#opensimworld — Public Fediverse posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a newsflash for everyone interested in #OpenSimulator:

AviTron will shut down on August 28th.

I guess #AviTron shutting down isn't the actual surprise. It's rather AviTron having survived for more than two years plus the fact that grid founder and owner Alexsandro Pomposelli, also known as Alex Ferraris, has announced a grid shutdown for the first time. Now, if he also gave out IARs and OARs to his residents, that'd be a miracle.

I mean, he really rose to infamy when he managed to run his first grid, #AviWorlds, into the ground a whopping 13 times within 10 years. You can read about much of the drama on #HypergridBusiness.

All closures were permanent and unannounced, whatever the reason for the shutdowns might have been. Now, these reasons included various kinds of drama as well as AviWorlds running out of money or Alex running AviWorlds on servers in his garage, dismissing all criticism that the power supply was absolutely inappropriate for that. Guess how the latter ended.

Never did the residents get any backups. No IARs, no OARs, and if they had invested money in the grid, they lost that, too. It wasn't like Alex couldn't or didn't want to create IARs or OARs. At least the last few times when AviWorlds came back, all the official sims owned by Alex himself looked just like before the previous closure.

In one case, not only AviWorlds went down the gutter, but so did the grid hosting company Alex had started. That hosting company took about half a dozen active grids with itself, leaving their owners without at least recent backups.

Alex eventually sold AviWorlds, backups included, to Josh Boam in 2020 and wanted the name and the domain back shortly after. He got neither. This incarnation of AviWorlds is still up and running.

Afterwards, Alex launched #VirtualVille which, again, didn't even get to live for a year before it shut down out of the blue, leaving Alex' faithful followers as well as clueless newbies with no backups.

In early 2021, he came back with AviTron which, so he promised, would be different. Well, it was different in a few ways. The grid had its own hosting company again, now running in South America and staffed with cheap labour. Alex could claim that he had created jobs down there.

And he was shooting for the top. He saw the #Hypergrid as either a competition between grids or an out-right war. Either way, he announced that AviTron would win over all other grids. It was never clear if he wanted AviTron to achieve that by having both more land area and more residents than even #OSgrid, the biggest OpenSim grid which had had 14 years to grow to its size, or be it by actually vanquishing all other grids and becoming the only surviving OpenSim grid.

The latter doesn't sound too far-fetched, considering his aggressive tone. On #OpenSimWorld, he was constantly lashing out against critics and even announced to doxx them in real life. At the same time, nobody was allowed to reply to his posts and comments.

Later the same year, he struck an exclusive deal with #Sacrarium. The Kazakh-Russian grid which had been built around the distribution of illegally obtained #SecondLife content, which was now specialising in just that, had introduced a monthly subscription fee for granting Hypergrid access to individual avatars after a series of grid blockings. AviTron's deal was for the whole grid to pay the fee so that all its residents could have free access to Sacrarium. However, Sacrarium demanded AviTron put all content on the grid on no-export, thereby at least theoretically making it impossible to take any content from AviTron to other grids. It was completely unclear where Alex wanted to get that money from.

It was then that AviTron really exploded with new users. Alex claimed that they had all found new homes. In reality, however, there were two kinds of new users. One was the freebie junkie who only went to AviTron to always get the latest new arrivals on Sacrarium first. Since these were rare, many of them began to satisfy their hunger for freebies by going around the Hypergrid and copybotting entire sims wholesale, especially when there were purpose-built, one-of-a-kind buildings on them. This led to AviTron being blocked by more and more grids.

The other kind were freebie sim owners outside AviTron. They created avatars on AviTron, went to Sacrarium, often picked up everything from every freebie store and then circumvented AviTron's no-export setting and removed the no-transfer restriction on the Sacrarium boxes. What used to be exclusive Sacrarium content was now spreading across the Hypergrid full-perm, causing some more "How dare you steal my stolen content" #drama.

When geopolitical events rendered the Sacrarium deal null and void, AviTron lost what little appeal it had to anyone but total newbies.

By the way, there were actually AviTron users who sold copybotted Second Life content for money, either in-world for Gloebits which can be exchanged for real money or even in webshops for real money. This was illegal as per AviTron's TOS, but Alex' reaction was that if it's illegal, it isn't happening.

Speaking of content and TOS, for quite a while, the AviTron TOS said that everything on AviTron's asset server is Alex' exclusive intellectual property. This applied to what little stuff was created on AviTron, legal freebies from the rest of the Hypergrid, even when they actually had licenses on them, legal payware from the rest of the Hypergrid and even Second Life content that was circulating on the Hypergrid. Alex was publicly called out for this, and he actually had to change the TOS under that pressure. It would have been interesting to see reactions in Second Life upon lots of creations by Maitreya, SLink, BlueBerry and others suddenly allegedly being the intellectual property of an OpenSim grid owner.

AviTron is also responsible for the "Inaccurate" value for the visitor count on OpenSimWorld. It was introduced after AviTron staff had parked some 20 permanently AFK avatars on a sim owned by a resident who didn't know any of Alex' history and put full faith into him. Generally, this is a very popular method of manipulating visitor stats and pushing sims up OpenSimWorld's oh-so-prestigious list of most popular sims, but nobody had had the audacity to place more than four AFK avatars yet, much less 20. And Alex insisted in them all actually being regular traffic.

Eventually, the pressure became so immense that AviTron was forced to retreat from the OpenSim community by and by. First, after Sacrarium, AviTron became the second of still only two grids to be completely banned from OpenSimWorld. A lot has to happen for this measure. In February of 2023, AviTron stopped reporting stats to Hypergrid Business; before that, AviTron ranked second in active users and first in new registrations, but only 17th in land area, being a bit more than 1/40 as big as OSgrid. With five regular monthly users for each standard region (in OSgrid, it's the other way around), it was clear that people weren't looking for new homes.

When Alex started charging AviTron residents for things that are normally free-of-charge, some expected that AviTron's end by going broke was coming closer. It wasn't to be.

The last "sign of life" was when AviTron officially closed its Hypergrid access for whichever reasons. It wasn't too much of a loss for the Hypergrid, I guess, seeing as how many grids had blocked AviTron already, some only having that one grid on their block lists. Alex was infamous for closing Hypergrid access on his grids and then bringing it back, but this time, it was final.

Now AviTron was isolated by choice, but it was blocked by large parts of the Hypergrid anyway. With the Hypergrid connection gone, no new content came into the grid. Alex says he has invited creators to come over to AviTron. I guess actual established creators of legal content were asked to fully relocate from where they had been before to AviTron where their creations would have been no-export. It's clear that and why they refused to do that. And those who referred to putting copybotted SL content back together and replacing its missing scripts if necessary as "creating" had the same reason not to follow his call.

Also, advertisement had become difficult. Hypergrid Business had stopped writing about AviTron except for the stats in late 2021. OpenSimWorld had banned the grid and its residents, but even without the ban, AviTron sims wouldn't have been allowed on OSW due to being disconnected from the Hypergrid.

Without Hypergrid access, AviTron must have lost lots of users. Three freebie hoarders must have gone elsewhere, as have the Sacrarium exporters who may now resort to stealing directly from Second Life. Even newbies who had discovered AviTron's glossy website with its spectacular pictures blistering with stolen content by Googling the term #Metaverse must have left for greener pastures after finding out about the Hypergrid through other avatars.

With nothing left to keep the grid running for, no revenue stream, the grid's reputation in shambles and, most importantly, nothing to brag about anymore and nowhere to brag about it, it's only logical to shut AviTron down. I wonder if it'll pass out IARs and OARs this time, and I wonder how many grid residents will actually be left to ask for them. After all, he doesn't have a track record of doing so.

Lastly, I wouldn't be too surprised if Alex came back with a new grid under a new name. And sadly, I wouldn't be too surprised if he still had faithful followers who'd immediately be on board again.

#VirtualWorlds

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

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

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

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.

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld #Satire #Cheating