#wolfterritoriesgrid — Public Fediverse posts

Today is one of those days on which simply too much happens in the Hypergrid at the same time.

There's the World Zero Discrimination Day event in ZetaWorlds which starts in a bit over an hour and a half.

There's the grand opening of OpenSim World's Fair in the Wolf Territories.

There's an unlisted St. David's Day Dance on the Welsh sim Redoutable in Speculoos Grid.

Not to mention a whole lot of more or less regular events.

Maybe we'll do some event hopping today.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Hypergrid #VirtualEvent #ZetaWorlds #WolfTerritories #WolfTerritoriesGrid #WolfGrid #WTGrid #Speculoos #OpenSimWorldsFair #StDavidsDay #DyddGwylDewiHapus #ZeroDiscriminationDay

One of the worst things that can happen in an OpenSim grid, except its complete and permanent shutdown, is the inventories of all avatars being wiped clean. It has happened in Metropolis, I think, in 2019. Many of those who were around back then decided to move away to another grid that promised to be more reliable. Those who were AWOL returned later, just to find their inventories completely empty and their avatars consisting of only the white, textureless system body. In either case, their inventories didn't even contain the "building blocks" for standard Ruth, and when they returned, a blank skin, a blank shape, blank hair and blank eyes had to be created on the spot.

Except for what they had installed in-world, if anything, they had to start over from scratch. Not exactly few decided to do so on another grid, basically starting Metropolis' shrinking process.

Now, Metropolis was one of the oldest grids, launched in 2008. When it was shut down in 2022, it was the fourth-oldest grid. For a while, it even used to be bigger than OSgrid. But this age also meant it was dragging around a whole lot of old assets that were no longer in use.

OSgrid is even older. Except for maybe the odd impromptu private test grid to get recently-created OpenSim running, it has always been the oldest grid. It was launched in 2007, so it's a whopping 17 years old now. Also, for most of the time, it has been the biggest grid and basically the "lighthouse instance" of OpenSim where almost all newbies ended up.

In other words, a whole lot of people contributed to the filling of what has been one of the most troubled asset servers in OpenSim for years already. The admins had tried quite a few things over the last few years to improve the situation, only to worsen it. Assets in inventories were broken or missing altogether. Announcements that the situation would normalise in a few months (with an increasing number of months estimated) never came to pass.

What was identified as a major issue are assets that don't exist in-world, and that are broken or faulty to begin with. Some may only exist on the asset server, but others linger in the inventories of avatars, many of which haven't been used in years. A lot of these were stolen from Second Life and haphazardly imported, or they broke upon export already.

So they decided to take this last resort and reset all inventories to get rid of broken content. The announcement came yesterday.

But as it seems, they've received a whole lot of criticism. They may also have been reminded that the total inventory reset with everyone losing everything that wasn't rezzed in-world was the beginning of the end of the once-mighty Metropolis Metaversum. Apparently, the OSgrid admins all pack lightly, and they seem not to be able to estimate how much the still active avatars would lose and have to save or reconstruct.

Sure, it's possible to save your entire OSgrid inventory as an IAR. But that's only possible if you have land, if you have at least one sim attached to OSgrid. So this could also have been seen as a ploy to get those who don't have land yet to host and attach sims so that OSgrid can outgrow the Wolf Territories Grid again and reclaim its spot as the biggest grid on the Hypergrid. I mean, it's commonly known that OSgrid doesn't take Lbsa Plaza not being the top spot on OpenSimWorld either. Besides, many simply don't have what it takes to host your own sim, not even temporarily.

And so Dan Banner, one of the admins, changed the asset reset announcement. The OSgrid team had understood how bad an idea it actually is to purge all assets that aren't rezzed in-world and delete everything from everyone's inventories, actually including payware from commercial grids. It would drive people away from OSgrid even faster than the current situation which mostly has them create backup avatars elsewhere.

It would not only drive them away from OSgrid, but over to commercial competitors like Kitely or Wolf Territories which not only aren't younger than OSgrid, but which have their own powerful asset servers and actually take good care of them. Especially the Wolf Territories Grid comes with the advantage of being only three years old and never having been used as a gateway for mass-importing tons of copybotted content. Also, these commercial grids have stable sources of income in the shape of land rentals. OSgrid doesn't have land rentals at all; all sims that aren't official are hosted by their users and attached for free. So OSgrid only makes money from donations and an annual in-world auction.

And indeed, @Lone Wolf has just reported that 87 sims were just recently moved to Wolf Territories via OAR export and import. This greatly reeks of a beginning OSgrid exodus.

This must have caused a change of mind among the OSgrid admins. They still consider a reset, but now they want to try to restore the assets in people's inventories afterwards. That's all we know now.

Metaworld Opensim Social wrote the following post Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:24:54 +0100 Asset Reset - OSgrid News
https://www.osgrid.online/news/asset-reset/

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #QuotePost #QuoteTweet #QuoteToot #QuoteBoost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #OSgrid #Kitely #WolfTerritories #WolfGrid #WolfTerritoriesGrid

What really gave me to think when looking at Hypergrid Business' OpenSim statistics for May was the varying discrepancy between active users, Hypergridders included, and land mass on the various grids.

The biggest grids in land mass are both special cases. Being the second-largest grid with 29,248 standard regions, the Wolf Territories Grid is one because it's largely varsims, and at least the mainland is varsims from 4x4 upward. Whereas other grids are dominated by standard-region-sized sims, a typical Wolf Territories sim is 16 of these. Also, @Lone Wolf himself is probably still the owner of the most land in the metaverse. At the same time, the Wolf Territories Grid tops the list of most active grids with 6,232 MAUs.

OSgrid, largest with 32,547 standard regions, easily leaving Second Life in the dust, and second-busiest with 5,186 MAUs, is a special case because it doesn't offer land rentals. Everything that isn't an official sim is attached to the grid and hosted by its users. Size-wise, that goes from single personal sims hosted at home to whole archipelagos of varsims like Tropicana Estates (which used to be a whole lot bigger even) or Nautilus Estates. Technically speaking, OSgrid is the one grid with the most region servers. Also, for this reason, OSgrid's land mass always takes a little dive whenever they do a clean-up and remove dead sims from their map because many don't shut their sims down properly when removing them. At the same time, of course, OSgrid is a popular destination for Hypergridders even beyond parking your avatar at Lbsa Plaza.

Now let's take a look at some other grids.

Kitely is the third-largest grid with 18,077 standard regions, but the 20th-busiest grid with only 627 MAU. But it's a popular builders' grid due to its stability. Kitely's trick to cope with that much land is to shut all sims down when they aren't populated and start them up again when someone wants to enter them, a trick that was later re-implemented by DreamGrid.

ZetaWorlds is the fourth-largest grid with 12,910 standard regions, but only the 21st-busiest grid with only 596 MAU. I doubt that this includes the 3rd Wind community. Still, one reason ZetaWorlds is so large and underpopulated is its huge ocean, consisting of dozens upon dozens of varsims; I think it was 3x3s. It's so big that it takes well over five minutes to cross in a motor boat at full speed. Even Stark, a nudism-encouraging archipelago of 14 4x4 vars, that's still 224 standard regions in the hands of three owners, doesn't make up a large percentage of ZetaWorlds' land area. The lack of MAU can be explained by ZetaWorlds not letting avatars from lots of grids in for reliability reasons.

Alternate Metaverse is actually balanced. It's the fifth-busiest grid with 2,025 MAU and the fifth-largest grid with 10,178 standard regions. This may not seem balanced, but AMV residents love to build big, too. Grid owners Cataplexia Numbers and Clifford Hanger seem to almost always build vars because they always need lots of room. Welcome and Annex are exceptions because they're practically entirely indoors. Chris McCracken builds vars so big that even he gets lost without a proper map. And AMV was where Jimmy Olsen inflated Norway-themed Alfheim from an already respectable 4x4 with lots of details to a 10x10 giant before it sadly vanished. At the same time, AMV has loads of events which also attract Hypergridders.

GroovyVerse, sixth-largest at 7,837 standard regions and 23rd-busiest with only 514 MAUs, is a community effort in building a whole lot of land. It's actually building a sim-crossing railway network which by now may be larger than the one in the Wolf Territories, and that one already takes quite some time to travel.
One reason for the lack of activity may be because only few sims are advertised on OpenSimWorld, and so only few people know about them in the first place. That's partly because of @Hyacinth 🏳️‍⚧️ ☮️'s very justified love-hate relationship towards OSW to say the least. In fact, she "loves" OSW so much that she is working on an alternative to replace it.

Shoalwater Bay is another interesting case: The tenth-largest grid with 1,072 standard regions isn't even in the top 25 of busiest grids. The reason becomes apparent if you look at its grid map, and the grid name is a dead giveaway: It's a sailing grid with only 49 adjacent sims, six of which are 8x8 vars, the other 43 being 4x4 vars. Over half a dozen sims don't even seem to have any actual land on them.

The GBG Metaverse, formerly GreekLife Breath Grid, is the opposite case. It's the third-busiest grid with 2,239 MAU, but only the tenth-largest grid with only 956 standard regions. This is astounding for two reasons. One, GBG is the result of two grid mergers. First, the Tranquility Grid was merged into the younger Little Breath Grid. And then Little Breath merged with GreekLife. Two, GreekLife used to make renting at least one sim mandatory for every resident. GBG has switched to a different model: Your inventory is limited to 5,000 items unless you rent land or donate. Still, I wonder where the discrepancy comes from, seeing as GBG doesn't have any super-popular events or freebie sims.

Even more extreme: Darkheart's Playground and WaterSplash are number seven and eight in MAU, both between 1,600 and 1,700. But neither is even in the top 40 of largest grids. However, both are famous for one very popular freebie sim each, Darkheart's Boutiques and iPleasure respectively, the latter being the home of the R. Lion "brand". I think both grids have only got about half a dozen sims each or so. So either the stats are vastly dominated by Hypergridders, or people create alts on these grid to make grubbing freebies and passing them on to their mains easier and circumvent grid blocks. For example, AFAIK, ZetaWorlds has blocked both, and in the case of Darkheart's Playground, the block is mutual. I'd really like to see the faces of the users when they discover that most content offered on both grids is no-transfer.

Last but not least, Neverworld makes me wonder, too. It reported 1,101 MAUs, ranking ninth, on only 343 standard regions, ranking 22th. And that's considering this grid is mostly vars, too. Most of it is joined together in one big mainland connected by a network of streets. A lot of it is owned by grid owner Govega Sachertorte and split into parcels for everyone to rent for free, even Hypergridders. Still, most of that land is vacant, maybe also because you can't set your home out in the Hypergrid, so it isn't quite useful as a dwelling-place unless you're a Neverworlder. What probably causes the most traffic, however, are Nexus Storm's several large freebie sims.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Grid #WolfTerritories #WolfTerritoriesGrid #WolfGrid #OSgrid #Kitely #ZetaWorlds #AlternateMetaverse #AMV #GroovyVerse #ShoalwaterBay #GBG #DarkheartsPlayground #WaterSplash #Neverworld #OpenSimStatistics

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

Always interesting to look at the monthly #OpenSimulator stats from #HypergridBusiness.

For example, #OSgrid, the oldest and biggest grid, has once again managed to grow larger than #SecondLife. OSgrid reported 29,770 standard regions; the most recent number from Second Life are 27,813 regions as per September 10th.

Only one more #grid measures over 20,000 standard regions, over 25,000 even, and that's the #WolfTerritoriesGrid (25,504 standard regions). Now, while all of OSgrid except for the official sims is hosted by its respective owners and attached to the grid for free, the #WolfGrid is entirely owned by @Lone Wolf and offered as paid rentals. Long ago, when the grid wasn't nearly as big yet, he said you'd have to be a millionnaire to own so much land in Second Life.

#Kitely (18,301 standard regions) is almost as big as all Second Life Private Estates (18,380) put together.

Add #ZetaWorlds (10,386 standard regions) with its massive sailable grid-owned ocean, and you've got four grids which altogether have three times Second Life's landmass. And the top 38 grids on the #Hypergrid that report their stats to Hypergrid Business are a bit over 440% as big as Second Life.

The second-oldest grid, #3rdRockGrid, has shrunk by about 30%. Should I be worried?

One more detail: #TheGridThatShallNotBeNamed is back in the stats. Maybe it wasn't shut down after all. Interestingly, it ranks 9th in active users (1,121), but 34th in land mass (209 standard regions). As the active users include Hypergrid visitors, this might be a case of bile fascination after the Hypergrid connection was re-established. If not, it says a lot about the target audience of this grid.

Metaworld Opensim Social wrote the following post Fri, 15 Sep 2023 18:48:35 +0200 at
https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2023/09/opensim-hypergriddable-land-area-up-to-a-new-all-time-high/

#OpenSim #OpenSimStatistics #Statistics #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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