open borders has special advantages in helping stop griefers.Sex sells! That is well known and it probably drives about 60% of Internet traffic. Oculus Rift looks like adding an exciting new dimension to virtual worlds and video game companies are getting seriously interested. Virtual worlds are well placed to take advantage too and the cost is not that great. It is still early days and the final production model is scheduled to go on sale in the spring of 2014 so plenty of time to set up a grid and adapt features suited to the use of the Rift, especially in the area of adult entertainment.

Into The Free Metaverse...

If you are planning or contemplating setting up your own small world or full grid then look in on the Google Plus community, Opensim Virtual. There you can learn more about the free Metaverse and promote your grid free of charge. Opensim Virtual is a large community of Opensim users from across many grids and  standalone worlds. They are a friendly bunch and very helpful to new comers. I set up Opensim Virtual at the end of 2012 in order to learn more about the Metaverse community and discover it's true extent. I must say, to my delight, Opensim Virtual has been very successful and presently the largest Opensim community on Google plus. Many grid owners promote their grids and tell us about events and role play they support. There is plenty of News to keep up on Merchants too tell us about their virtual wares. Some grid owners have their own G+ communities as well so we are developing across many grids which is in keeping with the whole idea of Hypergrid and a free Metaverse. Come join us. You'll be welcomed!

See my top links for more pages of free textures, resources and vendors with both free and sale items on offer. Check out the Metaverse link to and search for grids and worlds of interest.

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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 Lag: Let's Do The Time Warp!

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

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


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

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

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


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


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


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


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

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Kinect. It's all Happening!

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

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

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

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

The future is defiantly on the march!