#opensimworld — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #opensimworld, aggregated by home.social.
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By the way: Thirza Ember of @HG Safari has interviewed me for and featured me and @Juno Rowland in her blog post about the "What Are You Looking For?" group on OpenSimWorld.
You can find the blog post here.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld #HGSafari -
By the way: Thirza Ember of @HG Safari has interviewed me for and featured me and @Juno Rowland in her blog post about the "What Are You Looking For?" group on OpenSimWorld.
You can find the blog post here.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld #HGSafari -
By the way: Thirza Ember of @HG Safari has interviewed me for and featured me and @Juno Rowland in her blog post about the "What Are You Looking For?" group on OpenSimWorld.
You can find the blog post here.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld #HGSafari -
By the way: Thirza Ember of @HG Safari has interviewed me for and featured me and @Juno Rowland in her blog post about the "What Are You Looking For?" group on OpenSimWorld.
You can find the blog post here.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld #HGSafari -
@Jackie Wallace OpenSim has a similar problem, but it's even harder to solve.
OpenSimWorld has a very basic ranking system for the most popular sims. It isn't for specific parcels, it's for entire sims. The problem, of course, is that it can be manipulated very easily, and it is actually being manipulated constantly.
The ranking "algorithm" is very simple: It only counts how long how many avatars are present. It does not even recognise individual avatars, much less IPs. Also, it allows for sims to rise in popularity very quickly: One sufficiently big event, and they're in the top 10.
There are many ways of manipulating this algorithm, including:- telling your friends to park their avatars on your sim (Lbsa Plaza is not much more than an avatar storage for OSgrid residents to make sure that it's always the number one most "popular" sim)
- using alts as "sim decoration" where NPCs (unlike Second Life, OpenSim supports actual NPCs) or even only animesh would do the same job
- parking alts on a sky platform for which only you have a landmark
- dropping a few alts that are basic Ruths with running numbers in their names under a pier where you think nobody will look
If you host your sim yourself, or if you're even the grid owner, the Radegast viewer is your friend. Install it next to OpenSim and automatically launch a bunch of instances right after your region server has come online. Instant top 10 ranking if you do that with at least four avatars.
Of course, this goes along with claiming either that you don't care for ranking or that it's regular visitor traffic.
A trick that has never been that popular is to make visitors camp on your sim. Offer content on your sim for in-world "Monopoly money". Give visitors a limited amount of that money to whet their appetite. And then give them the chance to earn more money by doing something on your sim for long enough. I've seen this come with a time limit to ensure that the camping is not too obvious, but this also means that you'll have to come back often to earn some more money.
I think there may still be some scoundrels who try to acquire older versions of the OSW beacon that still count NPCs as avatars, or who try to modify newer versions into counting NPCs as avatars. However, OSW no longer recognises these older beacons, and it will ban your sim if you use a hacked beacon.
That is, you can also report sims which obviously cheat their traffic figures to the OSW admin who will then turn the visitor counter for that sim permanently off. However, when a sim owner discovers that this has happened, they do what they also do after one negative comment or review or zero-star rating: They delete the whole entry and make a new one for the same sim. This comes with extra the advantage of the sim also being listed among the top 10 newest entries.
By the way, this feature was introduced after someone exposed the system of popularity rigging with alts by dropping 60 alts on one OSW-listed sim. And I guess countermeasures against this were mostly demanded by high-ranking OSgrid residents because it took that sim mere hours to outrank Lbsa Plaza.
Unfortunately, many of your suggestions for counter-measures wouldn't work in OpenSim.- OpenSim does have picks and ads, and you can pick sims anywhere around the Hypergrid. But OpenSim has no centralised first-party infrastructure that has access to the picks and ads of all avatars on the Hypergrid, much less on all OpenSim grids. OpenSimWorld is third-party, and it has even less of a chance to harvest all this data from all avatars out there.
Seeing as how few avatars have picks in the first place, this could also easily be rigged by making a hundred alts with the same picks and stashing them away on a private sim with no OSW entry. - Second Life's event registration is something that has never been implemented in OpenSim. OSW does have its own event calendar including announcing events on specific sims. But this would rank popular event sims higher than popular freebie sims. And not all events on OSW-listed sims are listed on OSW either.
- Counting unique visitors is out of question, too. Nobody would want a third party like OSW to know which avatars were on any given sim at which time, also seeing as theoretically anyone who knows a bit about scripting could latch onto the data generated by an OSW beacon and use it to track down avatars.
- Adjusted visitor time and interaction events can be rigged, too. OpenSim has its own scripting language, OSSL, which builds upon LSL, but with tons of extra features. You know AVsitter? That sit animation controller? OpenSim has SFposer which largely does the same plus tons of stuff that are unimaginable in Second Life. The host and presenter avatars at the last OSCC were entirely automated by "sit scripts". These scripts even make interaction with other objects possible. And I bet that OSSL can even be used to automate avatars through attachments without them having to sit down. Just about everything that requires manual interaction in Second Life can be automated in OpenSim.
In fact, if actual movement (as opposed to animations) counts, then events will be heavily downranked anyway. I mean, what do people do at DJ events in OpenSim?- They either sit their avatars down on dance pads or a line dance floor.
- Or they use a Clubmaster to launch a dance animation. Oftentimes, they keep the same dance animation running throughout the entire event.
- Or they use a Clubmaster to rez a pair of dance balls and sit down on one. In this case, you can only measure how often the animations are switched, and many simply put the Clubmaster on automatic anyway.
- Or they use a dance HUD which may or may not automatically change dance animations.
- A few use Firestorm's viewer AO feature to switch to a self-made dance AO.
Many actually leave the music running in the background and do something else in the meantime. Others only interact by gestures or "Yay" confetti throwers or other scripted attachments; I mean, that's at least something.
In fact, I know someone who sometimes sends one avatar to a DJ event and then another avatar with the same identity, but from another grid, to a non-DJ event and only actually operates the latter one. That same someone has also sent an avatar to a five-hour DJ event and then gone AFK to attend a nearby real-life music festival for some two hours and actually announced it.
Even I sometimes have avatars at two events at the same time; I focus more on the event which requires switching dance animations and turn the music from the other one down. But even when I attend the same event with two avatars (I can't go anywhere alone without people asking where @Juno Rowland is, how she's doing and when she'll come), both contribute to the local chat occasionally, and we do change dance animations along with the music (unless the DJ plays four hours of house or something).
Due to the abundance of event locations, DJ events can actually last quite long, sometimes three, four or more hours with one DJ. So a 90-minute threshold would be counter-productive.
All in all, it's next to impossible to implement fair and realistic sim rating that cannot be rigged in a decentralised system of virtual worlds where just about everything is third-party.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld -
@Jackie Wallace OpenSim has a similar problem, but it's even harder to solve.
OpenSimWorld has a very basic ranking system for the most popular sims. It isn't for specific parcels, it's for entire sims. The problem, of course, is that it can be manipulated very easily, and it is actually being manipulated constantly.
The ranking "algorithm" is very simple: It only counts how long how many avatars are present. It does not even recognise individual avatars, much less IPs. Also, it allows for sims to rise in popularity very quickly: One sufficiently big event, and they're in the top 10.
There are many ways of manipulating this algorithm, including:- telling your friends to park their avatars on your sim (Lbsa Plaza is not much more than an avatar storage for OSgrid residents to make sure that it's always the number one most "popular" sim)
- using alts as "sim decoration" where NPCs (unlike Second Life, OpenSim supports actual NPCs) or even only animesh would do the same job
- parking alts on a sky platform for which only you have a landmark
- dropping a few alts that are basic Ruths with running numbers in their names under a pier where you think nobody will look
If you host your sim yourself, or if you're even the grid owner, the Radegast viewer is your friend. Install it next to OpenSim and automatically launch a bunch of instances right after your region server has come online. Instant top 10 ranking if you do that with at least four avatars.
Of course, this goes along with claiming either that you don't care for ranking or that it's regular visitor traffic.
A trick that has never been that popular is to make visitors camp on your sim. Offer content on your sim for in-world "Monopoly money". Give visitors a limited amount of that money to whet their appetite. And then give them the chance to earn more money by doing something on your sim for long enough. I've seen this come with a time limit to ensure that the camping is not too obvious, but this also means that you'll have to come back often to earn some more money.
I think there may still be some scoundrels who try to acquire older versions of the OSW beacon that still count NPCs as avatars, or who try to modify newer versions into counting NPCs as avatars. However, OSW no longer recognises these older beacons, and it will ban your sim if you use a hacked beacon.
That is, you can also report sims which obviously cheat their traffic figures to the OSW admin who will then turn the visitor counter for that sim permanently off. However, when a sim owner discovers that this has happened, they do what they also do after one negative comment or review or zero-star rating: They delete the whole entry and make a new one for the same sim. This comes with extra the advantage of the sim also being listed among the top 10 newest entries.
By the way, this feature was introduced after someone exposed the system of popularity rigging with alts by dropping 60 alts on one OSW-listed sim. And I guess countermeasures against this were mostly demanded by high-ranking OSgrid residents because it took that sim mere hours to outrank Lbsa Plaza.
Unfortunately, many of your suggestions for counter-measures wouldn't work in OpenSim.- OpenSim does have picks and ads, and you can pick sims anywhere around the Hypergrid. But OpenSim has no centralised first-party infrastructure that has access to the picks and ads of all avatars on the Hypergrid, much less on all OpenSim grids. OpenSimWorld is third-party, and it has even less of a chance to harvest all this data from all avatars out there.
Seeing as how few avatars have picks in the first place, this could also easily be rigged by making a hundred alts with the same picks and stashing them away on a private sim with no OSW entry. - Second Life's event registration is something that has never been implemented in OpenSim. OSW does have its own event calendar including announcing events on specific sims. But this would rank popular event sims higher than popular freebie sims. And not all events on OSW-listed sims are listed on OSW either.
- Counting unique visitors is out of question, too. Nobody would want a third party like OSW to know which avatars were on any given sim at which time, also seeing as theoretically anyone who knows a bit about scripting could latch onto the data generated by an OSW beacon and use it to track down avatars.
- Adjusted visitor time and interaction events can be rigged, too. OpenSim has its own scripting language, OSSL, which builds upon LSL, but with tons of extra features. You know AVsitter? That sit animation controller? OpenSim has SFposer which largely does the same plus tons of stuff that are unimaginable in Second Life. The host and presenter avatars at the last OSCC were entirely automated by "sit scripts". These scripts even make interaction with other objects possible. And I bet that OSSL can even be used to automate avatars through attachments without them having to sit down. Just about everything that requires manual interaction in Second Life can be automated in OpenSim.
In fact, if actual movement (as opposed to animations) counts, then events will be heavily downranked anyway. I mean, what do people do at DJ events in OpenSim?- They either sit their avatars down on dance pads or a line dance floor.
- Or they use a Clubmaster to launch a dance animation. Oftentimes, they keep the same dance animation running throughout the entire event.
- Or they use a Clubmaster to rez a pair of dance balls and sit down on one. In this case, you can only measure how often the animations are switched, and many simply put the Clubmaster on automatic anyway.
- Or they use a dance HUD which may or may not automatically change dance animations.
- A few use Firestorm's viewer AO feature to switch to a self-made dance AO.
Many actually leave the music running in the background and do something else in the meantime. Others only interact by gestures or "Yay" confetti throwers or other scripted attachments; I mean, that's at least something.
In fact, I know someone who sometimes sends one avatar to a DJ event and then another avatar with the same identity, but from another grid, to a non-DJ event and only actually operates the latter one. That same someone has also sent an avatar to a five-hour DJ event and then gone AFK to attend a nearby real-life music festival for some two hours and actually announced it.
Even I sometimes have avatars at two events at the same time; I focus more on the event which requires switching dance animations and turn the music from the other one down. But even when I attend the same event with two avatars (I can't go anywhere alone without people asking where @Juno Rowland is, how she's doing and when she'll come), both contribute to the local chat occasionally, and we do change dance animations along with the music (unless the DJ plays four hours of house or something).
Due to the abundance of event locations, DJ events can actually last quite long, sometimes three, four or more hours with one DJ. So a 90-minute threshold would be counter-productive.
All in all, it's next to impossible to implement fair and realistic sim rating that cannot be rigged in a decentralised system of virtual worlds where just about everything is third-party.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OpenSimWorld -
Things seem to be about to escalate now, but hopefully outside OSW.
That British madcap has attacked another British user in IMs, and he's lying about it in The Box, demanding proof for these attacks, accusing him of being a hacker and threatening to alert the authorities about him.
Upon this, the other Brit has requested the server logs from Satyr Aeon, and it looks like he is actually going to alert the authorities and drag the madcap to court.
The madcap's reaction was the announcement per IM that if this happened, he'd walk into the court room with a gun, kill the other Brit and then shoot himself because he says he has got nothing to lose.
I hope Satyr will provide the logs for this as well. And I halfway expect that madcap to be insane enough to resist arrest and duke it out with the MO19 over this.
Whatever the outcome, I guess nothing will change on OSW itself because the users have take care of stuff themselves.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld #Violence #CWViolence -
Things seem to be about to escalate now, but hopefully outside OSW.
That British madcap has attacked another British user in IMs, and he's lying about it in The Box, demanding proof for these attacks, accusing him of being a hacker and threatening to alert the authorities about him.
Upon this, the other Brit has requested the server logs from Satyr Aeon, and it looks like he is actually going to alert the authorities and drag the madcap to court.
The madcap's reaction was the announcement per IM that if this happened, he'd walk into the court room with a gun, kill the other Brit and then shoot himself because he says he has got nothing to lose.
I hope Satyr will provide the logs for this as well. And I halfway expect that madcap to be insane enough to resist arrest and duke it out with the MO19 over this.
Whatever the outcome, I guess nothing will change on OSW itself because the users have take care of stuff themselves.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld #Violence #CWViolence -
Things seem to be about to escalate now, but hopefully outside OSW.
That British madcap has attacked another British user in IMs, and he's lying about it in The Box, demanding proof for these attacks, accusing him of being a hacker and threatening to alert the authorities about him.
Upon this, the other Brit has requested the server logs from Satyr Aeon, and it looks like he is actually going to alert the authorities and drag the madcap to court.
The madcap's reaction was the announcement per IM that if this happened, he'd walk into the court room with a gun, kill the other Brit and then shoot himself because he says he has got nothing to lose.
I hope Satyr will provide the logs for this as well. And I halfway expect that madcap to be insane enough to resist arrest and duke it out with the MO19 over this.
Whatever the outcome, I guess nothing will change on OSW itself because the users have take care of stuff themselves.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld #Violence #CWViolence -
Things seem to be about to escalate now, but hopefully outside OSW.
That British madcap has attacked another British user in IMs, and he's lying about it in The Box, demanding proof for these attacks, accusing him of being a hacker and threatening to alert the authorities about him.
Upon this, the other Brit has requested the server logs from Satyr Aeon, and it looks like he is actually going to alert the authorities and drag the madcap to court.
The madcap's reaction was the announcement per IM that if this happened, he'd walk into the court room with a gun, kill the other Brit and then shoot himself because he says he has got nothing to lose.
I hope Satyr will provide the logs for this as well. And I halfway expect that madcap to be insane enough to resist arrest and duke it out with the MO19 over this.
Whatever the outcome, I guess nothing will change on OSW itself because the users have take care of stuff themselves.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld #Violence #CWViolence -
Things seem to be about to escalate now, but hopefully outside OSW.
That British madcap has attacked another British user in IMs, and he's lying about it in The Box, demanding proof for these attacks, accusing him of being a hacker and threatening to alert the authorities about him.
Upon this, the other Brit has requested the server logs from Satyr Aeon, and it looks like he is actually going to alert the authorities and drag the madcap to court.
The madcap's reaction was the announcement per IM that if this happened, he'd walk into the court room with a gun, kill the other Brit and then shoot himself because he says he has got nothing to lose.
I hope Satyr will provide the logs for this as well. And I halfway expect that madcap to be insane enough to resist arrest and duke it out with the MO19 over this.
Whatever the outcome, I guess nothing will change on OSW itself because the users have take care of stuff themselves.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld #Violence #CWViolence -
CW: Aggressive big-mouthed Brit vs aggressive foul-mouthed MAGA 'Murkin on OpenSimWorld; CW: long (1,139 characters), USpol-, MAGA mentioned, right-wing American mentioned
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 -
CW: Aggressive big-mouthed Brit vs aggressive foul-mouthed MAGA 'Murkin on OpenSimWorld; CW: long (1,139 characters), USpol-, MAGA mentioned, right-wing American mentioned
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 -
CW: Aggressive big-mouthed Brit vs aggressive foul-mouthed MAGA 'Murkin on OpenSimWorld; CW: long (1,139 characters), USpol-, MAGA mentioned, right-wing American mentioned
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 -
CW: Aggressive big-mouthed Brit vs aggressive foul-mouthed MAGA 'Murkin on OpenSimWorld; CW: long (1,139 characters), USpol-, MAGA mentioned, right-wing American mentioned
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 -
CW: Aggressive big-mouthed Brit vs aggressive foul-mouthed MAGA 'Murkin on OpenSimWorld; CW: long (1,139 characters), USpol-, MAGA mentioned, right-wing American mentioned
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 -
@kaleb Okay, since you seem to be a native French speaker, I think I've got something for you. There's a "project" in OpenSim for people speaking French that's called Francopholie. @Thirza has described it on her HG Safari blog last year.
It has its own grid with AFAIK only one sim where you can go and inform yourself:francopholie.fr:8000:Francopholie
hop://francopholie.fr:8000/Francopholie/64/86/33
I've also sent you a landmark.
It was relaunched last week, and it's still a bit rough around the edges, but it should be able to help you at least a bit.
Another place you could visit is the main landing sim of the French Atlas grid. Amongst other things, it has another bunch of teleporters that could be useful for you. But put on something warm because it's winter there.atlasgrid.fr:8002:Atlas
You may also want to follow at least two more French-speaking OpenSim users:
@Acryline :linux: ⏚ is behind the Argentoratum grid (cogito.no-ip.info:8002) and a French OpenSim wiki. She also has a PeerTube channel: @acryline.
And @hicks is one of the creative forces in @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️'s grid Groovyverse.
Otherwise, the main source of information on all things OpenSim is OpenSimWorld. It's mostly a catalogue of sims all around the Hypergrid that can be sorted and filtered.
If you want to meet people, just wandering around like in Second Life won't do it. OpenSim doesn't nearly have Second Life's population density. It has fewer users on more than four times the land area.
So the best way to meet people is to go to an event. OpenSimWorld lists many of these as well. They're usually announced in grid time. That's always the same as SLT. If you're in France, it's 8 hours behind you, and the OpenSimWorld event calendar should assume the correct local time for you.
Just always check a) the description of the event and b) the description of the sim where the event takes place. Some sims and events are in languages other than English or French. And if OpenSimWorld has a red "🅰️" on a sim entry, it means the sim is Adult-rated which may mean the same as in Second Life: You may come across naked avatars or worse.
If everything else fails, this is my main avatar in Dorenas World:25b59a09-efb3-40a7-b191-85f7a68d29d7
And this is my spare alt in OSgrid:629a21a6-6be9-46bf-b21b-ca5a12ff90ef
CC: @Cheryl Furse
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Francophone #Francophones #Francopholie #AtlasGrid #Argentoratum #OpenSimWorld -
@kaleb Okay, since you seem to be a native French speaker, I think I've got something for you. There's a "project" in OpenSim for people speaking French that's called Francopholie. @Thirza has described it on her HG Safari blog last year.
It has its own grid with AFAIK only one sim where you can go and inform yourself:francopholie.fr:8000:Francopholie
hop://francopholie.fr:8000/Francopholie/64/86/33
I've also sent you a landmark.
It was relaunched last week, and it's still a bit rough around the edges, but it should be able to help you at least a bit.
Another place you could visit is the main landing sim of the French Atlas grid. Amongst other things, it has another bunch of teleporters that could be useful for you. But put on something warm because it's winter there.atlasgrid.fr:8002:Atlas
You may also want to follow at least two more French-speaking OpenSim users:
@Acryline :linux: ⏚ is behind the Argentoratum grid (cogito.no-ip.info:8002) and a French OpenSim wiki. She also has a PeerTube channel: @acryline.
And @hicks is one of the creative forces in @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️'s grid Groovyverse.
Otherwise, the main source of information on all things OpenSim is OpenSimWorld. It's mostly a catalogue of sims all around the Hypergrid that can be sorted and filtered.
If you want to meet people, just wandering around like in Second Life won't do it. OpenSim doesn't nearly have Second Life's population density. It has fewer users on more than four times the land area.
So the best way to meet people is to go to an event. OpenSimWorld lists many of these as well. They're usually announced in grid time. That's always the same as SLT. If you're in France, it's 8 hours behind you, and the OpenSimWorld event calendar should assume the correct local time for you.
Just always check a) the description of the event and b) the description of the sim where the event takes place. Some sims and events are in languages other than English or French. And if OpenSimWorld has a red "🅰️" on a sim entry, it means the sim is Adult-rated which may mean the same as in Second Life: You may come across naked avatars or worse.
If everything else fails, this is my main avatar in Dorenas World:25b59a09-efb3-40a7-b191-85f7a68d29d7
And this is my spare alt in OSgrid:629a21a6-6be9-46bf-b21b-ca5a12ff90ef
CC: @Cheryl Furse
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Francophone #Francophones #Francopholie #AtlasGrid #Argentoratum #OpenSimWorld -
Okay, I've done something which I've always wanted to avoid. I've taken a picture with an OpenSimWorld beacon in it, and I've described and explained the beacon, looks, functionality and all. It was a lot of writing, but it wasn't the toughest part of the description.
The beacon alone uses about 5,500 characters, almost one quarter of my current WIP image description. But WIP means I'm not done yet.
#ImageDescription #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld -
Okay, I've done something which I've always wanted to avoid. I've taken a picture with an OpenSimWorld beacon in it, and I've described and explained the beacon, looks, functionality and all. It was a lot of writing, but it wasn't the toughest part of the description.
The beacon alone uses about 5,500 characters, almost one quarter of my current WIP image description. But WIP means I'm not done yet.
#ImageDescription #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld -
Okay, I've done something which I've always wanted to avoid. I've taken a picture with an OpenSimWorld beacon in it, and I've described and explained the beacon, looks, functionality and all. It was a lot of writing, but it wasn't the toughest part of the description.
The beacon alone uses about 5,500 characters, almost one quarter of my current WIP image description. But WIP means I'm not done yet.
#ImageDescription #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld -
Okay, I've done something which I've always wanted to avoid. I've taken a picture with an OpenSimWorld beacon in it, and I've described and explained the beacon, looks, functionality and all. It was a lot of writing, but it wasn't the toughest part of the description.
The beacon alone uses about 5,500 characters, almost one quarter of my current WIP image description. But WIP means I'm not done yet.
#ImageDescription #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld -
Okay, I've done something which I've always wanted to avoid. I've taken a picture with an OpenSimWorld beacon in it, and I've described and explained the beacon, looks, functionality and all. It was a lot of writing, but it wasn't the toughest part of the description.
The beacon alone uses about 5,500 characters, almost one quarter of my current WIP image description. But WIP means I'm not done yet.
#ImageDescription #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #OpenSimWorld -
CW: OpenSim-related Follow Friday post; CW: long (well over 3,000 characters)
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 - Shelenn Ayres
-
CW: OpenSim-related Follow Friday post; CW: long (well over 3,000 characters)
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 - Shelenn Ayres
-
CW: OpenSim-related Follow Friday post; CW: long (well over 3,000 characters)
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 - Shelenn Ayres
-
CW: OpenSim-related Follow Friday post; CW: long (well over 3,000 characters)
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 - Shelenn Ayres
-
CW: OpenSim-related Follow Friday post; CW: long (well over 3,000 characters)
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 - Shelenn Ayres
-
@Cheryl Furse Oh, we are using #OSSL.
Furniture with #PMAC? The Clubmaster? The Paramour line dance floors? All written by Áine Caoimhe in OSSL.
The #SatyrFarm? Sailboats with #SFsail? Developed by Satyr Aeon in OSSL.
It's just that none of this can be found on any of those new hot freebie sims. Pretty much all they offer is from #SecondLife where #AVsitter still seems to be popular. So if you managed to get everything out of SL except for the AVsitter scripts, just take the same scripts from another piece of furniture with AVsitter, and you're good to go.
There are many other examples. Kayaker Magic's #khAOs AO script, for example. Drop-in replacement for CPU-hungry #ZHAO from SL. It uses technology that isn't even available in SL. But nobody uses it because at least those who still wear AOs as attachments have never heard of khAOs, and all the big and popular freebie sims only offer the "original" ZHAO versions of all those wide-spread AOs as they came in through Arkham. Mind you, there are khAOs conversions of most or even all of these AOs readily available. But not on the cool new freebie sims.
Aaack Aardvark of Arcadia Shop fame and Bibiana Bombinante of Encantada fame are both switching from PMAC to SFposer which was made by Satyr Aeon, too. But I'm actually surprised whenever I see that someone actually uses their furniture. For most others, it seems to be much more convenient to get everything from Richard Lionheart or, since his sim is no longer listed on #OpenSimWorld, from the Darkhearts Mall.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds -
To all you #OpenSim users out there: Follow @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ if you don't do it already.
She's the owner of the #Groovyverse #grid (the one with The Big Mamou, home of the #LuvMyBod mesh body, and an impressive #NewYorkCity varsim), she also runs the @OpenSim #Lemmy community (join it if you haven't already), and she's no longer on #OpenSimWorld. But she's here.
More and more users are escaping from the rampant, out-of-control drama in that largely unmoderated place, even if there's no alternative.
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:41:32 +0200 I have been on the OpenSimWorld website for years, and I finally deleted my account. I don't need another source of hate and negativity in my life. I love and care about OpenSim, and my grid family deeply. We have a beautiful, happy, peaceful world. It is really sad to see so many miserable people slugging out on that site every single day.
I really wish there were a better alternative, that just had region and event listings.
#OpenSim
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 16:10:12 +0200 Some drama-free alternatives to OSW I am thinking of.
1. A simple searchable listing. They enter the region and grid, and it just fetches the standard search data and parcel picture. No drama, judgement, or comments. just the facts.
2. A hookup tool. You can check-in/announce where you are. And also who you want to meet. A friend, a lover,play a game, dance party.. come join us .. etc. And you can browse live listings of where people are and their interests.
#OpenSim
#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds -
To all you #OpenSim users out there: Follow @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ if you don't do it already.
She's the owner of the #Groovyverse #grid (the one with The Big Mamou, home of the #LuvMyBod mesh body, and an impressive #NewYorkCity varsim), she also runs the @OpenSim #Lemmy community (join it if you haven't already), and she's no longer on #OpenSimWorld. But she's here.
More and more users are escaping from the rampant, out-of-control drama in that largely unmoderated place, even if there's no alternative.
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:41:32 +0200 I have been on the OpenSimWorld website for years, and I finally deleted my account. I don't need another source of hate and negativity in my life. I love and care about OpenSim, and my grid family deeply. We have a beautiful, happy, peaceful world. It is really sad to see so many miserable people slugging out on that site every single day.
I really wish there were a better alternative, that just had region and event listings.
#OpenSim
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 16:10:12 +0200 Some drama-free alternatives to OSW I am thinking of.
1. A simple searchable listing. They enter the region and grid, and it just fetches the standard search data and parcel picture. No drama, judgement, or comments. just the facts.
2. A hookup tool. You can check-in/announce where you are. And also who you want to meet. A friend, a lover,play a game, dance party.. come join us .. etc. And you can browse live listings of where people are and their interests.
#OpenSim
#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds -
To all you #OpenSim users out there: Follow @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ if you don't do it already.
She's the owner of the #Groovyverse #grid (the one with The Big Mamou, home of the #LuvMyBod mesh body, and an impressive #NewYorkCity varsim), she also runs the @OpenSim #Lemmy community (join it if you haven't already), and she's no longer on #OpenSimWorld. But she's here.
More and more users are escaping from the rampant, out-of-control drama in that largely unmoderated place, even if there's no alternative.
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:41:32 +0200 I have been on the OpenSimWorld website for years, and I finally deleted my account. I don't need another source of hate and negativity in my life. I love and care about OpenSim, and my grid family deeply. We have a beautiful, happy, peaceful world. It is really sad to see so many miserable people slugging out on that site every single day.
I really wish there were a better alternative, that just had region and event listings.
#OpenSim
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 16:10:12 +0200 Some drama-free alternatives to OSW I am thinking of.
1. A simple searchable listing. They enter the region and grid, and it just fetches the standard search data and parcel picture. No drama, judgement, or comments. just the facts.
2. A hookup tool. You can check-in/announce where you are. And also who you want to meet. A friend, a lover,play a game, dance party.. come join us .. etc. And you can browse live listings of where people are and their interests.
#OpenSim
#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds -
To all you #OpenSim users out there: Follow @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ if you don't do it already.
She's the owner of the #Groovyverse #grid (the one with The Big Mamou, home of the #LuvMyBod mesh body, and an impressive #NewYorkCity varsim), she also runs the @OpenSim #Lemmy community (join it if you haven't already), and she's no longer on #OpenSimWorld. But she's here.
More and more users are escaping from the rampant, out-of-control drama in that largely unmoderated place, even if there's no alternative.
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:41:32 +0200 I have been on the OpenSimWorld website for years, and I finally deleted my account. I don't need another source of hate and negativity in my life. I love and care about OpenSim, and my grid family deeply. We have a beautiful, happy, peaceful world. It is really sad to see so many miserable people slugging out on that site every single day.
I really wish there were a better alternative, that just had region and event listings.
#OpenSim
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 16:10:12 +0200 Some drama-free alternatives to OSW I am thinking of.
1. A simple searchable listing. They enter the region and grid, and it just fetches the standard search data and parcel picture. No drama, judgement, or comments. just the facts.
2. A hookup tool. You can check-in/announce where you are. And also who you want to meet. A friend, a lover,play a game, dance party.. come join us .. etc. And you can browse live listings of where people are and their interests.
#OpenSim
#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds -
To all you #OpenSim users out there: Follow @Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ if you don't do it already.
She's the owner of the #Groovyverse #grid (the one with The Big Mamou, home of the #LuvMyBod mesh body, and an impressive #NewYorkCity varsim), she also runs the @OpenSim #Lemmy community (join it if you haven't already), and she's no longer on #OpenSimWorld. But she's here.
More and more users are escaping from the rampant, out-of-control drama in that largely unmoderated place, even if there's no alternative.
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:41:32 +0200 I have been on the OpenSimWorld website for years, and I finally deleted my account. I don't need another source of hate and negativity in my life. I love and care about OpenSim, and my grid family deeply. We have a beautiful, happy, peaceful world. It is really sad to see so many miserable people slugging out on that site every single day.
I really wish there were a better alternative, that just had region and event listings.
#OpenSim
Hyacinth 🏳️⚧️ ☮️ wrote the following post Tue, 05 Sep 2023 16:10:12 +0200 Some drama-free alternatives to OSW I am thinking of.
1. A simple searchable listing. They enter the region and grid, and it just fetches the standard search data and parcel picture. No drama, judgement, or comments. just the facts.
2. A hookup tool. You can check-in/announce where you are. And also who you want to meet. A friend, a lover,play a game, dance party.. come join us .. etc. And you can browse live listings of where people are and their interests.
#OpenSim
#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds -
CW: Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned
@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 -
CW: Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned
@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 -
CW: Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned
@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 -
CW: Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned
@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 -
CW: Not everyone in OpenSim has the same definition of Adult; CW: long (almost 2,000 words), NSFW mentioned, nudity mentioned, sex mentioned
@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 -
CW: tl;dr: AviTron will shut down by the end of the month; CW: long (some 9,600 characters in one post), AviTron, Alex Ferraris
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 -
CW: tl;dr: AviTron will shut down by the end of the month; CW: long (some 9,600 characters in one post), AviTron, Alex Ferraris
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 -
CW: tl;dr: AviTron will shut down by the end of the month; CW: long (some 9,600 characters in one post), AviTron, Alex Ferraris
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 -
CW: tl;dr: AviTron will shut down by the end of the month; CW: long (some 9,600 characters in one post), AviTron, Alex Ferraris
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 -
CW: tl;dr: AviTron will shut down by the end of the month; CW: long (some 9,600 characters in one post), AviTron, Alex Ferraris
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 -
@Cheryl Furse No, what #OpenSimWorld did was switch the visitor count of the Playground Mall to "Inaccurate".
This is a standard method to remove obvious cheaters from the popularity ranking. And it's unlikely that the Playground Mall actually had that much regular visitor traffic. Like, 20 avatars at the same time on a freebie sim that doesn't even have any events.
"Inaccurate" was introduced when Alex Ferraris tried to cheat up the visitor numbers and the alleged popularity of sims on AviTron which he didn't even own himself by permanently parking some 20 alts there.
The effect of "Inaccurate" is that the visitor number reported by a beacon is no longer used by OpenSimWorld in any way. Instead, it simply assumes that there's nobody on the sim. -
@Holocluck Henly There's the #OSCC (OpenSimulator Community Conference; #OSCC23 in December; official website) which is an annual multiple-day conference with five adjacent expo regions.
Then there's the #HypergridInternationalExpo, #HIE in short (October 7th/8th; official website) which is practically the same for presenters and an audience whose native language is not English. And it doesn't have five standard regions worth of expo, "only" some booths along a path.
Then there's #OpenSimFest. You already know that, I guess. It doesn't have a website AFAIK, but here is a post on #OpenSimWorld.
The nearest major event is #OSG16B, the 16th #GridAnniversary of #OSgrid, the first, oldest and biggest #OpenSim #grid and the one with the most users (July 24th to 30th).
You can be glad that you haven't asked me in February. I would have had to explain #CornflakesWeek to you. -
@Holocluck Henly There's the #OSCC (OpenSimulator Community Conference; #OSCC23 in December; official website) which is an annual multiple-day conference with five adjacent expo regions.
Then there's the #HypergridInternationalExpo, #HIE in short (October 7th/8th; official website) which is practically the same for presenters and an audience whose native language is not English. And it doesn't have five standard regions worth of expo, "only" some booths along a path.
Then there's #OpenSimFest. You already know that, I guess. It doesn't have a website AFAIK, but here is a post on #OpenSimWorld.
The nearest major event is #OSG16B, the 16th #GridAnniversary of #OSgrid, the first, oldest and biggest #OpenSim #grid and the one with the most users (July 24th to 30th).
You can be glad that you haven't asked me in February. I would have had to explain #CornflakesWeek to you. -
@Holocluck Henly There's the #OSCC (OpenSimulator Community Conference; #OSCC23 in December; official website) which is an annual multiple-day conference with five adjacent expo regions.
Then there's the #HypergridInternationalExpo, #HIE in short (October 7th/8th; official website) which is practically the same for presenters and an audience whose native language is not English. And it doesn't have five standard regions worth of expo, "only" some booths along a path.
Then there's #OpenSimFest. You already know that, I guess. It doesn't have a website AFAIK, but here is a post on #OpenSimWorld.
The nearest major event is #OSG16B, the 16th #GridAnniversary of #OSgrid, the first, oldest and biggest #OpenSim #grid and the one with the most users (July 24th to 30th).
You can be glad that you haven't asked me in February. I would have had to explain #CornflakesWeek to you. -
@Holocluck Henly There's the #OSCC (OpenSimulator Community Conference; #OSCC23 in December; official website) which is an annual multiple-day conference with five adjacent expo regions.
Then there's the #HypergridInternationalExpo, #HIE in short (October 7th/8th; official website) which is practically the same for presenters and an audience whose native language is not English. And it doesn't have five standard regions worth of expo, "only" some booths along a path.
Then there's #OpenSimFest. You already know that, I guess. It doesn't have a website AFAIK, but here is a post on #OpenSimWorld.
The nearest major event is #OSG16B, the 16th #GridAnniversary of #OSgrid, the first, oldest and biggest #OpenSim #grid and the one with the most users (July 24th to 30th).
You can be glad that you haven't asked me in February. I would have had to explain #CornflakesWeek to you. -
It's frightening how fragile the sims which I've listed in my mesh clothes shopping guide for the #Ruth2 family seem to be.
When the guide was still an unfinished draft, 100 Dresses disappeared from Catena di isole on the #VirtualHG grid. It has yet to resurface. Until then, the line is commented out.
Even earlier, Remmy Ravenhurst closed her sims in #OSgrid to start her own grid together with Tanned Babe. She has made a whole lot of textures for older mesh clothes. I'm still waiting for the grid to open. Another commented-out line.
Not long after I've published the guide, #DorenasWorld suffered from hard drive failure and spent three weeks offline during which it was impossible to get certain Klarabella Karamell creations and almost impossible to get the Deva Moda products. Now Klara is leaving the grid and relocating her own sims to OSgrid so I have to edit these lines. I myself am looking for a
While Dorenas World was already down, #Artdestiny got into software-side trouble, but it came back quickly.
The #EtheriaGrid had its own share of trouble several times, making certain exclusive textured #Clutterfly items unavailable. I hope it's halfway stable now.
Sabi Breen has completely redesigned Shopaholic once again, and she has yet to bring back her Damien Fate clothes.
Recently, Cloe Kegel, owner of the #Astralia Shopping City, posted something that sounded like she had also closed Shopping City for reconstruction. This could have meant the removal of older layer and mesh items, some of which can only be found there anymore. Fortunately, Shopping City is still open and complete.
And just a few minutes ago, I thought that Birch Grove on #Neverworld had been shut down in favour of its own spring variant which lacks some of the original's shops. It's still there, just not listed on #OpenSimWorld anymore. The spring variant with its new pride shop will receive a special mention when I make my list of shops with layer clothes useful for #BakesOnMesh bodies like Ruth2 v4.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #RuthAndRoth -
It's frightening how fragile the sims which I've listed in my mesh clothes shopping guide for the #Ruth2 family seem to be.
When the guide was still an unfinished draft, 100 Dresses disappeared from Catena di isole on the #VirtualHG grid. It has yet to resurface. Until then, the line is commented out.
Even earlier, Remmy Ravenhurst closed her sims in #OSgrid to start her own grid together with Tanned Babe. She has made a whole lot of textures for older mesh clothes. I'm still waiting for the grid to open. Another commented-out line.
Not long after I've published the guide, #DorenasWorld suffered from hard drive failure and spent three weeks offline during which it was impossible to get certain Klarabella Karamell creations and almost impossible to get the Deva Moda products. Now Klara is leaving the grid and relocating her own sims to OSgrid so I have to edit these lines. I myself am looking for a
While Dorenas World was already down, #Artdestiny got into software-side trouble, but it came back quickly.
The #EtheriaGrid had its own share of trouble several times, making certain exclusive textured #Clutterfly items unavailable. I hope it's halfway stable now.
Sabi Breen has completely redesigned Shopaholic once again, and she has yet to bring back her Damien Fate clothes.
Recently, Cloe Kegel, owner of the #Astralia Shopping City, posted something that sounded like she had also closed Shopping City for reconstruction. This could have meant the removal of older layer and mesh items, some of which can only be found there anymore. Fortunately, Shopping City is still open and complete.
And just a few minutes ago, I thought that Birch Grove on #Neverworld had been shut down in favour of its own spring variant which lacks some of the original's shops. It's still there, just not listed on #OpenSimWorld anymore. The spring variant with its new pride shop will receive a special mention when I make my list of shops with layer clothes useful for #BakesOnMesh bodies like Ruth2 v4.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #RuthAndRoth -
It's frightening how fragile the sims which I've listed in my mesh clothes shopping guide for the #Ruth2 family seem to be.
When the guide was still an unfinished draft, 100 Dresses disappeared from Catena di isole on the #VirtualHG grid. It has yet to resurface. Until then, the line is commented out.
Even earlier, Remmy Ravenhurst closed her sims in #OSgrid to start her own grid together with Tanned Babe. She has made a whole lot of textures for older mesh clothes. I'm still waiting for the grid to open. Another commented-out line.
Not long after I've published the guide, #DorenasWorld suffered from hard drive failure and spent three weeks offline during which it was impossible to get certain Klarabella Karamell creations and almost impossible to get the Deva Moda products. Now Klara is leaving the grid and relocating her own sims to OSgrid so I have to edit these lines. I myself am looking for a
While Dorenas World was already down, #Artdestiny got into software-side trouble, but it came back quickly.
The #EtheriaGrid had its own share of trouble several times, making certain exclusive textured #Clutterfly items unavailable. I hope it's halfway stable now.
Sabi Breen has completely redesigned Shopaholic once again, and she has yet to bring back her Damien Fate clothes.
Recently, Cloe Kegel, owner of the #Astralia Shopping City, posted something that sounded like she had also closed Shopping City for reconstruction. This could have meant the removal of older layer and mesh items, some of which can only be found there anymore. Fortunately, Shopping City is still open and complete.
And just a few minutes ago, I thought that Birch Grove on #Neverworld had been shut down in favour of its own spring variant which lacks some of the original's shops. It's still there, just not listed on #OpenSimWorld anymore. The spring variant with its new pride shop will receive a special mention when I make my list of shops with layer clothes useful for #BakesOnMesh bodies like Ruth2 v4.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #RuthAndRoth -
It's frightening how fragile the sims which I've listed in my mesh clothes shopping guide for the #Ruth2 family seem to be.
When the guide was still an unfinished draft, 100 Dresses disappeared from Catena di isole on the #VirtualHG grid. It has yet to resurface. Until then, the line is commented out.
Even earlier, Remmy Ravenhurst closed her sims in #OSgrid to start her own grid together with Tanned Babe. She has made a whole lot of textures for older mesh clothes. I'm still waiting for the grid to open. Another commented-out line.
Not long after I've published the guide, #DorenasWorld suffered from hard drive failure and spent three weeks offline during which it was impossible to get certain Klarabella Karamell creations and almost impossible to get the Deva Moda products. Now Klara is leaving the grid and relocating her own sims to OSgrid so I have to edit these lines. I myself am looking for a
While Dorenas World was already down, #Artdestiny got into software-side trouble, but it came back quickly.
The #EtheriaGrid had its own share of trouble several times, making certain exclusive textured #Clutterfly items unavailable. I hope it's halfway stable now.
Sabi Breen has completely redesigned Shopaholic once again, and she has yet to bring back her Damien Fate clothes.
Recently, Cloe Kegel, owner of the #Astralia Shopping City, posted something that sounded like she had also closed Shopping City for reconstruction. This could have meant the removal of older layer and mesh items, some of which can only be found there anymore. Fortunately, Shopping City is still open and complete.
And just a few minutes ago, I thought that Birch Grove on #Neverworld had been shut down in favour of its own spring variant which lacks some of the original's shops. It's still there, just not listed on #OpenSimWorld anymore. The spring variant with its new pride shop will receive a special mention when I make my list of shops with layer clothes useful for #BakesOnMesh bodies like Ruth2 v4.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #RuthAndRoth -
It's frightening how fragile the sims which I've listed in my mesh clothes shopping guide for the #Ruth2 family seem to be.
When the guide was still an unfinished draft, 100 Dresses disappeared from Catena di isole on the #VirtualHG grid. It has yet to resurface. Until then, the line is commented out.
Even earlier, Remmy Ravenhurst closed her sims in #OSgrid to start her own grid together with Tanned Babe. She has made a whole lot of textures for older mesh clothes. I'm still waiting for the grid to open. Another commented-out line.
Not long after I've published the guide, #DorenasWorld suffered from hard drive failure and spent three weeks offline during which it was impossible to get certain Klarabella Karamell creations and almost impossible to get the Deva Moda products. Now Klara is leaving the grid and relocating her own sims to OSgrid so I have to edit these lines. I myself am looking for a
While Dorenas World was already down, #Artdestiny got into software-side trouble, but it came back quickly.
The #EtheriaGrid had its own share of trouble several times, making certain exclusive textured #Clutterfly items unavailable. I hope it's halfway stable now.
Sabi Breen has completely redesigned Shopaholic once again, and she has yet to bring back her Damien Fate clothes.
Recently, Cloe Kegel, owner of the #Astralia Shopping City, posted something that sounded like she had also closed Shopping City for reconstruction. This could have meant the removal of older layer and mesh items, some of which can only be found there anymore. Fortunately, Shopping City is still open and complete.
And just a few minutes ago, I thought that Birch Grove on #Neverworld had been shut down in favour of its own spring variant which lacks some of the original's shops. It's still there, just not listed on #OpenSimWorld anymore. The spring variant with its new pride shop will receive a special mention when I make my list of shops with layer clothes useful for #BakesOnMesh bodies like Ruth2 v4.
#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #RuthAndRoth -
CW: OpenSim users don't really have anywhere to talk in larger numbers
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. -
CW: OpenSim users don't really have anywhere to talk in larger numbers
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. -
CW: OpenSim users don't really have anywhere to talk in larger numbers
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. -
CW: OpenSim users don't really have anywhere to talk in larger numbers
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. -
CW: OpenSim users don't really have anywhere to talk in larger numbers
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. -
Now that's a blast from the past, even if the past is still fairly recent...
Neovo Geesink has rebuilt Metro Memoriam, the sim in #OSgrid that preserves iconic elements of the #Metropolis #grid, the first and formerly biggest German grid in #OpenSim. It used to contain only the top level of the legendary welcome building. Now it's the entire welcome sim itself plus a sky platform with more structures like the 1078-prim Reichstag and Café Achteck from CenterWorld, a carousel that used to be one of the first objects made in Metro and the backup dance floor for the farewell party a good 8 months ago, the first event this place had seen in some three years or so.
Come to think of it, as old as this structure is, I've met two contributors to it just this evening.
A few things have changed in the building, though. The last remaining MRTPS teleport terminals are descripted dummies now, there's an #OpenSimWorld beacon now (there used to be one already when I joined Metro), the teleportals on level 2 are all blank, the big SuperTeleporter points at OSgrid targets instead of Metro targets now, and next to it, there are two additional teleporters, one to the sky platform, one for events. Level 1 has an unscripted Clubmaster dance ball now as a kind of souvenir from the farewell party; the building's built-in club didn't have a Clubmaster before that night.
The Metropolis logo on top, however, has been there when Metro was still alive. The commsys is still there and appears to be functional; it has actually been expanded to the sky platform. In general, I could post some of the pictures from before the shutdown here, and you wouldn't notice the differences, except that my pictures don't have the "eternal sunset" setting.
Also, nice to see new Bertha back at the info counter.
Here are two pictures from shortly before the shutdown; again, except for the sun which I had changed to have some better light, it doesn't look any different today.
Speaking of Bertha, amongst the surviving historical pieces of Metro is also Lacchi Macchi's legendary freebie sim AquaDark which disappeared from Metro in 2019 already and resides on its own grid now. There you can also find the full avatar which new Bertha is inspired by the android Maria from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
#OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds