#opensim — Public Fediverse posts

Wild party for World Peace Day at ZetaWorlds right now. Next to a lot of music about peace anyway.

When @Rogue Galaxy sang, @Juno Rowland and I joined an impromptu backing band. It was a good idea to bring instruments.

Ruud managed to multi-task: DJ, dance and slap ladies' butts.

Of course, such a party could impossibly happen without the Starks, even though it isn't taking place at Stark. For some reason, Niki sent people good vibrations on several occasions by throwing around free Hitachi Magic Wands. Don't ask.

And yes, it's nice to be back at ZetaWorlds without having to resort to our spare OSgrid avatars.

One and a half more hours to go.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #Stark #WorldPeaceDay #WorldPeaceDay2024

Wild party for World Peace Day at ZetaWorlds right now. Next to a lot of music about peace anyway.

When @Rogue Galaxy sang, @Juno Rowland and I joined an impromptu backing band. It was a good idea to bring instruments.

Ruud managed to multi-task: DJ, dance and slap ladies' butts.

Of course, such a party could impossibly happen without the Starks, even though it isn't taking place at Stark. For some reason, Niki sent people good vibrations on several occasions by throwing around free Hitachi Magic Wands. Don't ask.

And yes, it's nice to be back at ZetaWorlds without having to resort to our spare OSgrid avatars.

One and a half more hours to go.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #Stark #WorldPeaceDay #WorldPeaceDay2024

Wild party for World Peace Day at ZetaWorlds right now. Next to a lot of music about peace anyway.

When @Rogue Galaxy sang, @Juno Rowland and I joined an impromptu backing band. It was a good idea to bring instruments.

Ruud managed to multi-task: DJ, dance and slap ladies' butts.

Of course, such a party could impossibly happen without the Starks, even though it isn't taking place at Stark. For some reason, Niki sent people good vibrations on several occasions by throwing around free Hitachi Magic Wands. Don't ask.

And yes, it's nice to be back at ZetaWorlds without having to resort to our spare OSgrid avatars.

One and a half more hours to go.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #Stark #WorldPeaceDay #WorldPeaceDay2024

Wild party for World Peace Day at ZetaWorlds right now. Next to a lot of music about peace anyway.

When @Rogue Galaxy sang, @Juno Rowland and I joined an impromptu backing band. It was a good idea to bring instruments.

Ruud managed to multi-task: DJ, dance and slap ladies' butts.

Of course, such a party could impossibly happen without the Starks, even though it isn't taking place at Stark. For some reason, Niki sent people good vibrations on several occasions by throwing around free Hitachi Magic Wands. Don't ask.

And yes, it's nice to be back at ZetaWorlds without having to resort to our spare OSgrid avatars.

One and a half more hours to go.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #Stark #WorldPeaceDay #WorldPeaceDay2024

Wild party for World Peace Day at ZetaWorlds right now. Next to a lot of music about peace anyway.

When @Rogue Galaxy sang, @Juno Rowland and I joined an impromptu backing band. It was a good idea to bring instruments.

Ruud managed to multi-task: DJ, dance and slap ladies' butts.

Of course, such a party could impossibly happen without the Starks, even though it isn't taking place at Stark. For some reason, Niki sent people good vibrations on several occasions by throwing around free Hitachi Magic Wands. Don't ask.

And yes, it's nice to be back at ZetaWorlds without having to resort to our spare OSgrid avatars.

One and a half more hours to go.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #Stark #WorldPeaceDay #WorldPeaceDay2024

It's one of the most well-known OARs, and I guess every OpenSim user with a little more experience has come across at least one instance of it: the Universal Campus.

It was built by Michael Emory Cerquoni, an early OpenSimulator developer first known in-world as Nebadon Izumi who released his creations under the Oni Kenkon Creations brand, and who is also the builder of Wright Plaza, OSgrid's famous old freebie sim. The project was a collaboration with the now-defunct Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds at the University of California in Irvine, and it was designed and intended to act as an actual virtual campus.

Due to the size of the project as a whole and the main building in particular, Nebadon built the Universal Campus as a mega-region, an OpenSim hack from around 2009 that made it possible to stretch a build across multiple standard regions, in this case two by two. So the Universal Campus is not one OAR, it's four, one for each region.

The first publicly available version of the Universal Campus was released in 2011, so as futuristic as it looks, it is already roughly 13 years old.

The main building shown here is outright gargantuan. It is still one of the biggest buildings around the Hypergrid. At a length from north to south of over 200 metres, it actually had to be built across a region border. Today, a decade after the introduction of varsims, this is no longer a problem.

Although it's possible to walk from everywhere on the island to everywhere else, a network of custom-made teleporters with ten destinations reduces travel time greatly. One destination is right in front of the main building, and two more are inside, the only two in-door destinations, such is the immense size of the building.

Image description

The picture in this post is a digital rendering from inside a 3-D virtual world based on OpenSimulator, generated in a regular client for this kind of virtual worlds, also known as a viewer, using shaders and generated shadows, but without ray-tracing. It shows the main building of the Universal Campus as mentioned in this post.

What OpenSimulator is

OpenSimulator, OpenSim in short, is a free, open-source, cross-platform server-side re-implementation of the technology of Second Life. The latter is a commercial 3-D virtual world created by Philip Rosedale, also known as Philip Linden, of Linden Lab and launched in 2003. It is a so-called "pancake" virtual world which is accessed through desktop or laptop computers using standard 2-D screens rather than virtual reality headsets. Second Life had its heyday in 2007 and 2008. It is often believed to have shut down in late 2008 or early 2009 when the constant stream of news about it in mainstream media broke away, but in fact, it celebrated its 20th birthday in 2023, and it is still evolving.

OpenSimulator was first published in January, 2007. It was made possible when, in 2006, Linden Lab open-sourced the official Second Life viewer, which is how client applications for Second Life and OpenSim are called, thus laying its viewer API open. This led to the development of third-party viewers. After the development of third-party viewers had started, OpenSim was developed against them and the Second Life viewer API. It does not have its own official viewer, but most of the popular third-party Second Life viewers are compatible with OpenSim as well.

Unlike Second Life, OpenSim is not one monolithic, centralised world. It is rather a server application for worlds or "grids" like Second Life which anyone could run on either rented Web space or at home, given a sufficiently powerful computer and a sufficiently fast and reliable land-line Internet connection. This makes OpenSim as decentralised as the Fediverse. The introduction of the Hypergrid in 2008 made it possible for avatars registered on one OpenSim grid to travel to most other OpenSim grids.

What grids, regions and sims are

Second Life and the OpenSim-based worlds are called "grids" because they are flat worlds divided into square areas of 256 by 256 metres each which is roughly 280 by 280 yards. These areas are called "regions". Regions can be empty, in which case they're shown as ocean, but they can't be entered. In order for any actual content to exist in a region and for avatars to be able to enter regions, a simulator, sim in short, has to run in a region.

In Second Life, a sim is always one region. OpenSim had a hack from 2009 on that was called "mega regions". It exploited a feature in third-party Second Life viewers that was not used by Second Life itself, and that made it possible to extend a sim across multiple regions in a square arrangement. The Universal Campus itself is built as a mega region of two by two standard regions. Since this hack was buggy and limited, varregions, now known as varsims, were first developed for the OpenSim fork Aurora-Sim. Eventually, they were officially introduced into OpenSim in 2014. They theoretically allow for a sim to stretch across as many as 32 by 32 standard regions with no borders in-between.

Unlike Second Life, OpenSim also has the option to save entire sims into archives and load them from archives, so-called OARs which is short for OpenSimulator Archives. Many of these are available online. Mega regions are saved in one OAR for each region, and as the Universal Campus was designed as a mega region and pre-dates varsims, it is divided into four individual OARs. A varsim, on the other hand, can be entirely saved in and loaded from one OAR.

Where the pictures were made

Particularly, the picture was created at UniCampus, an instance of the Universal Campus in OSgrid (https://osgrid.org) owned by one of the grid admins. Launched in July, 2007, OSgrid was the first public OpenSim grid and intended as a testbed for OpenSim's development. Next to Wolf Territories Grid from 2021 (https://wolfterritoriesgrid.com/, https://www.wolf-grid.com/), it is one of the two biggest OpenSim grids; each one of these two grids has more landmass than Second Life.

OSgrid also adopted the early OpenSimulator slogan "The Open Source Metaverse" immediately after its launch. It still uses that slogan, and the term "metaverse" has been commonly used by the OpenSimulator community ever since.

Camera position and general setting

The picture was taken from a point of view higher than the eyes of an avatar, ca. three metres or ten feet above the ground. The position of the camera is near the inner edge of a wide path that describes an eccentric path of three quarters of a circle around the likewise circular main landing zone as well as just a bit south of the southern edge of a wide, straight path that least eastward fromo the main landing zone. The direction of view is almost northward and slightly to the west. Also, the camera is tilted upward by a few degrees due to its low position and the height of the building.

All dimensions in this description are estimated.

Main building, southern end and main entrance

The main building of the Universal Campus is the centre-piece of the image. It is a gigantic building that towers high above all surrounding trees, although it is not actually a tower, nor does it have one. It is rather a lengthy building that stretches from north to south. In the image, the middle of its front is at one third of the width of the image from the left-hand edge, reaching to the left as far as one sixth of the width of the image from the left-hand edge. The conference hall at the far end is at one third of the width of the image from the right-hand edge with parts of the building almost reaching the edge. Its supporting structure mostly shows textures with highlights included which suggest that it was made of stainless steel. Otherwise, glass with a horizontal gradient between lighter grey and darker grey on the outside and a plain darker grey tint on the inside is the most commonly used material. The building does not have any exterior walls.

The southern entrance, the main entrance to the building with the main landing area right outside the doors, is surrounded and marked by a tall geometrical structure which is rather complex in spite of only having straight edges. It resembles a spaceship from an early video game as roughly as it resembles the letter A or an upside-down V. It is almost perfectly symmetrical around both vertical planes. Its medium grey surfaces are untextured otherwise and don't mimic any particular material.

On each far side is a vertical "column" with a footprint with the shape of a trapeze, very roughly four metres or thirteen feet wide and four metres or thirteen feet thick. The short side of the trapeze, measuring only a bit over three and a half metres or twelve feet, is on the outside. These columns rise up some nine metres or 30 feet on the inside. The top slopes downward towards the outsides, so the columns are less than eight or about a half metres or 27 feet high on the outside.

The centre and top piece of the structure, right above the doors and roughly seven and a half metres or 25 feet above the ground, is roughly ten metres or 33 feet tall and roughly four and a half metres or fifteen feet wide. It has a rectangular cross-section when looked at from inside the building or from the main landing area, but a heptagonal cross-section when looked at from the sides. Its seven visible faces are all rectangular. At the bottom, it is roughly five metres or roughly sixteen and a half feet thick with only one surface. The top is roughly five metres or roughly sixteen and a half feet thick, too, but with a pair of surfaces of the same size at an angle of under five degrees, forming a slight ridge at the top.

The inner and outer sides of this centre-piece are each made up from an upper surface which is a square and sloped outward from the top and a lower surface which is a rectangle and sloped outward from the bottom. They meet at an angle of roughly 20 degrees.

On each side, two irregularly-shaped structures of seven surfaces each connect the seven edges of the sides of the centre piece with the four edges of the inner sides of the columns. Six of these surfaces are more or less slightly twisted because they connect edges at different angles with each other. The only planar surface is the one that connects the bottom edges which are all horizontal.

Two pairs of double glass doors make up the actual main entrance. Each door blade is about two and a half metres or eight feet wide and about five and a half metres or eighteen feet high. The glass has the same horizontal gradient texture both on the inside and on the outside so that all door blades can be identical. The only difference between the door blades is whether the door script opens them clockwise or counter-clockwise. The texture is arranged in such a way that there are narrow lighter areas along both vertical edges when the hinge is on the left, and there is a wide lighter area on the lock side and a narrow lighter area on the hinge side when the hinge is on the right. The narrow sides of the door blades are opaque when looked at from the outside but, due to OpenSim's limitations, not when looked at from the inside. The doors open inward by 90 degrees, and they do so when they're clicked, or when an avatar approaches them. They can be closed manually by clicking them again, otherwise they close automatically after ten seconds.

Each door blade has one simple door handle on the inside and the outside tinted the same generic grey as the large structure surrounding the doors. The handles are only a few centimetres wide. The grips have a square cross-section. Above and below, there are thicker parts which connect the grips to the doors while being flush with them on the sides and facing away from the door blades. Altogether, each handle is half a metre or one and five eighths feet long. The top of each handle is about one and three quarters metres or five and three quarters inches above the ground.

Between the two door pairs and on their sides, there are altogether three columns with a rectangular footprint of roughly 90 centimetres or three feet width by 30 centimetres or one foot thickness, each roughly seven and a quarter metres or 24 feet tall. Above each pair of doors, they are connected with a horizontal beam that fits between the top surfaces of the columns and the top edges of the doors while being half as thick as the columns.

The spaces between the large structure around the entrance, the columns and the horizontal bars are filled with glass panes.

The whole door ensemble does not sit exactly at half the thickness of the large structure. It is shifted outward by about half a metre or one and five eighth feet.

A structure shaped like an almost flat pyramid, but with a flattened top, is mounted upside-down against the bottom surface of the centre of the large structure around the main entrance. The glass pane above the doors passes right through its middle. A square light is installed on the flattened top which is actually the bottom now, illuminating the entrance area when it is dark. Otherwise, this flat structure has the usual brushed stainless steel texture which appears rather dark here.

On each side of the entrance area, a cylindrical column with a diametre of roughly four metres or thirteen feet rises some 20 metres or 66 feet upward. Each column is slightly tilted inward along the longitudinal axis of the building and outward to the sides. On each side, farther outside, there is another, even taller column, easily over 30 metres or 100 feet tall. These columns are tilted along the longitudinal axis of the building at the same angle, but outward to the sides at a smaller angle. They make up the southern corners of the main building. All four columns are textured to resemble brushed stainless steel.

A semi-cylindrical structure connects the complex main entrance structure through the inner columns with the outer columns on the ground. Its diametre is roughly 2.40 metres or eight feet. It uses the usual brushed stainless steel texture, but the brushing direction is radial, and the texture is stretched along the axis of the cylinder so much that its nature is anything but obvious.

Between the columns and the main entrance structure, there are three more glass panes. The panes between the inner and outer columns are mounted halfway into the building whereas the one around the main entrance structure is almost all the way inside the building. Three horizontal stainless steel rods of about 30 centimetres or one foot lead through each pane. They are roughly evenly spaced, but closer to the upper and lower edges of the glass panes than to each other. The rods that pass through the panes between the columns grow to a diametre of roughly 45 centimetres or one and a half feet towards their ends before ending in short cylinders with diametres of about 1.80 metres or six feet.

On top of the inner columns and partly intersecting with the outer columns, a massive, upright, flat structure with stainless steel textures serves as the southern end of the roof. It has to be about 50 metres or 160 feet wide, about 15 metres or 50 feet tall and about 3.60 metres or 12 feet thick. The front and rear surfaces are slightly countersunk with margins of slightly varying thickness all around except for the bottom. The top edge has a fairly short horizontal section of ten metres or 33 feet in the middle from which it curves downward in sections of ellipses. The bottom edge is almost horizontal and leads to corners from which short 45-degree slopes lead upward. The slopes from the bottom and the ellipses from the top meet in rounded corners. Unlike the columns below, this roof end is mounted vertically.

Main building, Universal Campus logo

The roof end also carries the logo of the Universal Campus, sitting at half the height of the outer countersunk area of the roof end and ever so slightly to the left of its middle. Its base is a circular, conical structure with a diametre of ten metres or 33 feet, the sloped edge being black. The actual logo is part of the texture on the front surface of the cone. It has a diametre of about seven metres or 23 feet.

The inner 80% of its diametre are filled with a gradient from medium dark grey at the top to medium light grey at the bottom. Three shaded three-dimensional primitive shapes are displayed in this area, a cube with one corner each pointed to the top and the bottom at the top, a sphere in the bottom left, a tetrahedron in the bottom right. At the bottom of this area, "Patefacio radix" is written in medium dark grey letters, in a wide sans-serif typeface and in what is likely to be small caps. It is Latin for "open source". Below, the Roman number MMXI, 2011, marks the year of the first public release of the Universal Campus.

A thin dark grey circle separates this area from the outer 20% which are light grey. Re-using the same typeface as in the inner part, and in dark grey with blue shading, "Universal" is written at the top and "Campus" at the bottom, both capitalised with otherwise small caps and following the circular shape of the logo.

29 identical black circular spots, very roughly evenly spaced, protrude from underneath the logo all around it by a bit more than their own diametre. They separate the logo from the surrounding white area which, in turn, is surrounded by the aforementioned black conical slope.

The Universal Campus logo is illuminated from below. The light source sits in a slot in a cylinder on top of the main entrance structure, about two metres or six and a half feet long and a diametre of about 30 centimetres or one foot. This cylinder has spherical end pieces, and the whole arrangement has a simple, glossy, medium grey surface.

Main building, side

Each side of the building, all the way to the conference hall at the northern end, is tilted outward at the same angle as the corner columns around the front and much simpler in design. Starting north of the side entrances right behind the front, a semi-cylindrical structure on the ground, similar to those at the front, extends northward towards the conference hall, only interrupted by another set of side entrances shortly before the conference hall. Farther up, there is another cylindrical structure of the same diametre and with the same texture on each side, but with a cutout on the upper inner side of a bit over 90 degrees to help carry the upper floor on the right, actually semi-cylindrical on the left and stretching all the way between the columns on both sides. Even farther up, right below the roof, another cylindrical structure is installed, but cut out on the inside by 60 degrees upward and 75 degrees downward.

Eight cylindrical beams with a diametre of roughly 90 centimetres or three feet and the usual stainless steel texture serve as the near-vertical supports. Nearly evenly spaced, except for the first being closer to the second, and running from the bottom to the top, they divide each side into eight full-sized sections and one small section right in front of the conference hall.

As mentioned above, the building has four sets of side entrances. One on each side is right behind the front behind the colour and the first support beam, one on each side is just south of the conference hall between the seventh and eighth support beams. The doors are identical to the ones that make up the main entrance, but each side entrance has three pairs of doors instead of two.

Between the three double doors, there is a filler column with a rectangular vertical cross-section, a width of about 45 centimetres or one and a half feet and a thickness at ground level that is slightly less than the width. While the inside surface is vertical, the outside surface is sloped in parallel to the outward tilt of the side of the building. Similar but wider columns are installed on the sides of the doors, being the closest that the building has to outer walls. Another structure with a rhomboid north-south cross-section sits on top of each set of four pillars, connecting them and carrying a glass pane on top. Its inside surface is sloped outside, its outside surface has a stronger slope than the outer side of the building. Also, its texture is lighter than that of the pillars.

Everything else between the vertical and horizontal structures on the sides of the building is filled with glass panes, all with a light vertical streak down their centres, blurred by the gradients on its sides.

Main building, roof

On the visible right-hand side of the building, right above the positions of the first seven of the eight support beams, curved brackets reach down from the roof, holding the upper horizontal cylindrical beam from the outside. They appear to be dark grey, but they actually have the usual brushed stainless steel texture. These brackets are installed on both sides across the outer parts of the roof, and slightly larger versions span across the centre of the roof as can be seen from below through the windows of the building.

A little bit of roof is visible underneath these brackets. The roof has four identical sections from its end to the conference hall. All are mostly planar with a rounded outer side. From above, they have the most elaborate surface of the whole building. It is almost black. A bump map or a normal map divides it into slightly embossed and slightly less rough rectangles, slightly countersunk and slightly rougher rectangles and the another bit smoother lines in-between. The rectangles are of varying size. They have an aspect ratio of four to five along the building's longitudinal axis by three to four along its transversal or vertical axis. In addition, the texture on these roof segments is glossy, giving it a plastics-like appearance. From below, however, it is smooth and transparent with the same tint of grey as the glass panes.

Between the inner and outer sections of this kind on each side, there is one long textured strip, on top of which rest the larger brackets across the centre of the roof. Its texture is slightly glossy, but hard to identify as resembling something: It consists of stretched rectangular fields of medium grey, arranged transversally, with very thin dark grey outlines, surrounded and interrupted by narrow areas of medium light grey which are emphasised by bump-mapping or normal-mapping which makes them appear embossed as well as specular-mapping which makes them appear glossier than the rest. Within these fields, but at some distance from its outlines, there are more nested rectangles, from outermost to innermost: medium dark grey, dark grey, medium dark grey, medium grey and slightly bumpy, medium light grey and bumpier as well as appearing to be slightly countersunk, light grey and appearing to be even more countersunk. This pattern repeats over a hundred times over the length of the southern part of the building. It is on the bottom face of these two strips as well, but not on its narrow sides.

The very middle of the roof is simply one long glass pane. It is separated from the dark sections to its side by what seems to try to resemble rectangular aluminium profiles with the long sides oriented vertically. On each side, at a height right above the glass pane, there is a stripe that glows white in the dark while not actually being a light source; this is another OpenSim limitation.

Main building, domed conference hall

Beyond these parts of the building, a large geodesic dome rises up, below which is the conference hall. It is assembled from triangular glass panes in seven rows, four of which the image shows from outside, and untextured light grey cylindrical rods. The glass panes have the same tint or texture on both sides. The ones in the two bottom rows have the usual grey tint. The two rows above have the same lighter texture which most of the other panes on the building have on the outside. Unusually, this geodesic dome has no points at which five triangular panes meet. On all points which aren't on the bottom edge, six panes meet except for the very top where only four panes meet.

The dome is surrounded by a huge, disc-like object of varying thickness, but very thin on the eastern side which is revealed in the image, that is well over a hundred metres or 330 feet in diametre. It is bascially an eccentrical cone with a circular outer shape and a way off-centre hole towards it slightly slopes down. The geodesic dome mostly rests on the edge of the hole which means that the outer edge of the disc is shifted way to the east. There is also a cutout towards the south all the way to the circular hole, uncovering the roof of the southern part of the building. The western edge of the cutout deviates from being parallel to the longitudinal axis of the building by a few degrees to the right. The eastern edge of the cutout points at the centre of the circular hole.

Along the outer edge, the top surface of the disc is tapered over a distance of about seven and a half metres or 25 feet so that the outer edge is almost razor-sharp. For unknown reasons, the western edge of the cutout shows a similar sharpness by being tapered at the bottom.

The upper and lower surfaces of the disc shows variations of the usual brushed stainless steel texture. The cutout faces, however, show a dark grey texture with four darker grey grooves upon zooming in.

Right below, there is a second, similar asymmetrical cone, but smaller in diametre, even thinner and with a bigger slope. Its outer edge touches the first disc from below. Being dark coffee brown, it is the only outward part of the building that is not a shade of grey. Also, while it is half-transparent like tinted glass from above, all other surfaces are opaque and glossy, so it's possible to look through it from above, but not from below.

The inner edge of the brown cone connects to a ring around the conference hall at about roof height on the outside or the top. The ring describes about three quarters of a circle with the opening oriented towards the southern parts of the building. It has a slightly darker tint on its brushed stainless steel texture.

The ring also serves as the upper connection between the seven cylindrical pillars that surround the conference hall, four of which are hidden behind the building itself in the image. They have a diametre of about six metres or 20 feet, and they vary in length by a few metres. They all stand on the ground, and they are sloped outward from the conference hall, partly intersecting with the two cones above.

Main building, interior

Since the outer surfaces of the building are mostly glass, more can be seen inside the building than just the underside of the roof. Horizontal support cables are mounted between the textured roof strips and underneath each of the seven central roof brackets. They are similar to those through the side window-panes in the front, but longer and thinner. From all of these but the southernmost one, two darker, thinner and shorter support cables lead downward. Another pair is mounted farther south against the textured roof strip on its side. These fourteen vertical cables support the upper floor on its inner sides.

The upper floor is roughly U-shaped with the opening towards the south and the main entrance. It also serves as the ceiling for the ten seminar rooms on the ground floor, five on each side, above each of which it extends inward with a semi-elliptic shape. Its bottom side, the ceiling, is light grey. It has a bump map or a normal map which not only roughens it up but also divides it into octogonal pads with rectangular spaces in-between. The vertical surfaces towards the aisle have a texture that simulates small, square, dark grey panels in four rows held in place with one rivet in each corner. The seams between the panels are black. On some surfaces, the textures have obviously been stretched horizontally, making the panels rectangular, the rivet heads elliptical and the vertical seams wider than the horizontal seams. The upper side with its bluish-grey patterned carpet texture cannot be seen in the image.

The entire inner edge of the upper floor is protected by a railing. It consists of one mostly light grey rail with a rectangular cross-section on the floor, an identical rail that is a bit over 1.20m or four feet high above the floor and a number of small, slightly darker grey vertical beams with a square cross-section which connect them. The whole railing lacks texture and gloss.

Of the seminar rooms on the right, only the separation walls can be seen through the panes on the right of the building. These have mostly tan textures but with coarse and blurry stripes of various greys at the top and bottom.

Through the right-hand pane in the front, two seminar rooms on the left are visible, the rooms A7 and, north or to the right of it, A8. The seminar rooms A7 through A9, as well as A2 through A4 on the right, have a variety of untinted glass doors each: one in the northern corner towards the central aisle, another one in the southern corner, and one in each of these two corners that leads to the neighbouring seminar room. Apart from the lack of tint or texture, the glass doors are identical to the entrance doors.

The aisle-side wall of each seminar room can be described as convex although it is not rounded. It rather consists of four segments separated by narrow vertical columns with square footprints. They are connected by a number of horizontal rods with a rectangular cross-section. One is always right under the ceiling. Three more are roughly at 65%, 50% and 33% height above the ground. For the outermost segments, this is the height of the glass doors, so underneath the rod at 33% height above the ground, they have another vertical rod to separate the doorway from a narrower piece of wall. At some 12 or 13% height above the ground, there is another rod, and the last one is on the ground, in both cases except where there's a doorway.

The space between the latter two horizontal rods is filled with a wooden panel, showing the same reddish wood grain as all wooden-textured furniture in the building and on the sim. The other spaces have untinted glass panes in them. To illustrate the dimensions: The wooden panels are about 1.80 metres or six feet high, so for realistically-sized avatars, the only way to look into or out of the seminar rooms is through the doors.

On the vertical rod next to each aisle door, a sign with the room number is installed. The sign itself is simple, flat and rectangular. It is entirely black except for the white room number written on it in a regular Helvetica sans-serif typeface. It is attached through a glossy white cuboid that serves as a very simple mounting bracket.

Furthermore, there is an easel with a blank whiteboard standing next to each aisle door. It is a simple construction from cuboids, cylinders, a tetrahedron at the top and small spheres for feet and joints. Apart from the whiteboard which is mostly white and untextured except for the plywood texture on the back, the whole thing shows a brushed stainless steel texture with some gloss added.

Inside each seminar room, visible through the window-pane behind the easels, there is a whiteboard which is a much more elaborate construction. Each room has two of these. There is also a dark grey HDTV screen attached to the middle one of the three columns with a wall-mount swivel arm. A bit of furniture is barely visible through the closed glass door: Each room has seven quite long tables with elliptical ends, one long light grey foot on two legs with a wooden plank between them and a dark grey surface surrounded by wood grain. Six of these tables are for seminar participants with two chairs each. These chairs consist of two wooden parts in the shape of a stretched U with rounded sides and dark grey padding, two small metal rods connecting them and four conical metal legs. The seventh table is for the teacher whose chair is identical to those for the participants, only that it has an extra headrest in the same style as the rest of the chair plus a pair of elliptical armrests.

Main building, further interior objects

The large object that appears to be standing in front of seminar room A7 is a teleporter that was specifically designed for the Universal Campus due to its size. It is actually standing in the middle of the aisle, the control panel turned southward towards the main entrance. It is mainly a rectangular console on a massive angled stand. The frame around the control panel included, the console itself is about one and a half metres or five feet high and about three metres or ten feet wide. Above the control panel, there are two tiny spherical light sources on small trapezoid arms. They actually emit light to illuminate the control panel of the teleporter.

The control panel is labelled in a typeface not entirely dissimilar from Futura. On its left, there is a top-down view of the entire Universal Campus with the north oriented to the left. It shows the various buildings and other places. Ten circular markers are placed on the map, all with a glossy grey frame and a black number from one to ten. All markers but one are yellow; one is always glow-in-the-dark green. In this case, it is marker number 6 to the right of a rectangular building with a circular extension in its bottom corner. Below the aerial view, there is another, slightly bigger yellow circular marker, but with a red frame surrounded by a glowing red aura while not glowing itself. It has the number 2. Next to it is a label with an arrow-like point to the left that reads, black on white, "This is currrent (sic) location". It is up to the user, however, to find the marker with the same number on the map.

On the right of the control panel, there is a touchable list of destinations with their numbers in markers of the same size as the glowing red one in the bottom left, but with the usual shiny grey frame. The labels with the names of the destinations are identical in style with the current location marker:

• 1: Main Landing Zone
• 2: Main Building Lobby
• 3: Main Conference Hall
• 4: Recreation and Conference Center
• 5: Observation Deck and Sea Lab
• 6: Science Lab and Conference Room
• 7: Campfire and Beach Zone
• 8: The Light House
• 9: Engineering Conference Center
• 10: Helicopter Landing Pad

Just like on the map, destination number 6 is the only one with a glow-in-the-dark green marker and a glow-in-the-dark green label background. It is the currently chosen teleport destination. Upon clicking another one, it would be marked green, as would be its marker on the map. Below the list, there is another white label, but with an upward arrow point on its left-hand end that points to the column of numbered markers. It reads, "click to select location then right click and teleport!" This means that if the user were to right-click the panel, thus opening a pop-up menu, and then choose the option "Teleport", the avatar would instantly be relocated to whichever location is selected on the teleporter. To the right of this label, there are two small red triangles with glowing auras pointing upward; they appear to be non-functional.

The background of the control panel is glossy medium grey. The rest of the structure is glossy with a gunmetal-like dark grey texture.

There are also quite a few potted plants inside the building. On the sides of the teleport panel, there are two identical açaí palms in square terracotta pots with wide rims. Like the other potted plants, these mostly dark green plants with long pointy leaves are kept at an indoor-compatible size, namely about three and a half metres or eleven and a half feet tall. Also, like the other potted plants, they are made of only four flat and surfaces with partially transparent pictures of the plant on them, arranged in angles of 45 degrees to one another.

Through the main entrance, a slightly taller Jacaranda tree with dark lilac flowers can be seen. It is planted in a bulgy terracotta pot with a smaller rim than the square ones which is supposed to be round. In order to reduce the impact on graphics performance, however, the pot is actually hexagonal. There is also one of the two angled flights of wooden stairs leading to the upper floor and, outside the building again, a small but wide maple tree with brown autumn leaves. A look through the side entrance to the right shows an even slightly taller Bougainvillea with purple flowers. Above these doors, the underside of the upper half of the other flight of stairs is shown. The steps are not covered from below, and the spaces between them are open.

Some of the unusual dividers on the upper floor can be seen through the windows, too. The main element is a half-arch of a bit over 90 degrees from the floor to the tilted structures on the side of the building. Its core is a thin, roughly 1.80 metres or six feet wide circle segment with an inner radius of about four and a half metres or fifteen feet and a dark grey texture which resembles some kind of rock. It is lined on both the inside and the outside with arches with a brushed stainless steel texture. The inner arch is about 45 centimetres or one and a half feet wide, the outer arch is slightly narrower, and both are significantly thicker than the core arch. From both ends of the arch, narrow brushed stainless steel bars extend to the centre of the arch where they meet. They are thinner than the stainless steel arches, but thicker than the core arch. Finally, the area between the two bars and the inner arch is filled with a grey tinted glass pane.

On each side of the upper floor, there are six such dividers. The southernmost ones are installed right above and north of the stairs and attached directly to the vertical structures on the sides. Between the other ten and the side structures, there are horizontal extensions in much the same style. The arches themselves are extended to the sides by two rhomboids in the same style, a longer one of some four and a half metres or fifteen feet with four cylindrical connectors of roughly 60 centimetres or two feet of diametre on its corners underneath which avatars can pass and a shorter one of some three metres or ten feet which connects to the vertical structures. The latter one also has a third stainless-steel-framed rhomboid all the way down to the floor underneath itself which is filled with a grey tinted glass pane.

Avatars in OpenSim and the avatar vendor rooms

On the eastern side of the building, barely visible through the large glass surfaces, there is an area that offers complete classic avatars as well as classic avatar accessories.

Unlike in most other 3-D virtual worlds, avatars in OpenSim-based worlds, just like Second Life, are not monolithic. They are highly modular, they are highly configurable, and they have evolved over the years. The most basic classic avatar consists of five components that always have to be there. The only one that cannot be replaced is the system body which is automatically generated by the viewer application. OpenSim has the same system body as Second Life. The four components that can be replaced but never removed are the shape which greatly defines the look of the avatar with 88 parametres, the skin which is a set of three textures for the head and which can be tinted with parametres, the upper body and the lower body, the hair which defines the shape and length of the classic hairdo growing out of the head as well as its texture, and the eyes which are basically only a texture again.

Classic clothes are also referred to as layer clothes because they are just that, layers of textures painted onto the system body. Their order is defined by nine categories, in each of which a classic avatar can only wear one kind of clothing. A few of these have an influence on the shape of the avatar: The shirt and the jacket can widen the arms to simulate sleeves. Likewise, the pants can widen the legs downward to simulate pants legs and even bell-bottoms. And the shoes can both raise the avatar in general and grow a sort of spike out of the heel, lift the whole avatar except for the toe area because the system body does not actually have toes and thus generate high heels. A separate layer is for skirts; it textures a part of the system body which is usually fully transparent and thus invisible. In 2011, four tattoo layers were added between the skin and the two underwear layers.

It is also possible to attach objects to an avatar at 30 different points, and it has been for as long as OpenSim was around. This was quickly used not only for things carried by the avatar, jewellery or other accessories, but also for more realistic hair, for better-looking shoes in comparison with the painted-on classic shoes, for various ways of having new shapes of skirts, for collars, for pants legs et cetera.

Originally, these attachments were made from primitive objects or "prims" in short: basic shapes like cubes, spheres, cones and the like which can be generated and manipulated a lot in-world without needing external software except for making textures. Since building complex objects from them is somewhere between highly complicated and impossible, it was made possible to import sculptmaps as exported from 3-D software like Blender and use them to create more complex prims. All kinds of prims can be made flexible with a little bit of physics which is used for hair and skirts as well as for flags, but the physics don't have collision detection.

The next step was the introduction of mesh. Mesh allows the user to directly import 3-D files in the Collada format, texture mapping included, without having to resort to sculptmaps. Mesh came to Second Life in 2011, as did experimental mesh support in OpenSim. The first stable release of OpenSim with mesh support came out in 2014. On avatars, mesh was originally used for hair, shoes, jewellery and other accessories. It really started a revolution with the introduction of rigged mesh which automatically latches itself to multiple points on the avatar. This made it possible not only to create clothes that move with the avatar's movement, but even to create all-new, better-looking bodies and heads. Nowadays, most avatars consist entirely of mesh.

The newest technological advancement for avatars was Bakes-on-Mesh which came up from 2019 on. This allows classic layer textures to be put onto worn mesh, especially mesh bodies, and in greater numbers than on the system body. The main purpose was to get away from skin appliers, scripted devices that have to be put on and used to put a different skin onto the mesh body. Also, the remaining onion layers around mesh bodies that were necessary for tattoos, but made mesh bodies unnecessarily complex, had become obsolete because Bakes-on-Mesh allows for wearing classic layer tattoos on mesh bodies. But it also makes wearing layer clothes possible again which can make sense in the case of skin-tight clothes.

The latest version of the Universal Campus from 2012 already uses mesh for a few things, mostly rocks. The main building itself and everything else shown in this image is still put together from prims and sculpties.

As for the contents in the avatar vendor area, none of it is newer than from 2011. Everything is still from times before mesh. The complete avatars come with layer clothes, but no attachments. They, like the skins and hair attachments, were created by Ina Centaur under the OS Avatars label around the same time as the Universal Campus. Many of the other items, the majority of which were made by Nebadon Izumi himself, are even older. All of them are offered under free licenses, however. In order to announce their availability, three of the divider extensions have signs mounted above them which can be made out in the picture. They are oval, black with a stainless steel frame, and they have the glowing, but not light-emitting white word "AVATARS" written on them in all-caps and in a typeface which looks to me like a regular Linux Libertine. The writing even uses proper kerning between the "A"s, the "V" and the "T".

In the first two of the three avatar vendor rooms, the rear sides of four stainless steel vendors each, lined up on the outer side of the room along the longitudinal axis of the building, and especially the signs above them on thin cylindrical stands can be made out, the only ones that aren't hidden behind something. The first four vendors offer one female skin each, the other four offer one male skin each. The displays on these eight vendors are oriented away from the camera.

Main building, upper floor, western side

The first two rooms on the western side of the building are conference areas, the other two are empty. Not much of them is visible except for three of the dividers, a semi-circular couch with a wooden frame and ten seats, a small banana tree in a hexagonal white concrete pot, another whiteboard and two HDTV screens in stainless steel casings on floor stands. One of them shows the monochrome test pattern which is actually on all of them, and which includes several screen-testing elements as well as a large medium grey circle in the middle with a white, a black and a thinner medium grey border around it and the digit 2 in black and in a heavy, condensed sans-serif typeface and a white square grid on medium grey ground with the capital letter "C" in two combined fields at the bottom.

The main landing area outside the main entrance

In front of the main entrance, there is the main landing area of the sim, a part of which is still within the image towards its bottom left. It is circular in shape with a diametre of about 40 metres or 130 feet. The centre of this circle is about 35 metres or 115 feet south from the main entrance of the main building. It shows the same light grey texture reminiscent of concrete that is used on most paths on the island. The texture is not shrunk to a realistic size, so it appears coarse and having a low resolution.

The outer edges of nearly all concrete surfaces on the island are lined with low walls of varying height and width. They all have the same concrete texture, but at a smaller scale and without the light grey tint so it appears almost white. The main landing area actually has two rows of walls around it. The inner walls are a bit over 1.20 metres or four feet high and about 1.50 metres or five feet wide. The outer walls at a distance of roughly three metres or ten feet are about 1.65 metres or five and a half feet high and about 1.80 metres or six feet wide.

At the ends, the gaps are closed with walls a bit lower than the inner walls and roughly 90 centimetres or three feet wide. The spaces between the walls are filled with dirt. They form planters with identical shrubs in them; the short planters in the northwest and the northeast visible in the image have five plants each. These shrubs are not named in-world. They appear to be of tropical origin, and they have flowers with petals that are mostly white, yellow towards the centre and magenta along their edges. Like all trees on this sim, the shrubs are made of simple, textured sculpty prims for the trunks and branches, and the twigs, leaves and flowers are semi-transparent textures on intersecting two-dimensional surfaces, a popular way to make plants in Second Life and OpenSim before the arrival of mesh. The textures used for all plants on this sim are photo-realistic as far as the maximum possible or feasible texture resolution allows.

On the left-hand edge of the image, in front of the northwestern planter, there is another teleporter which is almost identical to the one that can be seen inside the building. There are two differences, however: Its current location is number 1, and the selected location in the image is number 4. Another one of the unidentified shrubs appears between the teleporter and the left-hand edge of the image, partly hidden behind the teleporter.

Another single-target teleporter is standing on its right. It is a custom addition to this particular instance of the Universal Campus. It was built by Neovo Geesink, formerly of Metropolis Metaversum fame and now involved in OSgrid, in his trademark style. This style includes a particular brushed stainless steel texture which, unlike those used by Nebadon Izumi, emulates the surface having been brushed circularly. The stand under the panel is a simple cone, flattened to an extremely elliptical footprint. The panel is as high as that of the original teleporter, but only slightly wider as it is high. The frame around the image in the centre is slightly narrower than that on the original teleporter.

The image itself shows an aerial view of its single hard-coded target, a sim named TeleHub, built and operated by Neovo. It is nothing more than a single region, a square of 256 by 256 metres or 280 by 280 yards, surrounded by blue ocean and a wall made of beige bricks which is about ten metres or 33 feet high. The ground is tan and divided into four triangular areas by two diagonal lines. In each area, there are 141 single-target teleporters similar to this one, but with a higher panel, in rows of eleven. A few show previews of their targets, but most are unused with black screens. In the very centre, there is a small circular platform on which avatars land after teleporting in. It has a beige top surface with a hexagonal tile pattern and a woodgrain texture on the sloped surface all around. Four arches with textures resembling rough taupe stones and black signs on them lead to one triangular area each. The position of the camera is off one of the corners and pointing diagonally downward to one of the yellow division lines.

Yet another one of the identical unidentified shrubs is behind this teleporter and shown to its right.

In the background, the low walls on the sides of a path appear between the shrub behind the teleporter to TeleHub and the main building. The path is straight and leads northward along the western side of the building.

Even farther in the background, behind the two teleporters, there is some vegetation. From left to right, it starts with an unidentified tree of about eight metres or 26 feet of height. It has reddish-brown bark, medium green leaves in pairs and what could be taken for pale yellow-ish fruit. Below it, there is a large bushel of khaki-coloured grass that stands about two and a half metres or more than eight feet high. The tree intersects with another maple tree with brown and tan leaves that is about ten metres or 33 feet tall with more massive greyish trunk and branches. Immediately to the right again and partly intersecting with the maple tree, there is an even unidentified tree, about 17 metres or 56 feet tall, with grey bark on a fairly slim trunk and a messy crown of dark, brownish-green leaves which are so small that the texture makes it impossible to tell individual leaves. This tree is partly hidden behind the building already. It has another two bushels of the same tall grass underneath it which, due to the point of view, only seem to stand immediately to the right of the trunk.

Behind this vegetation, right below the crowns of the trees, the horizon separates the sky from the sea. What little sea the image shows is medium light blue. The sky right above the horizon is very light cyan, and around half the height of the image, it gradually changes into a tone of blue similar to that of the sea. From the top left corner of the image downward and to the right, more than half of the sky is covered by a cirrus-like thin cloud with a small hole above the roof end of the main building. On the right, the cloud dissolves into smaller clouds above the geodesic dome and the surrounding thin cones.

Further additions to the Universal Campus include five easels of the same type as seen inside, but with custom writing in it. They are lined up next to each other in front of the northeastern planter, starting right next to the wide path towards the main entrance. The writing on all five easels is done in black and in an unidentified humanist sans-serif typeface which appears condensed due to the texture having been stretched vertically, thus losing its original aspect ratio. Only the writing on the first of the five is visible from the camera's point of view, though. It reads in three lines, "To download a free copy of the Universal Campus Var Region." This is followed by a blank line and one more line that reads, "Click here for notecard". Upon clicking the easel, it gives the avatar a notecard with an Amazon cloud storage URL following an explanation that it contains the Universal Campus as a varregion archive and followed by a full copy of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

Around the main landing area and the main building

Due to limitations in construction with prims, the ground of the main landing area is slightly higher than that of the three paths which lead away from it. The widest one of these paths is about one third of the diametre of the landing area in average width that leads to the main entrance. It is trapezoid in shape, and its sides line up with the centre of the main landing area. Two more trapezoid paths, also widening with the distance from the centre of the main landing area but only half as wide as the first one, lead westward and eastward from an imaginary point a little north from the centre of the main landing area. The western one is not visible in the image except for on the aerial view on the teleporter. The eastern one makes up most of the foreground along the bottom edge of the image.

On the outer corner of the northeastern planter on the eastward path, there is a lamp post standing on an almost white, cylindrical concrete block of about 1.80 metres or six feet of both height and diametre. From the camera perspective, it is in front of the main building and near the westernmost front column. It appears to be almost parallel with the column, but the lamp post is vertical while the column is tilted roughly northwestward.

The lamp post itself is about seven and a half metres or 25 feet high and very slightly conical with an elaborately-shaped round foot. At the top, it describes a sharp 90-degree angle towards the path, rounded on the outside, forming a corner on the inside. It then extends conically towards the path by another roughly 1.50 metres or five feet before ending in a small sphere. The bottom of the sphere is flattened, and the actual light source is installed on this flat surface. It is round, glowing and emitting slightly yellowish light. The rest of the lamp post is light grey or white and highly glossy.

The walls lining the paths to the sides of the main landing area rise no more than about 30 centimetres or one foot above the paths themselves while being twice as wide.

In the bottom right corner of the image, the path to the east intersects with a circular path around the main landing area that begins and ends near the southern side entrances of the main building. Its centre is some ten metres or 33 feet north of that of the main landing area, and its outer diametre is about 100 metres or 330 feet. Due to the aforementioned limitations, it is a little bit higher than the trapezoid spoke path at the bottom. Its walls rise about 60 centimetres or two feet above itself and about 80 centimetres or a little less than three feet above the path to the east, and they are about 2.40 metres or eight feet wide.

Between the main building, the path to the main building, the planter northeast of the main landing area, the path in the very foreground and the circular path on the right, a large patch of sim ground is still unused. It shows a green texture with some slightly darker or minimally more yellow-ish areas. The texture has a fairly low resolution. It is coarse and blurry, and at the same time, even this patch of ground reveals the repeating texture tiles. The ground itself is rather bumpy as though it has been manually treated to be like this. All the same applies to the corresponding area to the west of the path to the main building of which fairly little of it is revealed in the image.

Right before its end near the right-hand entrance, the circular pathway first branches diagonally to the right to another path three small steps down. On both corners of this junction, there are fairly cylindrical platforms inserted into the walls. Both have a diametre of about 3.60 metres or twelve feet and a height of about 1.20 metres or four feet above the branched-off path or a bit under 90 centimetres or three feet above the circular path. The walls along the branched-off path are fairly small, only some 45 centimetres or one and a half feet high and about 60 centimetres or two feet wide.

After about 15 metres or 50 feet of length, the branched-off path continues down a set of stairs. Due to how low the camera position is, the stairs itself are hidden from the camera, but the block and guide rails along the far side of the stairs, the northwestern side, are not. The block is the same shade of grey as the surfaces of the paths. It serves as a primary guard on the sides of the stairs. It is about 90 centimetres or three feet wide. It ascends from the usual wall on the side of the path which it overlaps by the same amount on both sides, and it does so at an angle of roughly 25 degrees. It reaches its peak right above where the stairs start at a height of about two metres or six and a half feet above the path. From there, it descends at an angle of about 35 degrees which, curiously, is a little less steep than the stairs themselves.

The guide rails are dark blue flat slabs, about 30 centimetres or one foot wide and about seven and a half centimetres or three inches thick. They come in stacks of four, arranged above one another with round about one and a half times the thickness of one rail worth of space between them. They are parallel to the descending surface of the block. The lowest one has a distance to the block of circa 30 centimetres or one foot. Each set of rails is held together and in place by two shiny, textureless blocks of 120 centimetres or four feet of height and a square top surface which, however, slightly narrows downward to the large concrete block below when looked at from parallel to the rails. Upstairs, the four rails extend beyond the stairs by roughly seven and a half metres or 25 feet. Their upper ends are lined up almost exactly vertically. The whole arrangement is slightly shifted out of centre on top of the block, away from the stairs. A second, identical set of rails is installed further downstairs for no apparent reason other than looks. Such rails are actually on both sides of the stairs, but the image only shows them on one side.

Shortly before the stairs, one lamp post like the one is installed on the wall on each side of the path towards the stairs, complete with the cylindrical block underneath. In the image, the lamp post on the right with the exception of the foot and the cylindrical concrete block underneath is almost entirely obscured by two trees. One is identical to the tree with the chaotic brownish-green leaves to the left that is partly hidden behind the main building. It has another bushel of grass around where its roots were if it had any. Another much larger one is standing to its right, its trunk and most of its crown outside the image already. It is unidentified, too, but it shows some signs of being an acacia tree. Its bark is mostly greyish-brown with some rusty red patches on it. Its leaves are long, pointy and various tones of pale light to not-quite-as-pale medium green.

Immediately after the path towards the stairs branches off, the circular path leads into a straight path that runs parallel to the eastern side of the main building. The walls on its side have the same size as those on the sides of the circular path. On both of its ends, short, wide platforms lead to the side entrances of the building, connected to the path via two small steps each. These platforms do not have walls on their sides. At the far end, the straight path leads into another circular path, this time around the conference hall.

Some more vegetation is to the right of the path along the eastern side of the main building, all standing on sim ground. Right behind the unobstructed lamp post next to the path that leads downstairs, there is a fairly large unidentified tree that almost reaches the edge of the roof of the building. Its crown has rather dense foliage in a quite saturated medium green tone. The bark texture on its thin trunk and branches is mostly taupe with bits of copper brown and fairly smooth except for long dark rifts along the trunk and the branches as well as a few dark holes.

Behind the block and the dark blue rails along the stairs by the right-hand edge of the image, a gigantic version of the unidentified shrubs in the planters is located on the edge of the downhill slope which necessitates the stairs. It is about five and a half metres or eighteen feet high, and its flowers are up to 60 centimetres or two feet in diametre.

Farther in the background, also behind the lamp post and a little behind the shrubs, there is a group of seven pine trees of varying size. They have semi-transparent, conical surfaces around their trunks with textures which give the impression of very dark green needles. There are also bushels of tall grass on the ground between the pines.

Lastly, one of the four main light sources is the simulated Sun. Since it is shortly before noon, it is standing almost vertically above the sim and shining what is technically grey light down on it. The sim uses OpenSim's default daycycle in which the Sun always goes through the zenith. The same applies to all converted older daycycles originally available in OpenSim. The Sun is also the only light source on the sim whose light casts shadows. The other four main light sources are three types of ambient light in darker taupe, bluish slate grey and Prussian blue. These three neither have a specified direction of light, nor do they produce any shadows.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #VirtualPhotography #VirtualArchitecture #Sim #Varsim #OAR #NebadonIzumi #UniversalCampus #OSgrid #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSim #OpenSimulator

So how fscked-up is OpenSimWorld with its complete lack of user rules and moderation? Yes.

There's a guy with a thousand sock puppet accounts who keeps creating new ones just to attack others and claims to have governmental authorities take care of everything that's going wrong on OSW and in OpenSim in general. Now he has revealed himself to allegedly be British, and he's still implying to have something like the MI6 go against hatespeech on OSW as well as pirated Second Life content in-world.

He's currently duking it out with an good ol', red-blooded, flag-wavin', gun-tote'n all-Amurkin 'Murkin MAGA "patriot" from 'Murkuh who, on a scale from 0 = the most radical Antifa groups to 100 = literally Hitler in 1944, is a solid 500 and insults everyone from 499 downward as a "libtard", who "knows" he can beat anyone in a swearing contest just like 'Murkuh can beat anyone in anything, and who has told me once that he thinks Germans are wimps for not having enough balls to have an ultra-extremist right-wing government.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld #USpol #CWUSpol #Libtard #Libtards #MAGA

The OpenSimulator Community Conference is saving the best for last. At least for those of us who live in central Europe, 9 hours ahead of grid time, and who don't want to stay up all night for the late-late events.

• 11:30 AM-12:30 PM PST/grid time:
  Shop during lunch! Hypergrid Shopping Tour: Where to find content
  I'm curious where Lyr Lobo will take us. And if she has taken the time to add some of my suggestions as actual destinations. Then again, @Juno Rowland or I could probably do an even longer specialise "So you've got a Ruth2 v4, and you're looking for clothes, but you don't want to resort to copybotted Second Life stuff" shopping tour. Have this wiki article instead.
  
• 12:30 PM-1:30 PM PST/grid time:
  In Conversation: Mal Burns talks with Tish Shute
  Okay, that's a filler, but probably an interesting one, also because it takes a look at early OpenSim.
  
• 1:30 PM-2:00 PM PST/grid time:
  The Open Metaverse Research Group
  Right now, the Open Metaverse Research Group appears to be a bunch of idealistic OpenSim users who want to achieve what industry and cryptobros, both with no knowledge of even OpenSim's existence whatsoever, are working on independently themselves. And it doesn't look like the OMRG has any associates outside the OpenSim community. Not to mention the state their very wiki is in. I hope this panel will convince me otherwise.
  
• 2:00 PM-2:30 PM PST/grid time:
  Max – New Free Mesh bodies for OpenSim Avatars
  The most exciting panel of the whole event. Ada Radius presents the new "unisex" mesh body she has created this year, Max, that can be turned into a male variant named Maxwell and a female one named Maxine. It's the official successor of Ruth2 and Roth2 now, and just like them, it's free, open-source, legal and made in and for OpenSim by largely the same team. And it promises to provide a much better dev kit. I'll try to apply as a beta-tester, also because I don't want this body to go out there only lab-tested by its own devs.
  
• 2:30 PM-3:00 PM PST/grid time:
  A Home for Arcadia Asylum
  Another topic dear to Ada, now joined by Kayaker Magic: the creations of Arcadia Asylum/Aley Arai/Lora Lemon/Aley Resident, at least what was successfully rescued and transferred to OpenSim. Kayaker has recently launched an entire grid specialising on Arcadia Asylum, and there'll be a tour through it tomorrow at 10 AM PST/grid time.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OSCC #OSCC23 #Events #OMRG #OpenMetaverse #Max #Maxwell #Maxine #MeshBody #ArcadiaAsylum

Here's a premiere: the first #FollowFriday for #OpenSimulator.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about: OpenSimulator, also called #OpenSim, is a free and #OpenSource platform for 3-D #VirtualWorlds that uses largely the same technology as #SecondLife. It was launched as early as 2007. It mostly became a network of #federated, interconnected worlds (#grids) when the #Hypergrid was introduced in 2008. And "#Metaverse" has been a part of the standard OpenSim vocabulary since before 2010, too.

It currently measures about 420 public grids at various sizes from tiny to slightly larger than Second Life itself and countless private grids, the vast majority of which are on the Hypergrid.

So without further ado, here are some suggestions:

• Shelenn Ayres
  #InfiniteMetaverseAlliance CEO. Co-organiser of the on-going #OpenSimFest #OSFest2023 that'll continue until the end of the month. Follow her now for the daily schedule. Also maybe your first #Friendica connection.
  → @Shelenn Ayres
  
• Mal Burns
  Creator and main host of #InworldReview, also creator of several other YouTube video series about virtual worlds. One of the organisers of #HypergridInternationalExpo which will return next month after six years.
  → Main account: @Mal Burns Main
  → OpenSim account: @Metaworld Opensim Social
  
• Thirza Ember
  Organiser of the weekly #HGSafari. One of the hosts of Inworld Review. Another one of the organisers of #HIE.
  → @Thirza
  
• Tosha Tyran
  One of the four founders and owners of #CraftWorld, one of the five oldest grids. Another one of the organisers of HIE.
  → @Tosha T.
  
• Kelso Uxlay
  Co-founder and co-owner of the #CreaNovale grid. Co-builder of the famous four-seasons varsim known as #Novale. And yet another one of the organisers of HIE.
  → @Kelso Uxlay
  
• Lone Wolf
  Founder and owner of the #WolfTerritoriesGrid, the second-largest OpenSim grid. Might be the single person who owns the most virtual land in the world, but he offers it for rent. Also founder and owner of the OpenSimSocial #Mastodon instance.
  → @Lone Wolf
  
• Hyacinth Jean
  Founder and owner of the #GroovyVerse grid and the GroovyToot Mastodon instance. Prolific #MeshBody maker; has forked Ruth 2.0 into #LuvMyBod and Diana and created her own private mesh body. Currently working on an alternative to #OpenSimWorld.
  → @Hyacinth 🏳️‍⚧️ ☮️
  
• vrsimility
  Working on an authentic, detailed recreation of 19th century #Liverpool in OpenSim.
  → @vrsimility
  
• OpenSimulator Community Conference
  The #OSCC is a yearly community event with a whole number of panels about OpenSim in particular and virtual worlds in general. Expect #OSCC23 to happen in December.
  → @OpenSim Community Conference
  
• Finally, the OpenSim community on #Lemmy
  Not a user for a change, but a place on Lemmy for OpenSim users/avatars to meet and discuss.
  → @OpenSim

#FOSS #FLOSS #Decentralized #Decentralization #Decentralised #Decentralisation #VirtualWorld #WolfTerritories #WolfGrid #Ruth2 #OSFest

@OpenSim

Don't blindly trust Adult ratings on sims in #OpenSimulator. They don't necessarily mean the same as in #SecondLife.

If #OpenSimWorld advertises a sim as Adult-rated, and the description is in any language other than English, chances are the sim owner doesn't even know what Adult means in this context. Chances are they run the whole of OSW through Google Translate, and "Adult" is translated into what only means "grown-up" in their language.

The concept of "adult" meaning #NSFW pretty much only exists in English-speaking countries, if not even only in North America. Places with other main languages use different wordings and often don't shy away from naming things clearly. Thus, people who live there may be unaware that "adult" stands for stuff like nudity or sex.

Also, the translations of "adult" in the viewers may not be the same as the translation of "adult" when running OSW through Google Translate. This might explain why some sims by non-English-speaking users have different ratings in-world and on OSW.

In general, it isn't quite as bad if the sim owner's native language is German. Germans are often pretty relaxed, and they're very likely to run sims which actually allow for nudity or even more. See Stark. Also, English as a second language has been mandatory in the Federal Republic of Germany for decades.

On the other hand, it tends to be somewhat worse if the sim owner is Italian, not only due to a frequent lack of any knowledge of English, but also because Italians seem to be particularly up-tight. It may be another case of that dreaded prudish "wishful thinking" that "Adult" only means "no child avatars allowed" in #OpenSim.

So if a sim is rated Adult, but the sim description is not in English, be careful and look around the sim. If you spot things like nude beach signs or furniture with naughty animations, chances are good that the Adult rating means what it usually means. But if not, don't assume it does.

#Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

While going around #DorenasWorld and taking pictures for our #HypergridInternationalExpo booth, I came across something alarmingly dangerous.

A #lioness.

And a male lion.

And three cubs.



I regret nothing.

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Löwin #Wildschwein #Wildschweine #WildPig #WildPigs #WildBoar #Meme #EyeContact #EC

Since a couple months ago, you can read it all over the place: "The #Metaverse is dead." Everyone agreed, because for 99% of all people out there, "Metaverse" refers to the series of 3-D #VirtualWorlds (to be) launched by #Meta, formerly #Facebook. And as far as I know, Zuckerberg actually tried to use "Metaverse" as the registered, trademarked, exclusive brand name for his worlds until he learned that he can't trademark something already used in a commercially published novel, namely Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson from 1991.

Thus, he settled for names like #HorizonWorlds which nobody knows nor cares about because everyone still speaks of Meta's worlds as "the Metaverse". And I guess people would continue to do so even if Snow Crash was turned into a massive Hollywood blockbuster with a budget of $400M that makes $4B in theatres within the first week.

What we can take away from this is that Mark Zuckerberg did, in fact, not invent the term "metaverse".

Oh, and just recently, Linden Labs started a massive PR campaign for #SL20B, the 20th birthday of #SecondLife which has also only recently started referring to itself as a "metaverse" to try and jump into the gap that the Horizons leave behind as Meta drops them like they're hot in favour of #ArtificialIntelligence.

Many have rubbed their eyes in disbelief. Didn't Second Life, like, shut down in, what, 2008 or 2009? Because the rampant news coverage about it died down back then. Yeah, but that was because it was no longer viable for commercial mainstream mass media to have virtual offices in Second Life after what few big corporations had joined it had left again. And when journalists stopped using their avatars (said avatars are still there, only unused), they didn't know what was happening in Second Life anymore. Besides, what was still happening in Second Life was only of interest for Second Life residents, but not for casual mass media consumers.

Nonetheless, Second Life continued to exist, and it does so until today. It even developed and advanced greatly. Today's avatars look nothing like those from 2007 when the hype was the biggest and from when the most images and videos seem to have survived. Oh, and they blow everything that Horizons has ever dared to demonstrate clean out of the water while consisting entirely of user-generated content.

What we can take away from this is that the Metaverse (no capital M here) is not dead, and that #HorizonWorldsIsNotTheMetaverse and has never been "The Metaverse".

However, between Snow Crash and the renaming of Facebook (the corporation) into Meta, the term "metaverse" was still used a lot, only it was used in places which next to nobody even knew, which are still largely unknown today. I'm talking about the worlds based on #OpenSimulator, a sort of free and open-source implementation of Second Life, and its community.

To give you a few examples: Alternate Metaverse counts as the fifth-biggest #OpenSim grid by active users and the sixth-largest by land area. It was launched in late 2019 under this name. That already was well before Zuck implied having invented 3-D virtual worlds. And the name wasn't chosen to cash in on Snow Crash, but because the word "metaverse" had been all around OpenSim for years already.

The Infinite Metaverse Alliance is from 2016, if not even older. And it has always been all about OpenSim with two grids of its own, one named Metaverse Depot.

#Metropolis, launched in 2008 was one of the first OpenSim grids, it was the first mostly German-speaking OpenSim grid, and when it was shut down for good almost a year ago, it was the third-oldest still existing grid. Its full name was "Metropolis Metaversum" for which there's proof from as early as 2010.

I'm tempted to say the earliest uses of the term "metaverse" in conjunction with OpenSim go back until even earlier in 2008 when OpenSim introduced the #Hypergrid which federated grids much like Fediverse instances are federated: For the first and so far only time in the history of virtual worlds, it became possible for avatars to travel between separate worlds with separate operators. Some said the Hypergrid was worth being referred to as a metaverse.

This was when it was increasingly attempted to define what a metaverse or the Metaverse is. Another idea was that "the Metaverse" refers to the entirety of all virtual worlds, regardless of whether they're connected or not. It would include 3-D worlds like Second Life, There or the various OpenSim grids, it would include 2½-D isometric worlds like Furcadia, it would include 2-D worlds and maybe even text-only worlds, and it would include out-right games like Minecraft or World of Warcraft, even if the worlds in the former are created procedurally. Basically, "metaverse" became the new "cyberspace".

And then there were those who had probably read Snow Crash and who knew what the Metaverse in that book is: a centralised, monolithic, corporate-owned walled garden. Essentially, that Metaverse was a vision of an Internet that had evolved into a 3-D world, but in 1991, the Internet largely consisted of corporate-owned walled gardens such as AOL and CompuServe itself, and Microsoft tried to establish its own one. That was three years before the World-Wide Web.

So while the requirement of being corporate-run and even a walled garden wasn't pursued further, "metaverse" was defined as being one single world. According to this definition, there isn't "the Metaverse", but there are many metaverses. Each OpenSim grid would be its own metaverse. No wonder not few grids actually refer to themselves as metaverses.

Sometimes, another criterium is added to the definition: It's only truly a metaverse when it's possible to move between separate locations (rooms, spaces, lands, call them whatever) by natural means. Usually, a virtual world has to be divided into smaller units, especially if these smaller units can be run by someone else than the creators/owners of the whole world. Now, this criterium means that these units have to at least be able to directly border on one another. An avatar standing near the border between two units must be able to look into the neighbouring unit. And in order to enter the neighbouring unit, the avatar must be able to walk or ride a vehicle that's actually moving instead of being a teleporter in disguise (I've seen both in OpenSim). Teleportation must not be a requirement out of basic technological limitations.

Now, imagine a virtual world that's IRC or Discord ported to 3-D just like the Metaverse in Snow Crash is AOL ported to 3-D, a world that only consists of separate, enclosed chatrooms which are built in-world as virtual conference rooms which you enter by logging into them and leave by logging out again. It probably doesn't have any windows. It definitely doesn't have a door working as such; either there is no door, or the door is decoration, or the door is the logout button, but there's nothing outside that door. If your avatar runs into that door, provided your avatar can walk and isn't bound to a chair at the conference table (yes, there are virtual worlds in which avatars can't walk around), it'll log out of that conference room and back into a kind of lobby. By the above criterium, this cannot be a metaverse.

However, if the door actually opens, and your avatar can look and walk through it into a hallway, from there into the lobby and even leave the building, then we're getting closer to a metaverse, probably even more so if the conference room is actually a separate virtual location operated by someone else than the lobby and the hallways.

Second Life fulfills this definition. You can walk around the mainland for hours, constantly crossing from one sim into another, all rented and designed by different residents, even though they all run on the same server cluster under Linden Labs' control. Sure, you can teleport, but that's only necessary if there's no other way to get somewhere. That might be because your current location and/or your destination is too remote, i.e. isolated by empty regions with no sims running in them which can't be crossed, or out of convenience because your destination is too far away.

OpenSim grids fulfill it, too, while the Hypergrid doesn't. The Hypergrid requires teleportation because it connects separate worlds and not different places within the same world. Otherwise, it's like Second Life while sometimes taking the "separate places with separate owners" part even further: Between renting land on grids and running a whole grid of your own, you can host your own sims and have them attached to certain existing grids. As a visitor, it might actually happen that you walk not only from one sim to another, but onto someone else's machine.

Still, if you look around, if you look at the various platforms that have "metaverse" painted on them, whether they're operational or only vague concepts, each one of their creators has a different definition of what a metaverse or the Metaverse is, always corresponding on what they plan their worlds to be like. Corporations that place all their bets on #VirtualReality claim that "pancake" worlds which can be accessed through conventional devices with 2-D screens like Second Life or the OpenSim grids can't be metaverses. Those who want to include the real life and #AugmentedReality or #MixedReality claim that this is part of the very definition of "metaverse" so that they can also deny VR-only platforms such as #VRchat or #RecRoom any metaverse status. At the same time, even companies that offer nothing more than e.g. concerts in virtual reality claim that their secluded concert venues make up a metaverse, too.

Corporate definitions of "metaverse" almost always amount to, "A metaverse is what we call a metaverse; all metaverse definitions by our competitors are false, they don't have/work on true metaverses." Exceptions are limited to Meta ("We're inventing the Metaverse from scratch. Wait, what do you mean, we can't trademark that word?") and Linden Labs ("We've had a metaverse before any of you even had computers. And our very own Philip Rosedale has actually read Snow Crash. Your arguments are invalid.").

Sometimes the definition of "metaverse" even goes hand-in-hand with a declaration of what makes a virtual world, and what's necessary to build and operate one. Cryptobros, for example, insist that the Metaverse/metaverses/virtual worlds can impossibly function without a blockchain, a cryptocurrency and NFTs. Others who invest in AI currently state that virtual worlds won't and can't be possible without AI. Second Life has been proving them all wrong by successfully and continually running a virtual world without a blockchain, without crypto, without NFTs and without AI for two decades now, but they build their business model on their customers either never having even heard of Second Life or believing it was shut down before summer 2009.

The IEEE even has a scientific paper on the definition of "metaverse". No, really.

This leads us to a set of criteria for the Metaverse or a metaverse that may or may not be valid.

The first one is that it's 3-D. This is easy to agree upon unless pre-3-D worlds protest against that definition.

Persistence is another criterium. The world must not only exist on your end-user device and start up when you join it and shut down again when you leave. This is generally fulfilled. Generally because many OpenSim users run their own grids based on the #DreamGrid distribution on Windows computers at home. Some do leave them running 24/7, others only start them up when they're at home and awake. And then there are those who only own one functional computer which therefore serves as both the machine they run their viewer on and their grid server. Now, the typical Windows user starts up their machine when they need it and shuts it down when they're done. So there are actually public grids that are only online when their grid owners are, even if that's only two or three hours a day. But this only applies to a limited number of grids and not OpenSim as a whole. That said, even grid servers in data centres running larger public grids have to be restarted every once in a while.

Thirdly, some make a functioning economy an absolute requirement for a virtual world to call itself a metaverse. Second Life has one that works so well that Linden Labs makes more money per user and month than Meta, all without privacy breaches. It helps that nearly all in-world content is made by users, and Linden Labs doesn't take offering free content in larger quantities kindly.

Its younger open-source sibling, OpenSim, however, which has been referred to as a metaverse or multiple metaverses would fail this definition. It's technically impossible to implement an in-world economy both with "monopoly money" and with virtual currencies that can be exchanged with real money, either grid-independently (Gloebit, Podex) or grid-specific (like #Kitely or #WolfTerritoriesGrid handle it). But the vast majority of grids has chosen not to include any method of payment for anything. OpenSim in general doesn't even need an economy because most grids by far are run by hobbyists in their spare time. And openly for-profit grids are not only suspicious, but usually not very long-lived. In the meantime, OSgrid, the first, oldest and largest of all grids, celebrates its 16th birthday next month (I guess), and it's non-commercial and running on donations.

By the way, OpenSim also took over Second Life's set of item permissions. But since so many avatars in OpenSim have access to admin mode ("god mode") which can override them, they're symbolic at best and useless at worst.

Immersion is a point that's being debated. However, this lastly depends not only on the underlying technology, but also on how in-world places are designed. Immersion is something that I personally am very very interested in. But most OpenSim users neither know what it is, nor do they care, especially not if it stands in the way of convenience. For example, building an in-door club with no doors to the outside saves the sim owner the effort of a) cutting a hole into the walls of the building and b) scripting and configuring a door. Sim owners tend to believe that if they wouldn't use such a door, nobody would. But a building with no doors is not very credible and realistic, and having to teleport to get into it and back out is not very immersive.

If we're talking about "the Metaverse" instead of single virtual worlds as metaverses, decentralisation is of course important. Now, by this definition, everything else from Second Life to #Roblox to #Fortnite to Horizon Worlds is just a bunch of centralised walled gardens and not even close to being part of the Metaverse. The few exceptions are all not corporate-owned; they include the #HighFidelity fork #Vircadia, the Vircadia fork #Overte and OpenSim's Hypergrid. The latter is made up from hundreds, if not thousands of separate grids, and very very rarely do even two have the same owner. On top of that, there isn't even an "official grid" run by the developers; lead dev Ubit Umarov only owns one standard region that's externally attached to OSgrid.

On the other hand, OpenSim entirely runs on one and the same software product. Even if various versions and even a number of forks are in use, it's only one platform and not several. And besides, how can the Hypergrid be "the Metaverse" if only a tiny minority of the grids that make it up pass the "metaverse litmus test" themselves because they don't have an economy?

Not even Vircadia could comply with this definition. It's decentralised, and it's commercial. Also, it's said to be fully compatible with Overte, so we already have two different virtual world platforms interacting. But for one, Overte is still a Vircadia fork, a soft fork even, so they aren't as different as Second Life and #ThirdRoom, and Overte messes with the economy requirement by being decidedly non-commercial at platform level already.

But seriously, debating such details is kind of futile as long as it's even unclear if it's "a metaverse/multiple metaverses" or "the Metaverse". So no, nobody has the privilege of having that one single "official" definition of "metaverse".

It's a pity that there's no good place for #OpenSimulator users to meet and discuss and exchange ideas and such. I guess Google+ used to be one, but when it shut down, people couldn't agree where to go instead. Luckily, they didn't agree upon Facebook instead. But still, the #OpenSim community ended up largely strewn about.

In order for there to be a healthy discussion and exchange culture, a minimum critical mass of users is required. Small groups can only serve as support groups for common technical issues, for example, but not so much for discussing things. If they're a bit larger, discussion may become possible, but only about whatever is mainstream in that group. Anything that's niche is either too underrepresented, i.e. there may actually be only one group member able and willing to talk about it, or it isn't represented at all. And OpenSim itself is already pretty niche.

If you want to talk about something that's niche within your niche, an overall fairly large group is required. The bigger the group, the bigger each niche, the more likely it becomes for people interested in non-mainstream things to find someone to talk about it. Otherwise, you can post away about your thoughts, seeking a meaningful dialogue about it, but you're completely ignored at best or out-right told that you're wrong or dumb for not doing as everyone does at worst.

Now, when I say "niche", I don't mean weird kinks. In OpenSim, "niche" can be a lot from immersion and realism to preferring or only using legal content. In all these cases, you're likely to be told that you're doing it wrong if you aren't doing it like everyone else, and that you're either clueless or stupid or both.

A big, international OpenSim forum would be nice. Whatever your "niche" interests and topics are, you'd be likely to meet like-minded people. But there is no such thing. What forums there are are either specific to one certain grid each, so you at least have to feel bad for posting about other grids, or only for rather small, tight-knit communities.

#OpenSimWorld is currently the OpenSim community hub. But one of its biggest shortcomings is that it's almost total anomy. There is absolutely no moderation whatsoever except for the admin sometimes deleting stuff without saying a word. In fact, there aren't even any community rules because the whole thing was primarily created as a sim catalogue and not so much for user interaction.

Besides, unless some drama erupts somewhere, there's hardly any discussion going on. The forums are being used for advertising events without having to pay gold coins, but hardly for discussion. You can't even be sure to get any help there. There's even a discussion group feature which could be useful for niche topics, but which is hardly used because people don't know that OpenSimWorld has groups in the first place. It is as if the sidebar to the left doesn't even exist for most users.

Also, what doesn't happen on the frontpage or in the chat box counts as not happening at all because nobody notices it. And getting posts onto the frontpage costs gold coins which you have to buy for real money.

In practice, OpenSimWorld is almost entirely about showcasing sims and pushing their rankings, announcing events and the occasional drama erupting from comments.

Some OpenSim users ended up on MeWe. But MeWe has even less meaningful exchange, and it's even more about presentation and less about interaction than OSW. That's also because the OpenSim community on MeWe is so small and inactive that it isn't worth checking the various OpenSim-related pages daily. Thus, you can't get discussions going, for even if you get a reply to anything, you get it after a couple of weeks or months.

Only few OpenSim users have found their way into the Fediverse so far. The main gateway for OpenSim users into the Fediverse is through #WolfTerritoriesGrid and OpenSimSocial, so everyone who doesn't enter the Fediverse there is even more of a proverbial lone wolf than Lone Wolf himself because connections from there to the outside Fediverse take their time, if they happen at all.

Still, regardless of which instance OpenSim users are on, they hardly have any interaction. It's extremely rare that I see even one measly comment on OpenSim posts.

Interestingly, there's an OpenSim community forum on #Hubzilla with connections from all over the place, from Mastodon to Diaspora*. Unfortunately, it's dead. New connections have to be confirmed by the owner who hasn't shown up in ages, so you can't even hijack and revive it. By the way: It was named "Metaverse Community Forum" years before Zuckerberg claimed to have invented the #Metaverse.

For topics that aren't OpenSim-specific, it might sound like a good idea to join a community that isn't OpenSim-specific. I'm not too sure it is one, though.

First of all, you can forget any place that only talks about #VirtualWorlds that are too different from OpenSim in structure and UX. If you have to explain how #SecondLife works and then that OpenSim works the same whenever you want to talk about it because people can't imagine what having an inventory or modular, configurable avatars is like, then you're in the wrong place. Even more so if the general consensus is that virtual worlds absolutely require blockchains, cryptocurrencies and NFTs, because those communities aren't really about 3-D worlds, they're all about making lots of money through crypto and NFTs while claiming to have a halfway working 3-D world.

Speaking of Second Life, one of the biggest forums about virtual worlds is the official Second Life Community forum. But neither Linden Labs nor the other users will tolerate people joining and then never talking about Second Life itself, but instead about something that's actually direct competition to Second Life and, unfortunately, living on pirated Second Life content being distributed for free.

However, there's also virtualverse.one. It's a general discussion board about virtual worlds that even has an OpenSim subforum. Yes, it's very Second Life-centric, it's more about Second Life than anything else, but talking about certain topics with Second Life users is likely to be a lot easier than with, what, Horizon or Roblox or VRchat users.

There's still the risk of Second Life users shunning OpenSim users for reasons such as being pirates/supporting piracy or not using "the real deal" or something. And there's certainly the risk that Second Life users completely ignore the Virtual World General because they're only interested in Second Life and nothing else. Not to mention that it's very hard to talk about OpenSim-specific topics if only few people there use OpenSim in the first place.

Also, virtualverse.one has a reputation of being a shitposting hive. It sometimes does have that certain "4chan before Anonymous became the good guys" vibe. But then again, since I occasionally communicate through memes myself when that's easier than writing out what I'm thinking, that doesn't have to be too bad as long as it's still possible to have a meaningful discussion there.

Some people really don't seem to be qualified to have their sims listed on #OpenSimWorld. Why? Because they're incapable of properly setting up the beacon, and they're too indifferent to maintain it.

For starters, I guess they get themselves an OSW beacon and expect it to run perfectly right after rezzing it on their sims. But then they discover two things. One, it doesn't. Two, there's a notecard with a manual. And they're like, "lol cant be bothered to read shit" and dismiss it. But they want their sim on OSW. For that, they need the beacon to work.

So they open the notecard, and they try to skip right to what to do to get the beacon working. Then they try to do that with an absolute minimum of reading.

Some also try to set up the OSW page for their sim without reading up on anything and thus never have it shown as online. But let's put this aside.

Once they actually get the beacon and the connection to OSW working, they say, "My work here is done," and walk away again. It works, so what else should they have to do?

What else? Well, that's in the notecard, too. Make the beacon non-copyable. This is not optional. Even if this isn't required for the beacon to work, it's still mandatory.

Otherwise, people may come and copy the beacon and plop it down on their own sims. As it is. With someone else's beacon key in it. Because they don't know how it works. Because they don't really know what it is in the first place. Because they take it for nothing else than a cool and nifty #Hypergrid teleporter. Because they've never heard of the the website OpenSimWorld. Even though the beacon rubs it into their faces.

I'm not even kidding. I myself took more than a month of using OSW beacons as teleporters, also because nobody was there to explain to me how to Hypergrid using the map (#Metropolis had exactly zero newbie guidance), before I discovered the website. And someone I got to know later had been in #OpenSim for seven years, had seen dozens upon dozens upon dozens of beacons and still didn't know what OpenSimWorld was and what the beacons were.

Okay, so what's so bad about copying the beacon for your own sim? It's so bad because if you copy the beacon from sim Foo and put it on your own sim named Bar, both beacons will submit data to the same OSW entry. OSW will take both sims for Foo. It will mistake your sim Bar for Foo. The beacon you've rezzed on Bar is still set up for Foo.

The consequences: At least for some time, again and again, OSW will list "Bar" as the name of Foo in Foo's own entry. And it will also replace the "Foo" in the Hypergrid address with "Bar" then, making Foo inaccessible via Hypergrid address. People who blindly copy-paste Hypergrid addresses into their maps will come complaining to the owner of Foo that their viewers can't find Foo.

And why is that so? It's because OSW relies on so-called beacon keys. As a sim owner, you generate the beacon key for your sim in the entry for your sim on OSW, and then you go in-world and enter the key into your beacon. This establishes the connection between the beacon and the OSW entry.

This is necessary because the beacon can read sim names, but not grid names, so it can't uniquely identify sims by their addresses. This is because the OSW beacon is scripted entirely in #LSL so it even works on sims that don't allow any #OSSL for whatever reasons. And LSL was developed by Linden Labs for #SecondLife, so why should it support reading grid names if it was made for a virtual world with only one grid?

So, back to the issue: The beacon key establishes the connection between the beacon and the OSW entry. Problem: The beacon key establishes the connection between any beacon with this key in it and that OSW entry. Regardless of where the beacon is. It can be on an entirely different sim and still connect to that same OSW entry and submit data to it. There can be copies of this beacon with this key in it on dozens of sims, and they'll all report to the one same OSW entry, completely confusing both OSW and its users.

Satyr Aeon says the current version of the beacon has a built-in safeguard against this. Once you rez it somewhere, it resets and deletes whatever beacon key may be inside it. But there are still plenty of misconfigured (or not sufficiently configured) older beacons out there. And every few days or weeks, one of them is copied by someone.

I've lost count on how many times I've told sim owners that just this has happened to them, that they have to get themselves a new beacon key, and that they have to make their beacons uncopyable. And I've also lost count on how many times sim owners got new beacon keys (or outright deleted and re-entered their sims on OSW because they didn't know how to make a new beacon key) but left their beacons free for everyone to take.

Why do I still do that? Because most sim owners who have this happen to their sims won't notice. They only ever visit their own OSW entries if they want to post something. And because I guess nobody else would notify them, much less also tell them what to do to fix the situation and keep it from re-occurring.

#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #PetPeeve

And #drama in #OpenSim has reached new levels. Now it's two copybotters against each other. Both have actually stolen already stolen content.

The difference is: One has stolen content that someone else has stolen from Second Life and got caught trying to sell it for real money. He actually threatens the other one with Interpol for content theft. He also seems to have boatloads of alts under different names, and he has already created at least one sock puppet account on #OpenSimWorld.

Said other one was caught by #OSgrid officials walking onto official sims like #LbsaPlaza with a copybot viewer and at least the clear intent to copybot the entire sim wholesale, custom structures and all, if not even actually doing just that. Mind you, Lbsa Plaza is the only sim that's always populated with avatars which aren't alts of the sim owner, so there's also always a number of avatar inventories to copybot. He denied all accusations and blocked OSgrid from his grid in retaliation.

Seriously, these are the moments when I wish Linden Labs, along with the actual content creators, would send in the authorities. If they put enough effort into the investigations, I could see at least one certain grid being shut down and a number of people being convicted and arrested. But this won't happen, especially not in this case, for various reasons.

One, the financial damage is too small, at least in this case. It simply isn't worth pumping so much money into lawsuits and criminal investigations.

Two, in this case again, it'd have to be global investigations across several continents. The former guy has Spanish as his native language and obviously uses Google Translate to post in English, the latter runs a grid with a .ru domain. So we probably aren't talking about U.S. citizens and most likely not even about people living anywhere in the Western world.

Three, if Linden Labs actually decided to take world-wide legal action against stuff like this, they wouldn't concentrate on these two. I think they'd more likely go all-out and try to combat the theft and distribution of SL content all over the #Hypergrid, thereby threatening the existence of entire grids, but at least almost all freebie sims launched over the last five years or so. Pandora's box would be wide open.

#OpenSimulator #Drama

• Build a sim that falls into one or several of these three categories: blues club (that actually plays southern rock, if not even outright modern country, but insist that it's blues), freebie sim that offers the same stuff from SL as all the other freebie sims, Adult-rated tropical beach paradise island densely and randomly littered with all kinds of sex furniture.
  
• No matter what sim it is, build it so that it can also be used as an event location, regardless of server power or network connection. If your parties lag like crazy because you run your sim on some old Windows laptop at home, blame it on your visitors, even though your own avatar has an ARC of not less than 400,000, a ZHAO AO and at least four HUDs plus the viewer's radar always open.
  
• Add the sim to OSW as soon as you've plopped down the first building and before you open it for the public. Don't wait for it to be completed. Be there before the competition.
  
• Don't spend more time building your sim than one afternoon. It doesn't have to be pretty because you won't ever put a single in-world picture of it on OSW.
  
• Fill the description of your sim with all kinds of keywords that could be used for a sim, regardless if they fit your sim or not. Put "athena 6" and "bom" on a club sim or "bdsm", "rlv" and "sex" on a sim that even bans nudity. Shove your sim into everyone's faces, regardless of what they're actually searching for.
  
• Run all your keywords through Google Translate and then add them in German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese as well. Never mind that pretty much all German-speaking OSW users know English. Don't consult anyone who actually knows any of these languages, it isn't worth it.
  
• Either make up the name of your sim from mostly keywords plus buzzwords such as "free", "shop" or "store". Or steal the name from another popular sim.
  
• Why stop at stealing the name? Steal the entire OSW beacon if you can.
  
• If you have a freebie sim, get a SL account and a hacked viewer and go copybotting mesh clothes on your very first day already. Slap the boxes against the walls of your freebie stores and advertise for them with pictures of the boxes. Now you've got new hot exclusive stuff that no-one else has. Don't bother making new box art. Nobody in OpenSim knows the Maitreya, Slink, Belleza and TMP brand names and logos anyway.
  
• Only use the "Freebies", "Entertainment" and "Adult" categories. That's where everyone goes looking. Your sim should fall into one of these three categories anyway, but don't bother using the right one.
  
• No matter what the in-world sim rating is, give it an Adult rating on OSW. Yes, even if it's General-rated in-world. An Adult rating attracts more people than it repels. Sex sells even if there's no sex because it isn't allowed. Kick people for "streaking" on your actually General-rated sim that you've falsely advertised on OSW as Adult-rated, but don't ban them so they can come back with clothes on.
  
• Like your own sim.
  
• Rate your own sim with five stars.
  
• Utterly gush over your own sim in a review and say it's the best sim ever by an enormous margin in any regard conceivable. Nobody will notice that it came from the sim owner because nobody will ever take a look at who wrote the review.
  
• Like your own review.
  
• Create OSW accounts for every last one of your alts (at least those with different identities than your main avatar) plus a few extra accounts with blank profiles that don't have matching avatars. Have them all like your sim and rate it with five stars. It also makes them less suspicious of being your alts if they've got their own accounts.
  
• Besides, use the OSW accounts with no avatars behind them to attack other grids, their admins, their users, their fans and everyone who criticises your sims. Also use them to spread false rumours about your competitors. Have them claim that they've got their own sims or even a grid of their own, but don't have them say which. Have them lie as much as you think you can get away with. Go as far as having them claim that at least two of your competitors are alts of one another.
  
• Also, have at least some of your alts gush over the sim in reviews and/or comments. Nobody will notice if they use the same wording and make the same mistakes as you. Or if they gush over a sim although it doesn't have their names on its visitor board.
  
• Your main and alt accounts all have to like their reviews and comments mutually.
  
• Don't install any kind of childgate. Ageplayers and paedophiles are traffic on your sim, too. And it's always only all the other sim owners who get into trouble for that; you won't.
  
• Delete your sim from OSW and re-enter it as soon as it is no longer on page 1 of the most recent sims. That way, it'll stay on that page. Also, you can get rid of negative votes. Don't forget to save your review and those of your alts first so you can re-enter them. Nobody will find it suspicious if the same half-dozen overly positive comments and reviews keep re-appearing within 20 minutes of your sim's return to OSW, all with even more than half a dozen likes.
  
• In fact, forget deleting, just make a new entry on OSW.
  
• Always remove negative reviews and comments.
  
• Actually, do delete the old entries. It's the only way you can also get rid of negative ratings (= everything under five stars). People will find the old ones, what with how many keywords you've plastered the description with, and then they'll discover the negative ratings and reviews.
  
• This also means you must delete and re-enter your sim from OSW as soon as someone rates it under five stars. Never let anyone taint your sim's reputation.
  
• Have at least two OSW beacons on the sim and two entries on OSW along with them. Put each entry into a different category, and don't use the same rating for all entries. The more you have, the higher are the chances your sim will be found. Don't forget to add the same likes, reviews and five-star ratings to each instance.
  
• Advertise for it at least once a day. It doesn't matter if you keep using the same picture that isn't even from in-world and copy-pasting the same text.
  
• Park your main avatar on your sim on AFK. If you have multiple sims, use the one that you want to have the highest popularity rank on OSW.
  
• Always have at least five NPCs on your sim. Not four. Everyone has four nowadays. Use hacked OSW beacons that take them for avatars.
  
• Alternatively, create at least five alts, navigate them to their places on the sim (a secret, undecorated skyplatform 4,000 m above the ground) with a normal viewer, and then set up text viewers for each one of them that always start up together with the grid/your sim. Claim it's normal traffic. Claim it's perfectly normal for at least five people to log in immediately after your sim goes online. Also claim it's perfectly normal for avatars to be online 24/7. And to be AFK 24/7. Either that, or that it's pure coincidence that there are constantly five avatars on your sim, and whenever one leaves, another one happens to enter the sim. Deny that they're on a skyplatform because nobody will be able to prove that on OSW.
  
• That is, if you have a sex beach sim, give your alts sexy mesh bodies and no clothes and use regular viewers for them so that you can sit them down on sex furniture without having to learn how to script NPCs or convert your furniture to SFposer. That'll generate even more traffic because people will come over to have sex with your alts.
  
• Remember to make OSW accounts for the alts. You'll have more likes, more positive reviews, more five-star ratings and more positive comments, each review and comment will have more likes, and nobody will take these avatars for your alts anymore.
  
• If someone criticises you for any or all of this, tell them to do better than you or else shut up.
  
• If these people do have a sim or several, laugh at them because their sims clearly aren't as "popular" as yours.
  
• Should someone with at least one sim that outranks yours on OSW criticise you, crank up the above measures until you beat them, and then laugh at them.

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