OpenSim - An Update

[Note: This NOT about the LL OpenSpace or Void sims, it is about OpenSim, the standalone sim, available free of charge from the OpenSim project, and downloaded from the OSGrid website]

Hi

Having returned from the summer break a week ago I thought I would have a go at the new binary release of OpenSim, 0.5.9. Wow! What an improvement! Not one crash in a week of heavy use, and 45,000 prims per region now too.

I also decided to migrate from SQLite to MySQL to get full persistence, and also had a go at creating multiple regions.

I used the new recommended viewer, the Hippo Viewer which allows building up to 10,000m, megaprims up to 250x250x250m, and several other cool additions, not least of which is the new Grids button, which allows you to connect the viewer to any grid you like. It comes preloaded with SL, Openlife, 3rd Rock, OSGrid (the default), and a couple of others, and allows you to add grids at will.

Full details on all these adventures in the usual place, http://rock-vacirca.blogspot.com (articles 4-6).

Rock

So how much are they paying you to promote the open sim project?

Rock, you do realize that if you want to hint to the Lindens that they need to fix their code, you're posting in the wrong place?

Where do you get the Hippo Viewer from Rock?

Who makes it?

OSGrid makes the viewer and here is the link

http://opensim-viewer.sourceforge.net/

Actually I think that the SL code is better than it has been for a long time. This time last year the grid was almost unuseable, with frequent crashes and lots of lag. Nowadays I have almost no problems at all.

OpenSim has a long way to go to catch up with the SL development, but it is catching up fast.

I mainly use OpenSim to build, script, and play with my avatar (don't smirk!), in peace. It is also a good standby if the SL grid goes down, and I can invite my friends around, and as it is still very much in Beta, if not Alpha, I am learning a lot about it along the way.

The new release of the Hippo Viewer makes the possibility of (spoof) teleporting to and from the SL grid from my standalone very close now, and I have passed some comments to the author that I hope will result in teleporting being available soon.

Rock

The only thing is in 6 months I been checking OpenLife there doesn't seem to be any changes, the guy in charge hasn't posted to his blog for over a month.
Doesn't seem to be any news of anything exciting like new avatar meshes , shadows etc that were touted 12 months ago.

The main change to Open Life (grid) I've seen since I joined is that it supports attachments now. So now Iook the same in OL as in SL, except I always have my hair in a bun in OL!

I see fewer people in OL than I used to but maybe that's because their grid has grown. Most people I do see are 'stuck' avatars, immobile, non-communicative and with their arms outsretched.

I do use my standalone a bit but Second Life takes up most of my time these days.

I thought about giving it a shot a while back, but if SL is down, I'm usually in CoH. Or in SL wondering when I'll be able to change my attachments.

Now if OpenSim has neck attachment points....

O, probably the same amount LL paid me in 2004 to promote SL to eveyone I knew.

I did get a tshirt out the the deal tho so maybe I made out better then Rock.

Now I will go explore again- I couldnt handle the hair!!!

OpenLife is not the same as OpenSim, and their standalone server is usually several months behind the latest release of OpenSim. OpenLife does not allow OpenSim standalone sims to connect to their grid, and the prominence that OpenLife gave to the standalone software on its front page seems to have gone. Their Standalone forum also appears to have been frozen.

I do not use OpenLife, which looks like a weak imitation of SL, and appears to be going nowhere fast. I much prefer OSGrid, which is in the true spirit of Open-Source.

The OpenSim binary downloads are now hosted at (in my opinion) the most appropriate place, the OSGrid website.

I had a go at creating terrain files for my 4 contiguous regions in OpenSim last night, and the step-by-step details of this latest adventure will be on the blog in the next couple of hours, when I get home from work,

Rock

One of the major things opengrid has going for it i think is RealXtend .... i gave that a try and WOW! it's everything i wished SL was and more...

I tried downloading the latest OpenLife standalone yesterday. I set it up and logged in but I couldn't rez anything. So I'll stick to my 2-sim standalone that's an earlier version which works OK even if you can't do attachments on it.

I also looked at downloading a standalone from OpenSim, but that looks more tricky - it even says it's not easy on the OS download page!

Ok, so anyone looking for SL in an opensim environment is going to be disappointed for now, but progress is accelerating and for standalone applications it is starting to make sense as a springboard to internal development projects, if nothing else.

Several companies like IBM (and us) are developing Opensim plugins to email and PIM applications. Basically letting scheduled meetings take place in a virtual environment at a click of a mouse key from within Outlook for instance (or Lotus in the case of IBM's project).

We've moved down a more industrial opensim grid infrastructure in order to further our plans, but I've heard from a few people that the following article gives an excellent step-by-step tutorial in getting a local opensim environment working on Vista.

http://www.virtualwhite.com/?p=9

Might be worth looking at, if you're interested.

Unfortunatelty to me it seems OS grid suffers the same problems of Lag as OL, I would be interested to know how many servers are running this many regions, because some grids are running a dozen sims per server and seem to lag horribly, and that is with just builds, no avatars or scripts running. It seems a lot of people making their own grids make the mistake of going big instead of performance. They have wonderful builds spanning 100's of sims but only 1-10 other people ever online, and you can't find them because the green dots on the map function doesn't work and you can't fly from Atp B without going off the map on sim crossings or overshooting due to lag.
RealExtend has not posted anything since June on their webpage, so I could assume they are dead in the water too.............