#opensimulator — Public Fediverse posts

Work has been resumed on establishing connections between the Fediverse and the likewise decentralised metaverse, i.e. OpenSimulator.

For now, the only feature that's actually implemented is sending OpenSim group messages out via ActivityPub. However, it has been tested against the opposite end of the Fediverse from Mastodon: Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte.

https://codeberg.org/fionasweet/OS-AP

https://opensimworld.com/post/128355

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ActivityPub #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

It has finally happened. I was a guest at Inworld Review and interviewed by Thirza Ember and James Atlloud of @HG Safari fame as well as Petlove Petshop today.

Here's the video, redirected to Invidious. (Link instead of embedding so I hopefully don't have to spend months writing a visual description that'll take you days to read or listen to.)

Better yet: Thirza wanted to interview me about the Fediverse. Good thing OpenSim users are already used to things being decentralised because OpenSim itself is. In fact, I could have told her that some of the tropes associated with OpenSim being decentralised apply to the Fediverse as well.

Extra shoutouts to @Elena Rossini for her Fediverse video featured on fediverse.info and to @Dorena Verne as a good example of a grid manager (see Petlove's video in the video) because she has managed to move Dorenas World from a Windows server to a Debian server and considerably speeding it up in the process.

For those who aren't familiar with Inworld Review: It's an OpenSim-themed talkshow on YouTube started by the late Mal Burns many years ago. His whole backlog of almost 400 episodes can be found here. And here is the channel on which Mal's former co-host continue Inworld Review without him with 62 episodes so far.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #InworldReview

Does anyone remember when avatars were made to be unique and recognisable, even after outfit changes? Changing the body and/or the head was out of question if it turned out impossible to make the new ones look like or at least similar enough to the old ones.

It seems like these times are long gone in OpenSim. Second Life's "fast fashion" has arrived here. It doesn't matter anymore what your avatar looks like. Especially consistency doesn't matter anymore. After all, why should avatars be recognisable by their looks if they're already recognisable by the name tags above them?

Instead, what matters more than everything else is how new, how high-end, how highly detailed and how expensive in Second Life everything on your avatar is. After all, you don't have to pay for it anyway. Leave the paying to the freebie merchants who export the new stuff right after buying it. That is, unless they manage to copybot it for free instead.

Nobody invests any time into fine-tuning their shapes anymore. Instead, folks pick a mesh head and then one of the shapes that came with the head. If anything, they make the shape even more extreme: even taller, even longer legs, even bigger boobs, an even bigger butt. Anything beyond that isn't worth the effort if they're going to replace the head anyway when the newest LeLutka EvoX heads arrive in the stores a few months later. This is also why so many OpenSim avatars look like they're unmodified complete avatars out of the box.

Second Life users tend to cling to the content they've bought for as long as they can get away with. After all, they've pumped a five-digit amount of Linden Dollars into everything, and they don't want to let it go to waste, at least not that soon. Except, of course, for those who can afford to throw everything away in favour of all-new stuff twice a year or so.

In OpenSim, they've often got much higher-end content and much more of it. But they haven't paid anything for it. So it's easier to let go of it the moment something newer and hotter and better arrives. It doesn't matter that your brand-new head doesn't really look like the six-months-old head you had last. But it's newer and probably better.

Of course, in addition, this post by @juno still applies as well. But another reason why especially many female avatars only ever dress like for an Ibiza club party in summer is: Why bother with searching for clothes for different styles or purposes if you can't be sure that your mesh body won't be painfully outdated in two or three months?

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #SecondLife #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Avatar #Avatars #VirtualFashion

Dorenas World, the oldest German-speaking grid and the third-oldest of all grids, is going to celebrate its 16th anniversary this week. Due to real-life influences, the schedule is somewhat cut short.

All times are in grid time = PST.

Friday, January 16th (actual anniversary date)
11:00: DJ Anachron Young (open end)
Event location: Rock-House, Nihilon
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Nihilon/216/167/22

Saturday, January 17th
10:00: Reading by Rubeus Helgerud
11:00: Wolem Wobbit live "Still Alive"
Afterwards: DJ Rubeus Helgerud (open end)
Event location: Festival ground, Landing
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Landing/140/149/22

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #DorenasWorld #GridAnniversary

In other news:

Christmas is over, and so is almost the year. Snow-covered themes are being shut down again, and it won't be long after New Year's Day that OpenSim is back to its usual eternal summer until October. And then we'll have one month of autumn in a few places because autumn and Halloween are basically the same here.

Good thing there are a few exceptions. @Kelso Uxlay's Novale on his own grid probably still changes its seasons along with real-life Québec. Jimmy Olsen's Norge in the Wolf Territories shares its weather and daycycle with real-life northern Norway; his Alfheim used to do the same. And there are a few permanent winter or Christmas places; Dorenas World has three of them.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Novale #WolfTerritories #WolfTerritoriesGrid #WolfGrid #DorenasWorld

Seriously, never before have I seen as many condolence posts and comments and actions on OpenSimWorld as for @Luna Lunaria. And never before have I seen two independent memorial events being scheduled for one member of the community. (Unfortunately, one will be in the middle of the night for me.)

This is even more remarkable when you consider that she was a commercial merchant who sold most of her creations for money. Even some of the "Never buy in OpenSim" die-hards appear to mourn her. After all, her creations are worth the money, especially the buildings. I doubt that there's anything exclusive to Second Life that comes close to that monumental art déco event location appropriately called (CW for the link: eye contact) "The Majestic". (Sadly, we'll never get a PBR "Majestic" now, as gorgeous it is with Blinn-Phong textures.)

So I guess (I actually hope) that her passing won't be seen as an opportunity to copybot her creations, rebox them and offer them as freebies somewhere, now that she can't do anything against it anymore. I mean, her content isn't going to go anywhere. @Lone Wolf has said her sims will stay online. I hope that even the anti-capitalist activists and the freebie store owners who are constantly looking for exclusive, top-notch-quality content won't have the heart to bot or god-mode her stuff, especially seeing as her creations are so unique that nobody can get away with rebranding Luna's works as their own original creations.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Death #CWDeath

There's a lot of talk about male-defaultism these days. You know what else is totally male-default? Avatars in 3-D virtual worlds. At least if they can be modified in-world instead of being monoliths like from places like Ready Player Me.

Almost everytime an avatar system is being designed for virtual worlds, it's designed with only adult males in mind. Eventually, someone will ask the question, "Well, and how do we make female avatars?" It'll probably be those who design either the avatar parts if the avatars are sufficiently modular or the complete avatars if they're monolithic. But this won't occur before the avatar system is finalised to the point at which it can't be substantially reworked anymore.

If you're lucky, female avatars get a somewhat slimmer waist. Or a pair of boobs, maybe only one that's being hinted at by a single bulge. If you're very lucky, they get both. If you're unlucky, there's only one hard-coded body shape, and all they get is more feminine clothing for the upper body, maybe even painted onto the one body shape that's available. In fact, you'll probably have as many "clothing items" for women as for men, all of which were designed by guys. All of whom are software developers with next to no sense of fashion.

Oh, and you get female-looking hairstyles, none of which are even shoulder-long. Well, except maybe for one ponytail that stands off so far that it has no chance of clipping into the body because the head motion is too limited.

Seriously, though: Even if your virtual world system is only planned for purely professional purposes, i.e. business, industrial, governmental, organisational otherwise, and extra care is taken that it will never be used by anyone in their spare time, even then this won't nearly be sufficient. If you plan to hold formal (not necessarily as in business formal) events, it'll be even less sufficient. If it's supposed to be an all-purpose virtual world system, a "metaverse for everybody" that people will use in their spare time, it'll suck completely.

I dare say that I've been using 3-D virtual worlds for longer than most of those who design them from the ground up nowadays. I've been in OpenSim for five and a half years now. I've built both male and female avatars. So I know first-hand what it's like.

OpenSim's default avatar, which also used to be the default avatar in Second Life long long ago, is female. She is named Ruth. But she's based on an avatar system that's mostly geared towards male avatars, and her hairstyle is more of a mullet because this avatar system can't even grow hair over the ears, because guys don't normally wear their hair over their ears. She isn't even really pretty. She can easily be switched to her male pendant, Roth: A bit less shapely, no boobs, therefore abs and pecs, the hair is shorter, and the face changes a little.

Now, if you want to see what kinds of avatars people actually make in Second Life nowadays, just look around (content warnings: eye contact, mild female nudity) PrimFeed, the Flickr alternative created exclusively for Second Life users. These pictures were actually rendered in-world and not by an AI. They show actual Second Life avatars, often even daily-driver avatars, in actual Second Life environments.

Short hair? Long pants? Almost only on male avatars, if at all. And today's male avatars have even more chiseled abs than 22 years ago. And chiseled faces and chiseled everything.

Female avatars, on the other hand, are shapely like you wouldn't believe from a virtual world unless you've been there yourself. Big butts. Big boobs and actual boobs. Dresses. Skirts. Bikinis. Lingerie. High heels, almost never under 15cm or 6 inches, sometimes even higher with platform soles. And: long hair. And with "long hair" I mean lush long locks, not just longer than male hair.

By the way: Nothing of what you see in the images was supplied by Linden Lab. Everything that the avatars and the landscapes consist of was made by users. It has basically always been the users who drove Linden Lab to refining Second Life's avatar system, often by working around its limitations and repurposing features.

Sooner or later, users with female avatars will demand three things for them. Male-centric avatar systems will be unfit to deliver either.

Long hair

The challenge with long hair is to not only make it look natural and, especially, keep it from clipping into the body. Extra challenge: If the clothes aren't simply painted on, keep it from clipping into the clothes when the head moves.

Of course, this point is moot if avatars can't move their heads. Which Second Life and OpenSim avatars can.

Skirts and dresses

This point is moot if avatars don't have legs. You know, like in Meta Horizon or (formerly Mozilla) Hubs.

But if they do, then even in a strictly business environment, I wouldn't too firmly count on all women being content with putting trousers on their avatars. They will wish for pencil skirts.

Skirts and dresses will pose a whole bunch of challenges. None of them is to keep people from upskirting, especially if the camera can move independently from the avatar which it should be able to do in good virtual worlds. In fact, depending on how a skirt or dress is shaped, preventing upskirting can be quite trivial. So that isn't one of the challenges.

No, the first challenge is to rig skirts in such a way that the legs don't clip through them, no matter how the legs move. If you manage to get that done with one kind of skirt, try again with another nine kinds of skirts. Including a pencil skirt.

Think you got that pat down? Well, here's the next challenge: Rig them in such a way that they look good when the avatar is sitting. This is rather trivial with pencil skirts. Now try it with a circle skirt in such a way that the skirt doesn't stand off as if it's made of wood. Extra challenge: Try it with a 1950s poodle skirt. These are just about as unthinkable in virtual worlds as 50s-style corrugated stainless steel diners. Trust me, someone will build the latter.

If you think it's smart to simply hide the legs from the skirt hem upwards so they won't clip, this will come back to bite you once the avatar sits down.

By the way: Even Second Life has never managed the former, and neither has OpenSim. And the latter is hit-and-miss with more miss than hit, and it works best with the old "painted-on" system skirt.

The cherry on top would be if skirts still flowed halfway naturally, and if skirts with a looser fit swayed with the motion of the avatar. This requires not only at least a basic physics model, but also a collision system.

High heels

Again, this point is moot if avatars don't have legs. But if avatars don't have legs, they'll be ridiculed. Yes, they will.

It doesn't matter how high the heels have to be. They don't have to be 15cm spike heels. Or 30cm spike heels with 15cm platforms.

So you want a virtual business environment first and foremost. Then your female users will wish for footwear that isn't men's leather shoes. And not ballet flats or Mary Janes either. Something with at least slightly raised heels. Just like they'll wish for pencil skirts; see above.

Okay, so you may manage to put high-heeled shoes on your avatar. Now, the first challenge will be to get the avatar's feet into the shoes. You know, the same feet that are firmly rigged into a flat position because that's all you need for male avatars (until someone comes and wants to cosplay Dr Frank N. Furter).

So you've reworked large parts of your avatar system to allow for other foot positions than flat? Good luck. Now adjust the avatar's Z position accordingly because the feet and the shoes are clipping into the floor. Ready to pump another few thousand man-hours into something else that you didn't take into consideration when designing your avatar system?

In Second Life and OpenSim, the former could only be solved in a satisfactory way by attaching different feet. Or, in the case of mesh bodies from Second Life, by giving it a whole bunch of feet in various positions and using a HUD to make the appropriate pair visible and the other ones invisible. The latter requires manual adjustment or some long forgotten trickery from almost two decades ago.

Finally...

I've read about four worlds and world systems that have tackled at least the former two points, namely by implementing a basic skeleton-based physics system that's a big upgrade in comparison to flexi prims in Second Life and OpenSim. Its big advantage is a basic collision model that makes hair and skirts (and anything else that needs it that you want to attach to your avatar) nicely flowy with little to no risk of clipping.

The thing is: Sansar was launched by Linden Lab as a kind of Second Life successor. That was at a point at which Second Life already had user-made, highly detailed fitted mesh bodies from various vendors.

High Fidelity was launched by Philip Rosedale. Also known as Philip Linden. The guy who invented Second Life in the first place and who led it for many years.

Well, and Vircadia is a High Fidelity fork, and Overte is a Vircadia fork.

This goes to show how virtual worlds are developed by people who have years upon years of experience with already existing virtual worlds and their users and creations.

And it goes to show that even reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (which, by the way, introduced the word "metaverse" as early as 1991) doesn't give you the knowledge that personal experience with and in virtual worlds does. For Philip Rosedale has read it, and it has inspired him to make Second Life in the first place. But it has not inspired him to add certain elements for building female avatars right off the bat.

Unfortunately, however, even being prepared for that won't necessarily save a virtual world: Both Sansar and High Fidelity are no more. But that wasn't due to their avatar systems.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Horizon #HorizonWorlds #MetaHorizon #Sansar #HighFidelity #Vircadia #Overte #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Avatar #Avatars #MaleCentric #MaleCentricism #MaleDefault #MaleDefaultism

@Juno Rowland and I are at an art event for a change, but one that only happens every two years: The Wrong Biennale. Not in real life, of course, but at one of the virtual locations, the Kitely Expo Center. This virtual expo is named Synthetic Dreams, and it is explained as "a collaboration between artist and algorithm in the age of AI".

Amazingly, it only took two months to set up.

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Kitely #VirtualArt #TheWrong #TheWrongBiennale #WrongBiennale

So OpenSimFest 2025 has started. But there hasn't been any announcement whatsoever, at least not recently. Even the official OpenSimFest website is dead as OpenSimFest is ongoing. OpenSimFest will span 16 days, but you only learn that in-world, too.

The grid is down to one normal expo sim; the other "expo" sim is the home of the fenced-in zombie zone now. It's a far cry from 2022 and 2023 with their many expo sims, also because several very prolific exhibitors haven't been at OpenSimFest since 2023.

Also, the grid seems to have become painfully slow. It isn't laggy, there's no rubber-banding. But things rez rather slowly. Anything below the lowest mesh LOD only shows when I'm close and even then sometimes only after one or two minutes. Some objects take that long to appear in the first place. I've got my doubts that the recent Firestorm beta is to blame.

At least there are more exhibits on that one expo sim. Last year, OpenSim World's Fair in the Wolf Territories hogged so many resources that about half of the few remaining expo parcels at OSFest remained vacant and had to be used as impromptu Arcadia Asylum showcases upon short notice so that there was at least something on the land. Now we have things like a tiny Venice exhibit built by Cooper Swizzle, complete with a keyframed gondola ride.

Speaking of Kitely, Kimm Starr has brought back the fairground freak show that had to be removed when Coopersville was shrunk prior to being passed to its new owner. (By the way, Coopersville is not named after Cooper Swizzle. That's coincidence.)

Surprisingly little is still a work in progress on the first day. Then again, the sole expo sim is entirely in use.

After last year's break, Remmy Ravenhurst is back with her products, including an assortment of freebies. She even brought something new, namely free boxes with textures from which PBR materials can be made and free boxes with untextured mesh models. Since they are full-perm, it's possible to export the roughness texture and convert it into a specular texture for Blinn-Phong.

In general, the usage of the two Stores sims has improved, and that isn't only because the northern one of the two Stores sims is down to only two big stores. Still, as usual, there isn't a single freebie store; all stores offer payware either mostly or only.

What still makes me wonder are the clothes that are being sold, often for prices that appear to be converted from Linden dollars to Gloebits 1:1, regardless of the Gloebit being more expensive than the Linden dollar.

There are boxes with classic layer and prim clothes that must be well over a decade old, and yet, in real-life currency, they cost more than a comparable fitted mesh outfit with PBR materials and Blinn-Phong fallback textures costs in Second Life. Then there are boxes with mesh clothes that are rigged for mesh bodies of which not a single one is officially being sold in OpenSim. So in order to be able to wear these legally bought clothes, you need a pirated mesh body.

Interestingly, the grid was not reset since last year. I'm still a member of the OSFest Participant group.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #OpenSimFest #OSFest #OSFest2025

Looks like OpenSim users are getting increasingly anxious that e.g. Mississippi and UK law enforcement will shut down every last OpenSim grid on the grounds of their age verification laws, what with none of them having verified the real-life age of all their users. Even if a grid runs in Kazakhstan under a Russian domain with a Kazakh and Russian admin team.

"This will so totally happen!"

The self-same people, however, appear not to be afraid at all that Linden Lab and Second Life content creators will shut down any OpenSim grid on the grounds of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, what with almost all of them blistering with stolen Second Life content. Not even if a grid runs in the USA under a US domain with an all-American admin team.

"This will so totally never happen!"

Pray tell, why should the former wipe OpenSim out in no time while the latter hasn't even happened to one measly OpenSim grid in over ten years of copybotting tons of expensive premium luxury content in Second Life and offering it in OpenSim as full-perm freebies? Not even after these announcements by Linden Lab themselves from early this year?

Oh, and OpenSim cannot survive without selling the most private personal data of every last one of its users to some big, commercial, corporate age-verification service? But at the same time, OpenSim cannot survive either without breaking international copyright and intellectual property laws left and right?

Oh, and by the way: The most that Mississippi and the UK can do against a grid is try to fine it. The most that Linden Lab can do against a grid is Cease & Desist it out of existence.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #UKPol #CWUKPol #USPol #CWUSPol #MSPol #CWMSPol #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #DMCA #Copyright #AgeVerification

Today's three-hour DJ event in Dereos takes place on a brand-new sim that's inspired by the ZDF-Hitparade. I mean, they already have a sim inspired by the Beat-Club.

However: The music of the first half matches the location. In other words, Schlager. Probably mostly from the 1970s. The first DJ has opened with four Chris Roberts songs.

What really gives me to think is that even @Akira Sonoda has announced "Schlager" for the second half. Whatever that means in her case.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #Dereos #ZDF #Hitparade #ZDFHitparade #Schlager

Cherry Manga has made a nice Funko-style figurine of Mal Burns in his memory. She has even turned it into a statue which is on display and up for grabs at Lbsa Plaza in OSgrid.

I'd show you a picture, but I'd have to do that on another channel. And the background is so detailed that it'd take me an eternity to describe the image adequately.

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OSgrid #LbsaPlaza #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

I'm really curious about OSgrid's 18th birthday this year. Not so much because this is the first time that an OpenSim grid celebrates its 18th anniversary, but rather because I want to see how many exhibits it'll have.

The last years, it has always been the same. OSgrid set up four varsims with over a dozen parcels for exhibits each year. When the birthday celebrations started, one was usually fully booked, one was partially booked, and the other two were shut down again. Last year already, I think the second sim had something like three parcels in use.

This year will be the first celebration since the Asset Reset. Since OSgrid's asset server went completely haywire, causing loads of people to move to other grids. And since OSgrid as a whole was shut down indefinitely for the asset server to be purged and rebuilt from the ground up which caused even more people to move to other grids.

Let's just say the days of OSgrid being the biggest in anything are over. Even if Hypergrid Business no longer publishes stats, I guess it's clear that the Wolf Territories are number one now.

This also means that OSgrid will probably have even fewer exhibitors this year.

I also wonder if any of the previous events will have an effect on OSG18B. I mean, last OpenSimFest was a half-dud already. The one before had lost exhibitors due to its change of concept, and the last one was cannibalised by the OpenSim World's Fair with its enormous varsim with dozens upon dozens of parcels which was booked almost fully.

On the other hand, we haven't had any longer events in a while, and even the last Hypergrid International Expo which, if I recall correctly, was after World's Fair and OSFest, was chock-full with mostly brand-new booths. But these events were grid-independent, and OSG18B is obviously OSgrid-only.

OSG18B will start on Friday. We'll see then.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OSgrid #OSG18B #GridAnniversary

(This is technically a repost of this post, but with "unseen" images for the Unseen Image Challenge by @Altbot, a modified post text and an upgraded set of long image descriptions. I didn't have time to complete the descriptions for a set of wholly new images.)

OSgrid is probably the oldest 3-D virtual world based on free and open-source software (OpenSimulator) and run by community members. It's definitely the oldest 3-D virtual world that's federated with other virtual worlds.

These images are from OSgrid's 17th birthday celebration in July, 2024.

My little in-world sister @Juno Rowland, part-time OSgrid resident just like myself, celebrated the grid birthday with outfits based on the officially-issued women's tank tops. The first image shows her wearing one of these outfits on her pier at her now-soon-to-disappear home at Tropicana Tuneage on Friday, July 26th. She had been around the birthday sims on Thursday already, but in a different skirt. On Friday, she posed in one that's much easier for me to describe in front of a background that's a great deal easier to describe than the anniversary sims.

One day later, on Saturday, July 27th, she went and revisited the birthday exhibitions, also to see one of her favourite things, a Leonard Cohen album cover at an exhibition. The second image is from there.

Juno's look

• Body including head, eyelashes, feet and nails: Ruth2 v4 by the RuthAndRoth team ( @Austin Tate a.k.a. @Ai Austin, Ada Radius, Serie Sumei et al.)
• Shape: modified by herself from the shape in the Ruth2 v4 Extras box
• Skin: Starlight Remix Fair, NSFW, with eyebrows, but without eyeliner; originally by Eloh Eliot, "remixed" by yours truly so that Juno has a decent skin
• Hair: CS Milca by DieChaotin McMasters
• Necklace: Q's Pendant - OSgrid by Qandy Saw
• Top: Happy Bday OSG17B Black, mesh by Damien Fate, texture and assembly by Saphy Riler
• Skirt: mini-fuer-fate jeans beige, mesh and base texture by Klarabella Karamell, texture tinting and assembly by Juno herself
• Shoes: reBoot Flat Ballet Black, unrigged variants, by Taarna Welles

Image descriptions

The medium and the basic setup

Both images in this post are digital renderings from inside a 3-D virtual world, using shaders, simplified real-time reflections and an artificial sun as a directed light source for illuminating the scenery and casting shadows, but without ray-tracing. It shows a digital avatar made to look like a fairly young woman. In the first image, she is standing at the end of a wooden pier. In the second image, she is standing next to a painted portrait of Leonard Cohen which he has used as an album cover.

The locations

The images were created in two different places in OSgrid, known as sims. Both are linked to the 17th anniversary of OSgrid which was celebrated from July 22th to July 28th, 2024.

OSgrid is a virtual world, a so-called "grid", based on a virtual-world engine named OpenSimulator. OpenSimulator, OpenSim in short, is a free, open-source, server-side re-implementation of the technology of Second Life. It is not affiliated with Linden Lab, the creators and owners of Second Life.

Second Life is a centralised, commercial 3-D virtual world launched in 2003. It experienced a big hype starting in 2007 which faded away in 2008. It still exists, it is constantly evolving, and it is celebrating its 21st anniversary this month.

The development of OpenSim started in 2006, originally under the name of OpenSecondLife, then OpenSL, by reverse-engineering Second Life's viewer API and building a virtual world server against it. In early 2007, Linden Lab laid open the source code of the official Second Life viewer, the client application needed to access Second Life. This revealed large parts of Second Life's technology and made not only the development of third-party viewers possible, but also facilitatted OpenSim's development. It was also in early 2007 that the first test version of OpenSim came out.

Second Life, as well as the worlds based on OpenSimulator, are referred to as "grids" because they are split into square regions of 256 by 256 metres or roughly 280 by 280 yards. This roughly corresponds to a bit more than three by two major-league football pitches or soccer fields or a bit less than three by two American football fields.

While Second Life is a walled garden with only one publicly accessible grid that is connected to nothing else, OpenSimulator can be used by just about anyone to create and run their own grid. In 2008, a new feature called the Hypergrid was introduced that allows avatars registered on one grid to visit other grids. Thus, OpenSim is not only decentralised, but actually mostly federated. There are currently over 3,000 active grids, maybe over 4,000, and especially most of the larger public grids are connected to the Hypergrid.

Sims, in turn, are short for simulators which have to run in regions for any kind of content to be able to exist in them and for avatars to be able to enter them. In Second Life, one sim always covers one region. OpenSim has so-called varsims which can cover multiple regions arranged in a square without having borders between the regions. The upper limit imposed by the software is 32 by 32 or 1,024 regions, but anything significantly larger than 16 by 16 or 256 regions has been proven to be highly impractical.

OSgrid was the first public OpenSim grid. It was launched in July, 2007, as a proving ground for OpenSim's own development which it still is. Nonetheless, it was the first OpenSim grid to surpass Second Life in land area, and it currently is one out of two grids to have done so. Also, as early as 2007 already, OSgrid referred to OpenSim in general and then, by 2008, to itself as "the Open Source Metaverse". It has used this term for an actual virtual world 14 years earlier than Mark Zuckerberg. For about just as long, the word "metaverse" has been part of the standard vocabulary in the OpenSim community.

The avatar in both pictures

The avatar shown in the image is Juno Rowland. She is, in fact, a backup avatar for my female alt, short for alternate avatar, that goes by the same name and looks the same while being at home on another grid.

Juno is built to look like a young woman. OpenSim does not explicitly support different ethnicities, but the basic avatar-building components available in OpenSim are almost exclusively geared towards avatars looking white or Latin American and in the 30s at most. She is 1.74 metres or 5 feet 8 1/2 inches tall which is taller than the average real-life Western woman by about the length of an adult person's palm. She is fairly slim which is somewhat concealed by the loose fit of her clothes.

Juno's skin textures are light to medium-light. Highlights and partly also shades are part of the skin textures, but very subdued. Most shading on her is created by the shader built into the viewer.

She has brown eyes and black hair worn as a rather short bob that narrows downward from where her ears are and extends to a height halfway between her chin and her shoulders. Her bangs cover her forehead entirely. Strands of her bangs partly cover her eyebrows, and two of them extend down as far as her upper eyelids. On each side, a single thick lock extends forward and slightly inward. These locks occasionally cover parts of her lower cheeks.

Juno is wearing a loose-fitting black tank top with the official logo of the 17th grid birthday festivities on it. The logo stretches across about 90% of Juno's chest and from slightly higher than right below her breasts to slightly higher than the middle of the front of the shirt.

In the top left corner of the birthday logo, there is the OSgrid logo. It consists of five identical parallelograms. Each one of them resembles a rectangle which, when placed horizontally, has its short edges tilted to the right by 18 degrees. The long edges are longer than the short edges by about three quarters. These five parallelograms are arranged around a common centre at the same distance and at angles of 72 degrees from each other. There is always one pointed angle slipping under the long side of a neighbouring parallelogram. This way, the gap in the middle between the parallelograms is a five-point star. The outer short edge of each parallelogram is farther away from the centre than the parallel long edge of the neighbouring parallelogram by a bit over half the latter's width. The top right parallelogram is placed exactly vertically.

The whole logo has a light, yellowish orange tint. Size-wise, it takes up a bit more than 20% of the width and about 70% of the height of the entire birthday logo.

To the right of the OSgrid logo, there is the name of the grid, "OSgrid", written in all capitals in the same tint of orange as the OSgrid logo. The writing is about two thirds as tall as each parallelogram in the OSgrid logo is long. It starts to the right of the vertical top right parallelogram at roughly 80% of its width, and the top of the letters is slightly higher than the obtuse top right corner of the top right parallelogram. The typeface used is a heavy variant of the Futura typeface, a geometric sans-serif typeface known for fairly small lower-case characters and a lower-case "a" which is like a "d" with a shorter line, much like in hand-writing.

Right below, "The Open Source Metaverse" is written at a vertical distance that is roughly the same as the general thickness of the letters in the "OSgrid" writing. All four words start with capitals. The writing lines up with the "OSgrid" writing to the left. The typeface is the same as the one used for the "OSgrid" writing, only smaller by about 60%. It is small enough to not be easily readable in the image at the resolution at which the image was posted. The writing is tinted a light grey, resembling aluminium.

Most of the lower half is taken up by a horizontal rectangle, tinted a darker, slightly less saturated, slightly more brownish tone of orange. To the left, it lines up with the bottom pointy-angled corner of the bottom left parallelogram in the logo. To the right, it lines up with the end of the writing "The Open Source Metaverse". At the top, it almost touches the vertical line of the "p" in the same writing.

On this rectangle, "17th Birthday" is written in the same black as the rest of the tank top and the same typeface as the other two writings, but twice the height as the writing "The Open Source Metaverse". Vertically, this writing is slightly above the middle of the rectangle. Horizontally, it lines up with the other two writings on the left.

Below the tank top, Juno is wearing a straight, loose-fitting miniskirt which ends roughly the length of one of her hands above her knees. Its texture gives it a look like washed-out denim in various shades of slightly yellowish, medium-light-to-medium brown. Seams, pockets and the fly are all only part of the texture. The pocket on the front to the left from Juno's point of view is completely covered by the tank top, the pocket on the other side is mostly covered. The texture does not emulate any rear pockets.

Apart from the skirt, Juno's legs are bare. On her feet, she is wearing a pair of flat ballet shoes which mostly show a black texture, slightly lighter than the tank top, with a structure that resembles an unidentified fabric. The insides of the shoes are a medium-light, shaded tone of brown, suggesting some fabric or thin leather again. The soles are a medium-light, slightly reddish brown. They have very low heels.

Around her neck, Juno is wearing a necklace consisting what appears to be a single wire of solid gold of a similar thickness as the material used for clothes hangers plus an OSgrid logo made of gold as well. The logo is a bit over half as big as the one on her tank top. The eye through which the wire runs is attached near one of the outer obtuse-angled corners, so the logo is rotated to the left in comparison with the one on the tank top. Both the wire and the logo are glossy, the logo more than the wire, but the material appearance is textured onto both.

In both Second Life and OpenSim-based worlds, unlike most other 3-D virtual worlds, avatars are not only highly configurable in-world, but also highly modular. Everything on Juno is an attachment. Her body is an attachment, the head included. Her feet are a separate attachment; different feet for medium and high heels are available. The skin textures can be replaced, and standard skins can be worn on this body. The eye texture can be replaced, too. Eyelashes, fingernails and toenails are attachments, although the latter are fully concealed inside her shoes. Her hair is an attachment. The top, the skirt, each shoe and the necklace are separate attachments which makes it possible for her to wear all kinds of outfits. Her shape is configurable with over 80 parameters, and even that can be replaced with another one which is usually just as configurable.

Everything that Juno is made up from was made by users. Everything else, including the purpose-made texture on the tank top, was made directly for OpenSim.

The scenery in the first image

The first image was created on a sim called Tropicana Tuneage, a multi-purpose sim which is regularly used for events, but which is also Juno's home in OSgrid.

The scenery is limited to a wooden pier which Juno is standing on. It takes up the lower 45% of the image. Its water-side end would line up with the lower side of Juno's butt if she was shown from behind. The top surface of the pier is textured in a way that suggests wooden planks that run transversally across the pier. The wood is very slightly less yellowish tone of brown than Juno's skirt and varies greatly between light-medium, almost light, and medium. The sides of the pier are outside the borders of the image.

The pier leads to the southwest. The camera angle follows it almost exactly in parallel. It is oriented farther to the right by about one degree. It is also roughly at the height of Juno's waist.

Beyond the pier and behind Juno, there is nothing but blue sea with gentle waves on it. The tone of blue has a fairly low saturation, and some of the waves are partly almost medium-dark grey. The horizon is at almost precisely two thirds of the height of the image, roughly below Juno's breasts, which shows that the camera is tilted downward by a few degrees.

The sky is a very pale, greenish blue with a very faint gradient towards the horizon that suggests haze. To Juno's right, there are some thin clouds which increasingly blend in with the sky, the lower they are. A bit of cloud is above her head as well. There are no clouds to her left.

Juno in the first image

Juno is slightly left of centre, standing on her right foot while moving her left foot forward and turning it to the left. She is about to turn herself around. Her arms are on her sides, the left arm is moved a bit forward. Her hands are relaxed with both middle fingers bent inward a little more than the other fingers.

Juno's face is expressionless. Any expressions would require specific animations to be played, mostly manually which would be an extra effort. She is looking past a point slightly above the camera.

Her hair is fully covering her ears. The lock on the left of her face, the right for the on-looker, is in front of the lower parts of her cheek. So is the lock on the other side, but less so.

Lighting in the first image

The simulated time of day is late afternoon. The sun is quite low already in the west. This can be told by the shadows which Juno's legs cast on the wooden planks texture on the pier as well as some narrow highlights on her neck, her arms and her legs. The sun itself is not in the image.

Apart from the sun, there is medium grey ambient light that shines the same from everywhere and therefore doesn't create any shadows.

Save for being cropped, the image is unedited and unprocessed.

The scenery in the second image

The second image was created in a different place on the same grid named OSG17B2. The name refers to OSgrid's 17th birthday, OSG17B in short. It is the second one of four numbered exhibition sims created for the birthday, two of which were opened to the public while the other two remain unused.

In the second image, Juno is inside a building used as a gallery of music album covers.

Most of the right-hand 60% of the image are taken up by an art easel. It is about one and two thirds times as high as Juno is tall while appearing smaller due to the perspective. It is rotated to the right from the camera being directly aimed at its front by about 25 degrees.

The easel is a fairly stable and elaborate construction which looks like it is adjustable for various canvas sizes. Below where the canvas would be put, there is a shelf for painting utensils. The easel is mostly white with no texture on it. The exceptions are eleven slotted screw heads and a handle roughly shaped like a six-point star with which the easel can be adjusted to different canvas sizes. They have metal-like, partly light grey, partly light yellowish or brownish textures with medium-light orange spots hinting at corrosion. These textures include highlights and shading. The parts themselves are not shiny. Of the screw heads, only five are unobscured. One is holding the adjustment handle in place. Three are holding the almost vertical part of the easel together, one close to the top, two near the bottom. The fifth one connects the right-hand rear support to the foot.

The easel is adjusted for something way bigger than what it is carrying. It's the cover of the album Recent Songs by the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. It was released in 1979 as his sixth studio album, and it is not known for high-charting single releases. The cover is about half as high as Juno is tall. Again, due to the perspective, it appears to be smaller. Its aspect ratio is very slightly warped, it is a little wider than it is high.

The album cover is based on a frontal facial portrait painting of Cohen by Dianne Lawrence. It shows him as a middle-aged, light-skinned man with green eyes and black, medium-short hair which he wears in a somewhat asymmetrical hairdo that is slightly fuller on his left, the on-looker's right, than on the other side. The top of his hair is cut off by the top edge of the canvas. At the bottom, the portrait ends at Cohen's shoulders. He is wearing a black shirt which lacks too many details to be identifiable any further.

The background behind him is a solid, slightly pale medium blue with a minimal hint of green.

Above his right shoulder, his left shoulder from the on-looker's point of view, there is a drawing of a hummingbird which is only black and background blue and about as long from beak to tail feathers as Cohen's mouth is wide. The bird seems to be hovering above his shoulder with no intention to touch down. Its beak is oriented to the right for the on-looker and tilted slightly downward to between Cohen's shoulder and the collar of his shirt.

Between the top left corner and Cohen's hair, his name is written, "Leonard Cohen". Likewise, between his hair and the top right corner, the title of the album is written, "Recent Songs". Both are in black, fairly small, in an unidentified, very heavy geometric sans-serif typeface and in all-caps.

The narrow right-hand side of the box that has the portrait on its front has a medium-dark wood texture, slightly reddish, slightly greyish, with the grain perpendicular to the long edges.

The wall behind the easel is mostly white with a black circular pattern on it. It consists of 39 concentric circles whose thickness increase from the outermost to the innermost circle. Instead of a 40th circle, there is a dot in the centre which is a little bigger than the thickness of the innermost circle. The texture itself is a bit over one and a half times as high as Juno is tall and twice as wide as it is high. Thus, it has ample of white space on both sides whereas the outermost 16 circles are more or less cut at the top and the bottom. Two of these patterns are within the border of the image above one another. The upper one is cut off by the upper edge of the image in such a way that only the two innermost circles are complete.

The wall makes up a bit less than the upper two thirds of the background of the image. Apart from Juno and the easel, everything below is ground. The edge between the wall and the floor shows that the camera is rotated from being perpendicular to the wall by some five degrees to the left. Thus, the easel is rotated to the right by about 20 degrees from being parallel to the wall. Besides, the camera is as high above the ground as Juno's waist and tilted downward only very minimally.

The ground is a medium orange in the bottom left corner of the image. It gets a little darker and more purplish towards the opposite corner where it meets the wall.

Juno in the second image

Juno is on the left-hand side of the image. standing in front of the easel, a little left of its centre, and facing it. The image shows her to the left of the easel and from the rear right. Her head is tilted downward as if she was looking at the album cover. Her face is entirely on the far side of her head. The bottom of her hair is shifted to the back and to the left because she is actually in motion. Her right ear is still fully concealed under hair.

Her arms are relaxed on both sides. She is resting her weight on her right leg while having lifted up the heel of her left foot.

The right strap of her tank top is hovering above her right shoulder at a distance of a little more than the thickness of one of her fingers. The background appears through the gap.

Lighting in the second image

The only light available in the image are the omnipresent medium grey ambient light and several white point lights on the ceiling beyond the edges of the image, only one of which is on this side of the wall. The sun is fixed straight above the scene, but the roof of the building which is outside the image is in its way. Since shadows are on in this picture, the roof keeps the sunlight out. Point light sources like those on the ceiling don't cast shadows, so they add to the ambient light, but they only illuminate avatars, objects and the like from one side. The highlights on her legs hint at the position of the sole point light on this side of the wall, namely behind and slightly to the left of Juno.

Save for being cropped, the image is unedited and unprocessed.

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