Linden Labs At War With Opensim!

 

You will forgive me for opening this post with a little dramatics, the rebel flag and all, but read on and you will see why. Linden Labs has been firing shots at Opensim for some while now and I don't just mean a war of words here. The Lab is taking an aggressive stance with direct action now where, in the past, they seemed not to care too much. They were big enough to ignore the upstart. But the story has taken a new dark twist and the knives appear to be out and pointing.

For many month's now we have been witnessing the steady decline of Second Life losing up to a 100 or more regions a week. Linden Labs has lost close to 2000 sims since the start of last year and that represents an awful lot of money in tier payments. In an interview with Botgirl Questi, Zombie Linden agreed that last spring Linden Lab said they were going to cut off access to emerging SL features unless third party viewer developers stopped linking SL customers up with Opensim grids. In the interview Zombie Linden complained, "It didn't make sense to give technology weapons to the 'rebel' grids they could use against us." He went on, "Business is war isn't it?"

Botgirl's Identity Circus: Interview with Zombie Linden on loginURI Controversy

Botgirl reminded Zombie Linden that the Lab use to encourage open standards and wanted other grids to do the same. In deed, Linden Lab was fully engaged at one time under the direction of Mark Kingdom in developing the original inter grid teleporting between SL and Opensim. Hypergrid teleports and the notion of an interconnected open Metaverse grew out of those experiments. However, the Lab has clearly run up a flag of war now, and using language to match. The Opensim grids are Rebels they declare - all 200 of them, or 200 at least known to exist at this time. And growing! Business is war in their words and they are at war with the open Metaverse!

Zombie Linden went on to say the Second Life community is dysfunctional and thrives on drama which, when Botgirl put it to him the Lab would rather stir up drama than worry about releasing new features and fixing bugs, he didn't deny it. In fact he had already said rather cynically, "The more drama we create the more time and money people spend on the grid." He even dismissed Linden Realms as a lame feature!

Opensim Reaction

Reading the log of OSgrid's resident Town Hall Meeting the LoginURI controversy was a hot topic with many points of view being aired. Basically, given the Lab's decision the main issue was what would happen with the viewers and would some developers toe the line and turn their back on Opensim. Firestorm/Phoenix developers have already stated they aim to produce two viewers - one for Opensim and one for Second Life but no one yet knows how rigidly Linden Labs will enforce their policy. It could be the TPV (third Party developers) have to chose which viewer to work on with no option to work on both, even separately.

The issue is, of course, the grid manager and the Labs changes they aim to make in the viewer code to enable client-side Havoc physics. But clearly, that is only part of the argument. Linden Labs want to curb Opensim development because they are losing out to it more and more. Before, while the Opensim server code was still unstable and buggy, the Lab didn't care too much but the platform is far more stable now and easily starting to rival Second Life. Declining traffic to the Second Life grid and the huge loss of sims is taking it toll. The Lab has run out of patience and the directors want action. That clearly comes over in the Botgirl/Zombie interview.

The Second Life grid has been changing too as it declines. A full 12% of the regions are dedicated to Adult content and this includes gambling, a fact probably not gone unnoticed by parents and teachers for Linden Labs, in a change of policy last year closed their Teen grid and allowed children onto the main grid - albeit under supervision. But, kids being Kids and computer savvy they quickly get round restrictions and the age verification process was found to be a total farce anyway.

Linden Labs is obviously pointing a finger at Opensim grids stealing their customers while they should be looking closer to home for all their bad decisions, contempt for their residents, and a shockingly expensive and poor,  service.

Opensim is growing while Second Life is declining and perhaps the single greatest reason is the low cost of Opensim hosting. But there is more, anyone can use the open source software and set up a virtual world for school, business or just a private home, role play game or small club hangouts. Linden Labs could have opened some doors to Opensim people and fostered cross-grid cooperation and mutual support. The Lab could have been at the heart of the open Metaverse but instead it chooses war with it in pursuit of profit. Trouble is, not everyone in the Open Metaverse is bent on commercial interest and the Lab is not up against just another rival company. They are up against many companies and many educational institutions as well as a whole bunch of individuals getting on with their private  and affordable interests.

Dose Linden Labs really want to go to war with people, many of whom are actually still their customers?

Reaction Grid Out. Opensim HG2 & WebGL on Horizon!

Heritage Key on iPad

Reaction Grid has decided to go all out for their Unity3D web platform just when webGL is making it's debut going one better for it needs no plugin as Unity dose and it could stream Opensim regions right into a web page as demonstrated by Cloud Party without the conversation that is needed to put a region in Unity.




I'm not surprised though that Reaction Grid decided to abandon Opensim in favor of their Unity-based Jibe platform because it must be a lot of work maintaining two platforms, doing all the conversations and if the CEO has his heart in one and not the other then this is to be expected. RG has not been upgrading and keeping up with Opensim anyway so it was almost certainly going to happen eventually.

Gaga visiting the British Museum in Heritage Key grid during last year

Last year we saw Heritage key go the same way after putting more and more effort into Mesh for Unity. Originally, Heritage Key ( formerly the Rezable Greenies when they left Second Life) used Unity to put a showcase platform in a web page to draw visitor's attention to their Opensim grid which amounted to a living History Museum. I found HK after visiting their web site where I registered. I remember at the time though I still had to install the unity plugin.

Heritage Key was a pretty good virtual place with many exhibits ranging from Stonehenge to the Terra cotta Army of ancient China. I can't help thinking if they had stuck with Opensim then NPC bots could have been adapted to add even more life to their living exhibits.

The way in which HG set out to use Unity remains a valid objective for Opensim users regardless and the SpotON3D application - an invention taken from the open source and patented much to the disgust of the wider Opensim community (see this) - that streams a background viewer in a web page dose a similar job although you still have to have the SO3D viewer and application downloaded and installed. Ideally this is not the best way to do things though since there is a heavy download initially which, of course, is the put-off to mass adoption. The objective was always to have a basic first look at an Opensim world in a web page with no more than a light plugin application or, better still, nothing to download at all.

SpotON3D Opensim forked clone on a web page

Recently, we have seen the all new Cloud Party utilizing webGL to open a viewer in a web page. The speed with which it has been developed holds out the promise others will develop a similar webGL application for Opensim although webGL is still only supported by Firefox, Google Chrome, etc. Internet Explorer doesn't support it because Microsoft has stated the application is not secure enough yet.



There has been a call to crowd fund the development of a webGL application published on Hypergrid Business which, if anything comes of it, should encourage interested developers to  give it a go. I, personally, would certainly be willing in contributing money but, anyway,  Ludocraft, the developers of RealXtend - who have considerable experience of Opensim - has included a web application in their RealXtend/Tundra Road Map 2012/13 which aims to put work into the project this fall. Here is a quote from it... 

Bring Tundra to web via a NPAPI plugin - June-September 2012, 1-2 man months Compared to alternative ways to target the web, the NPAPI plugin route is relatively easy and feasible to implement. Some limitations have been identified (due to Qt and Ogre), but the code can be adapted to take these into account.

Their aim is to support their own flavor of Opensim of course which is the RealXstend platform and they are also aiming at the smart phone market but it remains to be seen if their work can be adapted for Opensim in general or even if they will do the work needed. Certainly, webGL dose hold out a lot of promise and there is a good chance that Opensim regions will make an appearance in a web page before too long and when it does I am confident it will boost traffic to the Opensim Metaverse.

Second Life look-alike, Cloud Party webGL viewer

Ideally, I think a webGL application need not be too heavy and I see no need for building tools or the many, many features available in a full viewer. It really doesn't need to offer anything more than the ability to render the scene reasonably well, allow avatar movement and a chat window - perhaps some limited view of a choice of complete outfit changes to view and wear all with a click. A decent AO built in for either gender goes without saying but the visitor should not have to learn too much. We want them to see the world and interact with it and even Hypergrid Teleport around. Once they are familiar and sufficiently immersed they will get a viewer to be able to do more and, in deed, use the grid search function to find more grids to visit. This is my vision how it should all work.

Hypergrid 2

Back in April, Diva Canto (Christa Lopes), joint developer of Hypergrid with Melanie Thielker of Avination Grid, said she expected to be releasing HG2 by the end of the summer so this month of August could be it. It's going to be an interesting experience and I for one am mightily curious how it is going to work.

What we are expecting, apart from a more secure inventory structure, is for content creators to be given the choice whether the content they make, give away or sell can leave their grid or not. Once objects are allowed to leave a grid then their is a high chance they will be copied and possibly redistributed or even sold in breach of the creator's copyright. However, with HG2 putting the decision in the hands of the creator rather than leaving it to a blanket decision for the whole grid dose offer a much more flexible system.

People who distribute Freebies like Linda Kellie who is willing to give her stuff away with no copyright restrictions at all can allow stuff to leave the grid. Other content makers and vendors can disallow it which has the effect of making all grids semi-walled gardens. However, how vendors choose to do business will be the acid test of the system really. Some may offer to deliver goods to other grids they trust while restricting the immediate sale to the home grid in which it was sold. The vendor will have to make it clear what they are prepared to do at point of sale which will probably mean offering some sort of list of grids they will supply too. This is not unlike Total Avatar Shop really as Sunny Whitfield, the owner, is willing to supply on many grids if you buy from her web site and, as far as I know, this has worked out fine.

Vendors might have to work a little harder in Opensim but at least the security will be improved and more options available and that will help build the Opensim Metaverse a lot quicker as new content makers come over to take advantage of this expanding market.

Opensim Can Do Anything That Minecraft Can Do

Presently, the only real money being made out of Opensim is by those who host regions for other people. These are either fully fledged grids with community and economy that lease land to be bought and sold within the confines of their respective virtual environments, or basic server companies who will host full grids on behalf of their customers or host standalones and regions connected to open grids like OSgrid. There is no serious money being made by content sellers yet or from in-world services and uploads. In deed, some grids like Inworldz don't charge for uploads anyway. So, the thing is if money can only be made from hosting, how will Opensim break out of the wilderness of vast tracts of virtual land that is well enough built but is also very empty?

The owners of Inworldz have done a lot of work to build community over the past few years and, while it has grown to be the largest and most populated individual grid on the open Metaverse, it can hardly be sighted as an example of meteoric growth. In the same time that Inworldz has existed Minecraft has grown to in excess of 33 million registered users and that includes some 7.5 million since the start of the 2012 alone. Both worlds can be described as open-ended build, share and connect with friends type platforms and when comparing their graphics, well, there really is nothing in it! Minecraft is out of the 8-bit world of NES for blocky graphics while Inworldz is as good as state of the art. Minecraft is old school while Opensim is up to date. And yet Minecraft pulls in the gamers like tomorrow is the end of the world!

I know, the graphics are awful but the kids love Minecraft and perhaps it's not the graphics they love but the game play itself. There is a whole bunch of monsters to kill and they give you things when defeated. Spiders give you string to make bows and Zombies will drop feathers that can be used in arrow making. With 33 million users it must have some pretty powerful magic!

Minecraft has got something that is not particularly special or that unique but it works. It works to such an extent that the owners, Mojang are now rolling in money. The blocky graphics have even worked in their favour to secure a deal with LEGO. So what is it with Opensim worlds that they can't pull in more users quickly even though Second Life is flat-lining?

I am sure brighter people than I can offer better answers to these question than I can but I am just looking at the way it is and wondering how an Opensim world could steal some of Minecraft's magic. I mean, what is that something that is not particularly special that works for Minecraft and can it be made to work in an Opensim world?

Actually, the more I look at it the more I realize it has all been done before in Second Life. In fact, I did very similar when I scripted the Barbary coast combat meter. Minecraft has several modes of play but Survival is the mode that best highlights it's specialness - if you can call it that. In Survival mode you enter a random world and you own nothing but you can wonder around gathering resources including food, materials and tools with which to construct a house for example or even a small fortress. Creating the stuff you need is the most important thing to do in Minecraft and you do this by basically converting the resources you find to the items you need. How it is done is explained on the various forums and Wiki pages. It's not very well explained actually and takes a lot of effort to learn everything. There are a lot of recipes and items you work with in the game and it can be quite intimidating and time consuming to learn yet people dedicate countless hours to it.

Here, Air Buccaneers from LudoCraft on Unity3D
demonstrates exciting game play in a Steampunk
inspired world with all the action of battling air ships.
Imagine the fun of finding the meterials to build
such an ship then using it to dominate the skies

Minecraft dose actually have quite a steep learning curve but once you gain mastery over the system there is a great sense of fulfillment and it's all very addictive anyway. It gets mildly scary too when night falls and the monsters come out to play! This is when all that work gathering and learning to make stuff pays off. You need simple things like a torch to light your way and a sword to kill the monsters with. Indeed, you are by and large the master of your fate by what you can make.

Opensim worlds are rich in features that can simulate pretty much anything that Minecraft dose except perhaps mining down through the blocky landscape. Opensim has NPC bots now and they are getting quite sophisticated in what they can be programmed to do so what is to stop a nifty script that turns a bot into a monster? An NPC can be given purpose just like monsters in Minecraft which can be found inhabiting deep dark mines where the most precious resources are to be found. Surely this can be done in an Opensim world one way or another. Why not?

You just need a combat meter that enables certain functions related to the game system you want to make. Your NPC monsters need to suffer damage from your sword and your character needs to suffer damage from the horrid actions of the monsters. Moreover, you need to gather food resources that can be eaten or converted into consumables to maintain your avatar's health. You should be able to grow food or hunt meat and net fish. It should also be possible to fight other avatars and even capture them too. It should even be possible to force a captive to work in a mine or in fields getting resources for you.

The drawback with Opensim is that if you run your sim on, say, OSgrid where content can easily be copied at present then the combat meter is wide open to hacking and cheating which rather undermines the game experience. In a closed world like one of the commercial grids this is not a problem but if you are like me and would prefer to be connected with the rest of the open Metaverse then  a security solution is required. It is one thing to develop features that resemble Minecraft but, in my view, it makes no sense to then shut yourself off from the potentially huge market Hypergrid is likely to make possible. Absolutely not. But no worry, Hypergrid II promises to offer new solutions to the content security issue that can work for us.

Here an Amazon warrioress at Barbary coast in Second Life. Over her head you can make out the meter tag with her name, role, status, health level, skill level and the balance of her money.

HG2 is expected to uphold the permissions set by the content creator rather than leaving it to the region owner to set the OutwardBounds permission to allow all content to leave, or not leave, the grid or standalone. Once we have this method for setting permissions then the grid can remain open to Hypergrid travel and the free flow of perm-allowed content while keeping our combat meter safely locked into our world no mater who gets to own a copy. What's more, it is perfectly feasible for the meter to be supplied on other HG2 grids that have been approved trust worthy. And the meter, provided it uses data storage on a http server independently of the virtual world we are active in, it should have no problem recognizing individual avatar names across worlds.

As mentioned already, in Minecraft you have to master the art of making what you need from the resources you gather or mine. Nothing is infinitely durable in Minecraft either. It will wear out, get consumed or perish eventually. Thus, there is constant demand and it is the job of meeting this demand that takes up a good deal of your time. In Opensim and Second Life we don't have resources in the form bricks, fire or wooden doors like Minecraft has but we do have a supply of prim's that can be shaped, linked together and textured to look like all kinds of items from clothes to sail boats. We have token currencies too and people create items that never wear out and sell them on the open market. There is no real sense of value until we consider leaving Second Life and find we can't take all that stuff we paid for with us. Then we suddenly realize it has value but it's a real world value and it is the ability to use real world money to buy your way through Second Life or Opensim that actually undermines some of the functionality that should be enriching your experience and sense of immersion.

Here a store room at the Port of Moresh in OSgrid
holds some innocent looking crates and barrels.
Sure enough the barrels hold ale that was brewed
in the port using grain gathered locally by slaves.
The barrel can dispense tankards of ale but it
could just as easily be a powder keg made from
saltpeter mined near by. It can be used to
blow a scripted door open no less!

To take an example consider a role play game in Second Life where warriors slog it out in countless fights using swords, bow and arrows or guns even. To register hits from the weapons some kind of combat meter must be worn by the combatants and, where the meter will probably be supplied for a particular RPG theme, most often the weapons themselves are bought on the open market. No one has to do anything but spend some Linden dollars or local currency (perhaps OMC or Paypal) which they buy with real world money. So there is little or no regulation as to what the weapons can do or how fast they do it come to that. There may be something in the rules of the RPG that forbid certain types of weapon but I have never heard of a role play game were the rules require you to find or use up resources to justify the use of a particular weapon. Indeed, I doubt if it could be enforced even if there were such rules without doing the actual scripting one's self as I did.

Another example might be the use of a ship with an array of cannons on either side. Who is to say what kind of ship you can own? Here again some venues list a selection of acceptable ship types but I don't know of any that basically say in their rules, if they have any, that you have to justify using a particular ship for reasons such as the resources you spent or the training you can prove to have received. For Second Life and even Opensim it basically comes down to what you can afford to spend which is really quite unfair on the guy who can't afford it. There are few games that do sell their own weapons which depend on the dedicated meter the game developer has made available to work. We have this in Barbary Coast RPG but it is still just part of the solution I would want in order to get anywhere near that model on which Minecraft functions. Generally, however, most combat meters in Second Life don't require resource gathering, no weapons making, no skill earned and really no work involved at all other than the speed of your connection and your quickness to hit the buttons. You buy your ship or sword or gun and do your worst and S/he that owns the best kick-ass-kit stands to win the day.

Here we need to reconsider what content really means and what value to place on it in our Opensim worlds if we want to have better, fairer and more impressive gaming. We need to engage players in the way Minecraft dose. We want to make their experience enjoyable whether they content themselves some days to gather or mine resources, another day to turn those resources into products useful to anyone in the game, or yet another day in which they battle with enemies, capture slaves of just kill monsters and vermin that infest the world.

The game builder needs to design a combat meter that can handle a fair few interactions including regulating the state of health of the avatar both in terms of nutrition as well as combat injury. Healing must be possible and the ability to eat food and take drink. The meter must have a skill level determined by winning and losing fights at least. There must be token money as well (not money that can be bought with real world money) to buy some of the goods being produced (you can't make everything). Players need to be able to trade goods, resources and make token money. For that the system must be able to deliver finished freebie goods that can only be bought and traded in the game. The same goods must have resource value and a life expectancy attached to them in a way the meter and world understands. They should perish or become unusable once they reach the end of their service life. And, above all, the freebies must be quality products that are locked into your game world even if the region is open to Hypergrid travel.

So the developer needs to get content made that is in theme or serves special purpose in the game such as food products. They need a meter and a well built region or set of regions that accurately represent their game world. They also need some rules - not necessarily intensive rules but enough to set the player on the right course quickly. This is especially needed for those players - probably more than you might think - that don't bother or skip over the material and prefer to rush off and learn by trial and error (just the sort that get it wrong, upset others and cause much of the angry exchanges in role play worlds). There should be a well written bio as well from which to gain a sense of the world the player will inhabit. Preferably, write a short novel in an ebook or PDF file for those who do take the trouble to read and are likely to be your most stable long term players. They would appreciate a story centered in your world and it would convey a lot more meaning to it which can place the gamer in the right mind set to begin their adventure.

Minecraft has something special that works for a lot of people but Opensim has huge potential to do some of what Minecraft dose. It can create a more realistic environment too. Minecraft's blocky graphics are part of it's unique character and it appeals to the very young and not so young alike. It can't do anything that is more suited to a mature user base and certainly not adult stuff. In contrast the Opensim platform is powerful, sophisticated and you can script for it. It can be used to develop most types of game both interactive and graphically realistic. The game we want to build and sell is not meant to be anything like Minecraft but it should exploit some of the features that work for Minecraft but done in a totally Opensim way. 

Here a somewhat bow legged Gaga visits the all new Cloud Party to check it out. My real interest of course is if webGL -  which puts this viewer in a web page (no download!) - holds out any hope it may become a usable application for Opensim. Certainly, with such ease of use it would be ideal for role playing on a web page while doing all the hard work and building in a full viewer. I must admit though is was quite good and I didn't need to use Facebook to get in. Just use https://its.cloudpartytime.com. Mind you I couldn't gain any land without a real login but, hey!

Opensim has clear advantages over Second Life. For one, you as owner, can decide what terms of use to impose. You don't have to allow the kind of pornography allowed in Second Life. But you might want to allow the kind of adult behavior that is erotic but not vile beyond reason or involving child avatars. You, as owner, can also control much of what happens in your sims unlike SL and while it is true many people stay with SL for the sake of their personal inventory or the traffic that affords them some income from sales it remains a closed world and basically a dead end street. Opensim continues to develop all the time. It's free and open source but yes it still has bugs and short comings which give Second Life that vital edge for now. But Hypergrid is developing too and soon it will offer new avenues to a greater market. We may even be able to experience Opensim via webGL before long similar to the new Cloud Party viewer in a web browser. The bottom line is there is everything to play for and Opensim really is a fantastic tool for creating virtual worlds by just about any body.

Building Role Play Across The Hypergrid

Fabulous 1001 Nights in OSgrid is a beautiful build and a trip to visit it is well worth the time. Within the city is a bizaar where you can get freebie themed clothes and accessories so the owner has put a lot of though into it. Presently they are looking for a Sultan to run the RPG and promote it - any takers?

Much of what has been written about the open Metaverse gives the impression that there has never been very much user traffic going to the Opensim grids it is made up of and this minimizes the impact they might be having. Most accounts only look at traffic in a few grids - generally the bigger ones of course - but when you take a broader view and look at the many small grids and standalone's out their a much bigger picture emerges and, thus, the impact the Opensim grids are having becomes more significant.

We are already seeing a small explosion of grids and standalone's coming on line. Each new start-up has one or several owners so we can count those as likely regulars online. Seventy HG enabled grids is probably double that number in traffic - about 140. Add next some friends of the owners who may visit and even stay to take part and you can double or even treble that number again. I think even that would be a low number as most people have quite a lot of friends and, dare I add, supporters? Certainly, some grids are the work of long established gaming and role play communities within Second Life and that is precisely the back ground I am come from so I can talk about it from some experience. Communities like mine generally have quite a lot of regular players in SL and it is not too hard to persuade them to register and try the open Metaverse out since they have a place - your place - to get acquainted. If just five or ten of those seventy startup's have established role play gamers to call on then you can add a lot more to the traffic. So, just on a guesstimate, the hypergrid connected mini-grids must collectively stand at around 500 active residents at least and probably a lot more.

Pirate raid on a port in Second Life leads to the capture of the local Pasha and the RP spills over into OSgrid. It could end up anywhere on the hypergrid. A portal region in OSgrid leading to a standalone mega sailing region representing the Caribbean sea or perhaps even the Mediterranean sea and the Barbary coast of North Africa in 1775. And finally back to SL. Never has there been such a great opportunity to expand role play in virtual worlds and reduce costs.

I can, of course, just sift through all the welcome screens checking the stats as shown on my new Teapot viewer at peek and off-peek times and add up all the current online traffic but it's a bit of a chore (I've done it in the past). Anyway, just taking the figure worked out above you get 3 X 140 = 420 which, alone, is greater than any single grid has achieved to date. Now go on adding the casual visitors, the serious travelers and the visiting gamers and role players that have been invited like I have been doing in recent months. The numbers then start to climb. Yes, they are all out there and using hypergrid teleporting to hop from one grid to another. I've even started to call it the hidden Metaverse which I wrote about recently here because that traffic is hardly accounted for. Hopefully though the viewer developer, Armin Weatherwax will give us more ready access to those hidden grids as revealed by the new grid listing functions in Teapot viewer or Kokua and their metrics will start to be better known. Certainly, this is something I have been pushing for over the last two years.

Role play at its best! Here we learn the old Pasha is
on the run in OSgrid but where? And who is behind this raid?

Not all but a sizable number of the start-up's are hypergrid enabled and while a fair few are pitching for the rental market in competition with other grids we are now starting to see grids that do have something specific in mind rather than come-rent-from-me-social-hangout  type of grid. The social/commercial grids like InWorldz and Avination all promote themselves as both hosts and providers of services including currency and economy. Residents are encouraged to build themed regions too which is the basic Second Life model - Your World, Your Imagination. However, the open Metaverse is really a very different animal than Linden Labs grid. Second Life is and always will be a closed grid both for protection from copyright theft and basically to keep the user base firmly rooted in their commercial realm. It's a monopoly and those Opensim grids that use the same model are doing so for the same reasons.

Armin Weatherwax is developing a new viewer grid list function to add, seek out and find more grids. It's now only a matter of time when HG2 and functions like this really start make the Metaverse a truly open and connected market.

There are thousands of ideas for startup's to try and I can think of a 1001 role play ideas right off the top of my head for building a grid that people will want to visit and I think eventually hypergrid will see a huge number of these small standalone's that offer any number of themes starting up. Moreover, the owners will be promoting their venue on the net, in SL, blogging and where ever they can. The more doing it the more people that will be entering the HG connected worlds and traveling about. It's only a matter of time now before the volume is turned up and the market explodes. This is what makes the Opensim Metaverse a very different animal from Second Life and, while I have come to accept there will be commercial closed grids on the open Metaverse, in time, I am convinced they will be dwarfed by the growth of themed startup's just as sure as AOL was dwarfed by the Internet.

Here, the port of Moresh in OSgrid serves as a welcome area for role players into pirate role play and sailing. Themed freebies are found in the local bazaar and a water front tavern offers good ale, help and information. The ship at dock is actually a hyergate portal offering a number of destinations in the network. Just select, board the ship and be teleported there.

The RPG theme, Gor is still quite big in Second Life. It has declined from its high point around about 2009 along with other RPG's as the players have left SL for other MMORPGs on the Internet but it could easily grow as big on the open Metaverse too if enough role players venture over and spend time there. Hypergrid fits perfectly with the Gorean modus operandi because in SL these groups constantly raid each other and engage in slave stealing and trading (all as role play). It would also suit other genre like the Ancient Empires network of regions that collaborate sending war parties to each other's sims and engage in epic battles. Same can be said for many others too including the many pirate sailings sims such as Fairwinds, Ocean Realms and Antiquity. Add to that a raft of other themes from Furries to Steampunk and the potential is huge. Opensim grids are becoming better known in Second Life all the time. I belong to one of the Opensim groups in SL and when I'm there I find the group chat is often alive with people asking for help and advice. And, as sure as you like there will be people around to answer - I sometimes do myself. Grid owners can promote their own game in SL via the Opensim group and other groups they belong to. If they have role play regions already like I do then you have every reason to make the most of it to promote your new world.

Here Lani Global's Dune region in OSgrid offers plenty of free Sci-fi related content. Lani is also the central region of a cluster of other Sci-fi regions which, together, form an association. Presently, they enjoy the highest traffic in OSgrid.

There are problems with Opensim of course. It still suffers weaknesses compared to Second Life especially in the area of physics but in other areas it is way ahead. New people have to face all this and get their heads round it so it's really important that those running mini grids can explain things and ease the visitor's concerns while promoting what they have to offer. Having a good stock of freebies on hand at the Welcome regions is very important too and, presently, this is where you see a serious shortage of clothing that would be expected for the particular theme being promoted. Lani Global in OSgrid has got all the right ideas when it comes to creating what a role play theme needs so a leaf can be taken from her book and grid owners must make or find the kind of things that fit the theme of their game even if it is just enough to get a bunch of avatars dressed up in period clothing. You can give LM's to other suitable stores all over OSgrid and the Metaverse. There is plenty of free stuff around but it's still hard to find all the kind of things you might need for a particular role play game.  And given that role players tend to be very imaginative they also make serious demands for highly detailed clothing and accessories. Some grids like Inworldz and Avination do have some class designers with outlets in their respective grids but presently they are both closed worlds although there is the possibility that at least Avination will open up to Hypergrid once HG2 arrives (expected this summer) and content security improves. I also think some of the others that are presently closed will reconsider it once they see the growth in the traffic it spawns. I guess though as business opportunity increases many of the top designers will turn their gaze to Hypergrid worlds with a renewed interest.

City of Alsium - Roman Role play in OSgrid is set to open soon.

Most role players will go where their friends are and it needs small dedicated groups of players in a particular theme to put in the time to do authentic builds that look good to the eye and make people believe this is an interesting place to spend some time role playing. Visitors wont join a role play game just on the strength of what they see though no matter how good the build. They need to be persuaded to stay and  immerse themselves in the role play and that takes time and effort. Someone must be there. Preferably more than one person needs to be there day in and day out, all hours to welcome and help visitors. Ideally, there should also be some role play taking place so that visitors can look in on it and judge for themselves. Serious role players don't just jump in so you have to remember that. Lookers will say they will come back but usually don't. Serious players might not say too much to start and visit a few times looking around to gauge the RP if there is any so all the more reason to try to keep some activity going near the welcome area if you can.

One way is to build a tavern or bar near the welcome area with a serving maid or dancer to help create atmosphere. Hell, even an NPC dancer and a real avatar can do that. It doesn't take that much really but it does take up someone's time. Like the Internet the Metaverse is 24/7 opening hours. Grids that close for the night or are left unattended can not expect to succeed - even in Second Life players are spoiled for choice so you have to make what you offer look better than the competition. If someone arrives at an empty Welcome region without anyone to actually welcome them then that is probably going to be a brief and easily forgettable experience for them. Constantly changing things leads to confusion for your less regular visitors, and moving the regions about too often just leads to frustration. Even worse is letting visitors land in the sea or under the floor of a building. That is just like, what kind of grid is this?!

Experimenting with airship flyers for possible inclusion of Steampunk elements to the Farworldz grid. Here again gird operators pursuing role play themes need to consider vehicles and scripted combat meters, all of which play a huge part in Second Life role play.

Now, considering HG2 when it arrives, I do actually think Avination could do very well out of it if they open up and we have every reason to believe they will since Melanie Thielker - owner of Avination and an Opensim core developer working with Crista Lopes on HG2 - has gone on record saying they would once the content secruity is improved. If this happens then Avination's vendors will be a serious attraction especially those selling role play goods. The sheer lack of high quality content available to role players is a serious disincentive to joining the open Metaverse as I have already pointed out and Avination could be well placed with very little competition from other grids to take advantage of the opening. There are designers producing highly detailed clothes for role players but you can't expect them to give away all their long hours of work for free and this is where Avination is well fitted to the commercial aspect of the open Metaverse. For small startup's that focus on individual themes then they should be making content or sourcing it for their players anyway to help fill the present gaps. There is lots of good stuff out there though and much of it is free but to gain serious traffic I think we have to start to match some of the fine creations that  Second Life vendors can offer. Low cost sims, great builds and endless land mass alone are not enough - in fact huge areas of empty land just look bad unless it's sea for sailing.  Second Life residents have huge inventories they enjoy. If they can't get some of the same quality content in the open grids when they arrive then I doubt many will stay. That has already been proved to be the case.

News from Kitely Virtual, the cloud-based grid with easy start-up sims at low cost, is they will open up too once HG2 arrives, and to be sure of that they are even working on their own security measures that will further enhance things since Kitely does contribute a lot of code back to core Opensim. Kitely also has plans to introduce Kitley currency and this will certainly provide yet another strong outlet that vendors can have confidence in. I think that between Kitely and Avination as well as some of the smaller but up and coming grids we might just find that the supply of role play related and themed content has a good chance of improving provided they do actually open up to Hypergrid and allow content to go to other grids. In any event my view is that whatever HG2 does I think it is about time that creators had a direct say in what leaves a grid through the permissions system and this seems to be what Kitely is aiming for.

Avination main welcome region today. Clean and pleasant with commercial shops before you and not a freebie in sight. I might add I never met anyone to greet me either and I was left with a sense of it being cold and lacking any community. But I do know Avination has a community but the grid has suffer a big drop in traffic since last year when it went right to the top of the pack for users. Since then it has declined steadily but it still has many of its vendors and a really well developed platform software with easy border crossings and many in house features. It also has its own combat meter.

Above I did some informed guesswork on the true size of the open Metaverse which left out the closed commercial grids. I was concerned only with Hypergrid connected worlds and if you follow Hypergrid Business grid list metrics you can't fail to notice all the new grids coming on line. It's true that it remains difficult to estimate the true size of Metaverse traffic and the way opensim reads this data means that a traveler visiting many grids will register as traffic in each which does distort the figures somewhat and is a diminishing factor but I don't believe it is enough to cast much doubt on my conclusions because all along I have really been under estimating if anything. Fact remains that collectively, the hypergrid enabled grids do form a cluster that attracts more traffic than any single commercial grid does or could ever hope to and it is my view that in the future it will expand into a huge market. At the center is likely to be OSgrid as a HUB with many portal regions that invite travel to a host of small educational and themed role play grids. Kitely, Avination and other startup commercial grids will all be part of it too if they open up. But, crucially, traffic will be shared right across the open Metaverse and it will have that special quality that helped Second Life to grow, lots of small startup grids each building their own worlds. That is the beauty of the Opensim Metaverse, it truly is our world, our imagination from the open source software base on which we build and up.

Formally of Second Life, Darkrose Castle is home to Prince Gabriel of
 Darkrose, the last in a long line. Opening soon in OSgrid this a roleplaying
sim of dark conspiracy and gothic Vampires with an emphasis on storytelling.

If we rely on anyone it certainly is not the overpowering corporate power of a monopoly like Linden Labs unless we chose to join a closed grid that is based on the SL model. There are many contributers to the Opensim Metaverse in so many ways and this is all part of what makes Opensim so different from Second Life. Indeed, I would venture to say it has the potential, if it hasn't been realized already, to be a more creative platform all together.

One of the many city regions of Gor in Second Life. OSgrid has some Gor regions
but links need to be established for exchange RP and raids from SL to OS and HG
and back. Role players in general and Goreans in particular could help to open up
the Metaverse making their Second Life part of a truly global community.

In Second Life there are a whole bunch of regions dedicated to ancient empire building and epic battles. They
interact with each other in Second Life so why not expand to OSgrid and take advantage of lower costs? Here
we show the Athenian Empire of SL but there are many more from Persia to Rome and right across the ancient world.
In the cities you find the training grounds and tournament arenas plus the day to day events that shape the
virtual lives and culture of the Elite, the warriors, the citizens and their slaves.

Latest Zen Viewer Includes Grid List/Search

Zena Juran, developer of Zen viewer, has added the grid listing function from Armin Weatherwax's Teapot viewer. Zena is maintaining the same list as Armin currently but it appears she has coded in the means by which grid owners can add their theirs. Zen is v3 based with a V1 feel to it and is gaining popularity amongst Opensim users.

I have been pushing the Imprudence team for over two years to upgrade the grid list and replace it with a searchable back-end database that grid owners can add theirs too. Armin Weatherwax took up the challenge recently and has release several versions of his Teapot viewer as he upgraded the functions.

So far good progress has been made but getting to the stage of being a searchable list may take some more time yet. In any event I welcome Zena's version in Zen. For many of us there is a strong belief that Opensim needs it's own viewer with features tailored to the open Metaverse and the grid listing and searching functions are not only very helpful in finding grids but it send a powerful message that the open Metaverse can stand on it's own without slavishly following whatever Second Life rolls out.

Download Zen 3.3.3.0 here

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.