Sim-on-a-stick, part 3: meeting people and exploring in OSGrid

In today's video I'm exploring OSGrid.

OSGrid is one of the virtual worlds powered by OpenSimulator, aka OpenSim.  OpenSim's front page states

OpenSimulator is an open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows virtual world developers to customize their worlds using the technologies they feel work best - we've designed the framework to be easily extensible. OpenSimulator is written in C#, running both on Windows over the .NET Framework and on Unix-like machines over the Mono framework. The source code is released under a BSD License, a commercially friendly license to embed OpenSimulator in products. If you want to know about our development history, see History.

OpenSim's history page traces its origin to Second Life(tm) releasing their client to open source in January 2007.  (Second Life has their own open source portal.)  Now there are a number of individuals and companies that run OpenSim.  You can find a grid list at OpenSim's site, where a number of public sites are listed.  Not listed are private grids, usually behind corporate firewalls, that can be used for conferencing, training, and so on.

Advantages of downloading, installing and setting up an OpenSim are having your own land free of  payments to another landowner, complete control over the content, and the ability to back up the world and your work.

When I was considering setting up my own world, I identified three important factors:  a processor fast enough and powerful enough to render the world, a secure database for storing and accessing assets, and enough bandwidth to maintain a reasonable frame rate.  (If you would like to add to my list, feel free to submit a comment.)  It seems to me one of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) setups would work great (but may be pricey).

Because I was unable to upload the video ("Virtual World Tours: OSGrid") to Blogger, you'll have to view it on YouTube.

It always surprises me how creative work knows no deadlines -- it's simply done when it's done.  This video has flaws, but it was time to move on.

-- Marge

Sim-on-a-stick, part 2: some virtual world basics

Highlighted today is a video, the first in a series of visits to virtual worlds.

The region being visited Terra Virtua in Kitely.  Kitely describes itself as "Virtual Worlds on Demand" and states "Each account includes one FREE virtual world." If you sign up at Kitely, you can either use their plugin (the Imprudence viewer) to access your world or launch the viewer of your choice independently of the website.  Kitely is based on OpenSim and they state in the FAQ that they

use a combination of standard OpenSim running in a ROBUST configuration, with our own proprietary OpenSim modules and web services.

Because the worlds are generated on demand, the user must wait for the world to be up and running.  This includes teleporting, which can cause awkward pauses, especially if your destination has particularly complex builds or many objects.

In "Virtual World Tours: Kitely" below, I'm offering basic terms used in virtual worlds and attempting to show what they mean.  There are sections showing building, primitive shapes  and terraforming.  I particularly wanted to show how avatars interact with the 3D environment.  Note that avatar Jamie walks into a structure and moves around in it.  If there were scripts in place, she could sit on the furniture and interact more fully with things.  This video is also available on YouTube in a larger format.

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Whew! Three working copies and a total restart later, the video is done.


-- Marge