Open... "Life"? Open... "something"? What is this?

What's this all about, y'all? A non-linden version, whatever? A friend mentioned this to me - is it up? Running? Usable? What's the current opinion of how it will play out?

OpenSim?

Long term a lot of the open projects are going to want to hook up to the main grid, a teleportation project recently proved successful.

However right now none of them have an economy, as far as I'm aware, and you can't take objects with you.

Devil's Dictionary entry:

OpenLife: (n) 1. Actual proof that there is something less reliable and more difficult to use than the Main Grid. 2. Serious competition for ActiveWorlds. 3. What happens if you rip the economy out and live in John Lennon's "Imagine" song, virtually.

Yes. It's similar to Second Life, developed form LL open souce via the OpenSim project. Open Life has a website where you can join. You use a copy of the SL viewer but you change its login according to instructions on website.

It's interesting to see, but quite a lot of the SL functions are not enabled - although they are being worked on.

The best thing from openlife is that you can download a standalone island to your own computer. It's like an island in SL, a whole sim (or several sims if you wish), but it's not connected to any grid so it's a lonely experience. You get a sort of scrawny Ruth avatar but you can customise your appearance - see pic:-

Do you get some palm trees and a volleyball named "Wilson"?

Actually, I'm very interested in this, just because I want to play with my own island, but I couldn't survive without the social interaction.

In Opensim, can you upload textures like you do in SL? If so, it might be a nice place to get your textures perfect before you upload them to the main grid at 10L a pop.

Skip opensim and go right to RealXtend. It's based on opensim but with alot of improvements.

Man, Trout, I was just sitting here trying to think of an excuse to get this onto my system. You're a genius.

In the Open Life version of Open Sim, you can upload your own textures exactly like in SL. They also give you a small library of textures. But you can't transfer stuff.
I did my av in the pic above by noting down all my slider settings and re-entering them in 'appearance' in Open Life and on the Standalone (that meant I had to do it twice!). The vest and knickers were my own textures so I could upload them to OL the same as SL. The OL newbie skin is quite similar to my SL one anyway, just a bit paler.

Yes, you can work on stuff on your standalone or in OpenLife itself and use the program Second Inventory to transfer stuff back to the SL grid if you want.

And with that program you can take stuff from the LL grid to OpenLife or your standalone. (Full Perm items.. think stuff you built.)

Frankly.. OpenLife is very alpha software and is based on the OpenSim software. It is not going to be a copy of SL.. already they are working on avatar improvements. It is pretty stable but does not have all the bells and whistles yet. Though it is much further along then SL was in the beginning.

The owner (Sakai Openlife) of OpenLife is a great guy who has commitment to make it a great virtual world. No, there is no economy yet but freebies are there and it is kind of fun to create for the sake of creating rather then worrying about if the item will "sell".

Some day in the near future they will connect grids with the LL grid.

OpenLife is not for everyone. But if you like the idea of testing software and being in on a world as it is forming then it is pretty darn cool.

Second Inventory : http://www.secondinventory.com/
Open Life: http://openlifegrid.com/Default.aspx
OpenGrid (another option): http://osgrid.org/index.php?&page=smodul&id=10&btn=10

Check out SL Universe for lots of talk about this:
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/other-grids-virtual-worlds/

You can do all of that and more. I regularly preview terrain on a standalone; you can upload textures, all of that.

But yeah, it's a bit of a Robinson Crusoe experience.

SL is still my first love, I get my social interaction here. My 2 sim standalone island is somewhere that I can build my own 'retreat' and terraform the landscape. On the Open Life grid, I basically just go there to look around and test it out but it is useful for testing texture uploads.

Another thing about standalones is that they can be used by anyone in a household. They are suitable for children to use too as they're not likely to find dubious content or unsavoury individuals lurking!

Here's a question...

In the standalone sim thing, do you have a prim limit like in SL?

15k a sim?
Less?

Seems like there shouldn't be as much of a limit, but iono.

45,000 prims.

o.o

If you never see me again, I'm busy recreating the Tahj Mahal.

LOL!!

Have fun.

Bonus: You can link up your standalone to OpenGrid and take it live if you want. So, you can show that off. hehe

Yes and no. The prim limit exists... But you can administer the server configuration to change it... But you also have to realize that you're running your own server, and the amount of system power required to support all those prims may possibly be overwhelming for your machine. (^_^)y

What I would like is a way to import the data from objects I create in OpenSim or RealXtend. Texture positions, for example, or avatar appearance numbers, instead of writing everything down on paper.

Bah! My machine can handle anything!

Lesse if I can get TWO Taj Mahals in one! Weeee!!

Seriously though, that one fact, the prim limit difference, is going to be the reason I try it out.

The real question is which rock you've been hiding under:

Please to enjoy:

Stand alone:
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

Other SL Grids:
http://www.openlifegrid.com/

http://secondlifegrid.net/

There are a few more...

The reading above should get you started.

Second Inventory will transfer an item you make with the texture positions in tact.

Avatar wise.. you would need to make a full perm body and transfer it.

Second Inventory is the only way right now, though I am sure down the road they will make it a function of the viewer. For now it is a well spent 5K though.

And one last tip: If you sign up on OpenLife utilize the forums. They have faqs on setting up standalones, etc.

Ahh, right, ability to transfer the object itself makes that needless. I'm going to look seriously at putting OpenSim onto my own system over the weekend I think.

It is a little tricky to figure out at first.. but stick with it and you will be happy.

I have 6 sims right now and will add more. It is kind of like playing The Sims on steroids.

My wife can connect to my sims via the network so that makes it even more fun.

I suggest OpenLife for you because it is the easiest to configure. They already have the settings in place.

Maxx Monde made a great FAQ if you want to get your geek on and do it all yourself. I started with this:
http://opensimuser.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/opensim-install-and-configuration-tutorial/

Check out the Open Life link I left on page one if you want the quick and clean version.

The latest standalone has 45,000 prims per sim but I'm wondering how long it would take to start up a couple of regions with 45,000 prims each on your PC!