Open Sims – Back to the Brave New World
by Alphaville Herald on 28/01/09 at 12:24 am
by Alessandra Narayan
Alessandra's look in OpenLife
Joining the new Open Sims is like starting all over Second Life, which means a ‘noobie’ figure, difficulty in getting it presentable – especially when you’re only allowed to change it after getting a new shape – and various problems, which now seem so distant in SL. For example in some days you can’t use teleports or you’ll just shutdown an entire region, having to log off and log back in describing in the start menu the region you wish to enter. Exciting? Another example of how much development Open Sims need is the difficulty of ‘rezzing’ your avatar: sometimes it’s a cloud, in other occasions you can’t ‘rez’ clothes, etc.
Where did I see this problem before? I wonder…
But, as if this wasn’t enough, you’ll find very few people logged in and severe lack of places to have fun. Ok, it’s cheaper, yes. That’s what all of the people who own land say. Right now it’s the only advantage in Open Sims, nominated Open Life viewer. And for those who don’t want to own land? Just have fun and not spending money? What will they do in Open Sims? Nothing really, trust me. Dying of boredom is the only available option at the moment.
If you visit Open Life site, somewhere you’ll read about thepossibility of joining with a SL avatar, but that’s not possible. Atleast I tried over and over again and couldn’t perform that operation,which would be nice in order to avoid starting from chapter zero onyour “Open Life”. Also, at the moment you can’t use scripts from SecondLife: go on and starting creating it all over again; this way, rightnow, it’s very hard to do basic stuff like dancing or sex; also noanimation overriders to help you walk decently; instead you have aslightly improved ‘noobie’ walk, not so bad as SL’s original, but not agood option either.
One thing for sure: people are already thinking of ways how to make money. So you’ll find, here and there, some clothing stores and some regions with houses to rent. Nevertheless you have to wait for currency to start operating transactions.
About the adaptation: well, it’s quite easy as viewers, menus and options are all an absolute copy of Second Life’s; the general aspect is quite the same, no big improvements or differences to what concerns avatars and options in creating clothes or modifying shapes and skins. So, at the moment, Open Life is just a basic Second Life starting from the beginning, trying to catch up years of Linden Labs advance with a big offer: cheaper land. Let’s just wait and see if that’s enough to drag people out of Second Life…
janeforyou Barbara
Jan 28th, 2009
I never realy belived in the “Open Sim” Idea.. i dont understand it..Cheep? hmm. you get whay you pay for.If somone bother to invest 300.000-400.000 USD In a huge group of SIMS and a serverpark and hire 10-15 tech ppl to develop scripts and code servers,, go ahead cuz thts what it wil take to get neer SL/The lab.And THEN it wont be cheep more lol. To build up VR worlds takes time.. loong time I been working on this sins 2001…in 2004 i broke out from one VR world and a friend of me that i joined used 80.000 USD in software and servers and payment systems, securety and developing, a group of us used 2 y to get it up and running.. after 4 y its still struggling and i pulled out in 2006 to join SL,, but ok, if somone wish to have a private lill sim in ” open SIMs” and no other that that,,its ok to use as a priv lill chat room. But you get that for 250 USD and 75 USD in tiers in SL also…( open space sim 750 prims) i belive?
Tizzers BnT
Jan 28th, 2009
Sorry, I was distracted by those tits.
Archie
Jan 28th, 2009
Thanks for the head up
I’ll give it a miss then…………
Stinky
Jan 28th, 2009
It is true that Open SIM is in the early stages of life. I think that is one of the interesting challenges of it. Ya there are just a few bugs here and there, Oh ya…, there and maybe here too. But it still hasn’t made it out the alpha stage of development and it is offering so much.
SL does have years of development over it. In a few years when you read the news and it is telling you about the people that are making bank on Open SIM because they were in it early. Then you can look back at this blog and smile while you pay them for the next greatest widget or rental on Open SIM. Plus you can remember the days when you could have made a difference but let it pass you by because you wanted to whine about Open SIMs not being complete.
Now are the day to enter the pioneering future of Open SIM. So many door have been opened in the last few years that the future is beyond imagination.
If your just a gamer looking for a sexball then don’t bother with Open SIM. At least not yet. But if your a pioneer the doors are wide open!!!
dandellion Kimban
Jan 28th, 2009
You missed the point. It’s not about being cheaper. It’s about making the code free and open. Why that matters? Because code that is not closed in one company is more secure and, after a certain point, faster developed. before some start arguing, take a look what happened with the viewer after the code was opened.
And, btw, you can have AO. ZHAO has open GPL’ed code so you’re free to copypaste it.
Hylee
Jan 28th, 2009
LOL….. I’m sorry…. I don’t want to be mean here…. LOL… but is that the only size of boobs available in Open Sim?… LOL. Okay… I’ve stopped laughing now….
I did appreciate the article though… once I got past the boobs.. LOL… Okay… I’m sorry, I won’t laugh any more.
I am hoping that Open Sim is able to get off the ground and offer some competition to Linden Labs offerings. Perhaps then LL will focus on customer support and improving some of the things that residents have been complaining about for a long time.
So thanks for the great article and I did want to mention that you have a very pretty face (red faced…hand covering mouth…. trying really hard not to laugh)
Neo Citizen
Jan 28th, 2009
Okay – I’m a guy, and just for the record, giant boobs appeal to teenage boys, not real men. If you put on giant boobs, you’ll only attract men who want giant boobs as a first criterion. That tends to leave out men who want somebody they can talk to, or appreciate other parts of you besides your boobs.
Galatea Gynoid
Jan 28th, 2009
Stinky, I’m not concerned about the bugs. It’s the missing features that make it currently unusable. I’d love to get in early and start developing those widgets, but I can’t get in early like you suggest because the platform not only isn’t complete, it’s barely started, and as of yet I can’t even start developing those widgets. Did you know “llMessageLinked” doesn’t work? That blows away the ability to develop anything non-trivial, period. I do have a simple flight-assist that doesn’t require multiple scripts to function. That compiles and runs, it just doesn’t do anything. I’m glad to hear you can make an AO, but really, OpenSim scripting appears to still be in the “test of concept” phase, not yet ready for actual use.
Now is not the day to enter the pioneering future. The platform isn’t mature enough yet to support pioneers. The magma needs to cool and form a crust before you can roll your wagons westward across it. This frontier isn’t yet ready for any pioneers…
Weeaboo
Jan 28th, 2009
DO NOT WANT D:
Prokofy Neva
Jan 28th, 2009
Didn’t have to wait long for the opensource loons to show up with their usual shill.
Re: “Because code that is not closed in one company is more secure and, after a certain point, faster developed. before some start arguing, take a look what happened with the viewer after the code was opened. ”
False. All we have gotten since the release of the viewer are various hacks and griefgs like God-mode stalking, megaprims used to lag and grief, and other forms of griefing. Anyone who has supposedly made a better viewer out of this mangle of code can’t be trusted because you’d have to sign on using your SL avatar name and password and it’s not clear to me how secure that is on one of the opensourced re-mixed viewers — not worth the risk. Nothing demonstrable has been done or added to the viewer that made any of these hacks and griefs and risks worth it.
So yeah, *look at what happened with the viewer after the code was opened*. More griefing. More idiocy.
Dr. Moreau
Jan 29th, 2009
For the record: I’m a guy IRL who really dislikes big cha-cha-bingos. But at least the poor woman looks like a human…well, a slutty tramp from Boca Raton!
My OpenLife avatar is so awful–when it’s not a cloud–that I’d settle for boobs of any size. Even man-boobs would be preferable to being a friggin’ cloud in OpenLife. When I last tried to alter the avatar’s appearance using some freebies, it ending up looking like it had escaped from Dr. Moreau’s Island.
NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME. The staff at OpenLife are nice folks, but they are riding a tornado. Gotta have scale to pull something like that off.
John
Jan 29th, 2009
Prokofy Neva said “All we have gotten since the release of the viewer are…..megaprims used to lag and grief” since when are megaprims a problem because of the new viewers? You can get them in any freebie place and use them just fine with SLs own viewer. Viewers like the hipo viewer that allow you to make prims over 10X10X10 on other grids still only let you make them the normal size on SL because that is controlled on the server side.
and megaprims have even been shown to cut back on lag since the server is not texturing the unseen parts of a prim that touch each other. A wall 100m long and 10m High with normal SL prims needs to fetch from the servers 10 things and texture 18 extra sides that are never seen. Or it can send 1 megaprim (1 call to the server) to cover that same area.
By the way I have never used a megaprim in a build but did the research in case i ever wanted to.
Neo Citizen
Jan 29th, 2009
Hmm. Well, I have to admit, Prok, you do have a point, though god mode stalking hasn’t worked in a very long time now.
The benefits of opening the source are possibly outweighed by the damage that did, I agree there too. However, the whole point of open source is that you get to read the code and see whether it’s doing something nasty or not. Which puts you out of luck if you don’t happen to be able to read, understand and compile code yourself like I can, so I can understand your reticence. It’s a lot easier for me to trust it, because I can see for myself. Most can’t.
ichabod Antfarm
Jan 29th, 2009
I am sorry Dr. Moreau but Cha-Cha-Bingos is unacceptable. If you must address them, they prefer to be called Lefty and Smiley (I won’t be elucidating!) Otherwise, a fine post; from one cloud to another, Hail!
ichabod Antfarm
Jan 29th, 2009
“Which puts you out of luck if you don’t happen to be able to read, understand and compile code yourself”
Neo, it puts the vast majority of people out of luck. It puts a good portion of C++ “programmers” out of luck! So, in practise, the whole “open source makes better code because you can look at it” thing, just doesn’t work. Oh sure, it works now and then but the idea that open source is always already “secure” and “developed faster” is a religious doctrine and, quite frankly, an unbecoming position for anyone who aspires to scientific rationality.
Oh, as for me, I never bother to compile my own code, I find gcc does a quicker job of it.
Neo Citizen
Jan 29th, 2009
Fortunately all it takes is one pair of eyeballs operated by somebody who knows evil code when he or she sees it to blow the whistle. So in practice, yes it does work, and the history of open source is full of examples of this. Far from being a religious doctrine, it’s something you can actually look up for yourself if you bothered.
Now if somebody makes a client and doesn’t offer the source code and expects us all to take it on faith that there’s nothing evil it without ANYONE being able to take a critical look at its innards and verify that, then users of it deserve whatever happens to them. Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?
All I’m saying is that for a lot of people it’s hard to make that leap of faith, and in that, I think you and I and Prok appear to be all singing from the same hymnal.
Orion Pseudo
Jan 29th, 2009
Umm, OpenLife is something like a few light years behind the normal variation of OpenSim! Long ago they decided for whatever reason to split off from the main OpenSim project to make their own variation based on it. This means that all the newer things like link messages, etc. are missing from their setup.
Instead of basing your conclusion of an entire technology on your visit to just one company that’s running it (and rather badly so from what I hear) why not try a few others to see how they work? There are tons of them out there at varying levels of stability and completion and even some that link to one another with a mechanism called HyperGrid which allows you to teleport with inventory from one grid to another.
Do us all a favor, take a look at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List and try a few of the other grids before you go off on some narrow minded tangent declaring a royal thumbs down? And please do remember, OpenSim is now only two years old and is a ground up rebuild of the SL server. How stable do you think LL’s grid was after only two years of development back before it even hit the beta stage?
Dr. Moreau
Jan 29th, 2009
@Orion–I will do just that and visit some other Open Sims. And my remarks were aimed the well-intentioned lagfest called OpenLife, in any case…so other grids cannot be worse than being a cloud. Hypergrid sounds worthwhile, though not with an avatar whose inventory I value. But that’s what alts are for: the lab-rats of the metaverses.
I’m sorry, Ichabod. “Cha-cha bingos” truly was an inappropriate term and I let it drip from my fingers in a moment of drunken weakness.
In this case, “Lefty and Smiley” do capture a certain “Come in, Tokyo!” quality (work your hands like you are tuning radio dials and say the words like a Japanese submariner in the movie “1941″).
But I’m a simple man: I’ll agree to settle for the more politically correct term: “Pontoons.” She’d float for months with those.
Owen Oyen
Jan 29th, 2009
I build a somewhat popular racing yacht in SL.
I have built a functioning sailboat in OSGrid (which is essentially the same as Open Life, using the same server software.)
The boat uses llMessageLinked. It does work and has worked for many months now.
OSGrid is doing a birthday thing this weekend for Open Sims in general. OSGrid also has a number of hyper portals for teleporting from grid to grid — where a grid is defined as a collection of sims/regions. Open Life is a grid unto its own. So is OSGrid. Univ of California Irvine has spearheaded the hypergrid effort and it is now functional.
OSGrid is now about 3000 regions including a huge swath of sims devoted to virtual sailing.
Avatar editing is fully available there. As are enough functions to generate a sailable sailboat equipped with apparent wind and wind shadow.
ichabod Antfarm
Jan 30th, 2009
Neo, what I said was “Oh sure, it works now and then but the idea that open source is always already “secure” and “developed faster” is a religious doctrine”. So, yes, it does work now and then. I bet there are a few thousand(s) bugs in DB2 that might be corrected by open sourcing it but what I was referring to was the automatic, non-falsifiable assertion that open source software is ALWAYS more secure, ALWAYS developed faster, ALWAYS better. Open Source is, at the very least, a methodology, a practise. I cannot think of any serious developer who advocates for the “one true way” when it comes to methodologies. There is no Universal Widget (unless there is (in which case (I stand corrected)) Lisp (was never my strong suit)) (can’t you tell)?
As for “evil code”, ‘while(i != 666)’ is evil and I am sure you know why (i, btw, is any integral on a modern machine)
Prokofy Neva
Jan 30th, 2009
>However, the whole point of open source is that you get to read the code and see whether it’s doing something nasty or not. Which puts you out of luck if you don’t happen to be able to read, understand and compile code yourself like I can, so I can understand your reticence. It’s a lot easier for me to trust it, because I can see for myself. Most can’t.
Like I always say: “Open Source=Closed Society of Coders”.
Thanks for reconfirming!
janeforyou Barbara
Jan 30th, 2009
Open SIMs/Grid/Source/Code are confusing for the mainstream user.
Btw you cant TP from it to SL.. thats why it wil be hard for me as i invested a lot in SL.
Melissa Yeuxdoux
Jan 30th, 2009
Prokofy always does an excellent job of displaying total ignorance when it comes to software.
I recommend Gwyneth Llewelyn’s blog posts “Open Simulator: the choice for 2010″ and “The Battle for the Desktop Begins” to any wishing to learn more about the advantages of OpenSim.
Melissa Yeuxdoux
Jan 30th, 2009
Prokofy always does an excellent job of displaying total ignorance when it comes to software.
I recommend Gwyneth Llewelyn’s blog posts “Open Simulator: the choice for 2010″ and “The Battle for the Desktop Begins” to any wishing to learn more about the advantages of OpenSim.
dandellion Kimban
Jan 31st, 2009
Prokofy always does an excellent job of displaying lack of logical thinking and whines in the hope that idiots like he will listen to his paranoia- Typical product of political brainwashing.
Alyx Stoklitsky
Jan 31st, 2009
@Prok: “megaprims used to lag and grief, and other forms of griefing.”
Yeah, because that’s really the primary function of megaprims, right? Protip: They’re invaluable for *building* things with – I’ve built many things that aren’t even possible without them.
Also, you may like the Dale glass client, considering what a grumpy old bitch you are.