Now, if a dear friend gets a new place, you go to visit, right? If a hawt dear friend gets a whole (open) sim, you surely drop by, no? So last night, I logged in on Dalien Talbot’s Ruth. Maybe it was the late hour, or maybe it was my looks there, but I felt that noobish. And TestA User and Dalien chatting away using a terminology that is ‘far over my head’ didn’t help to that either. But as exploring new things is fun, I had a blast anyway. And the noobish look even caused some feelings of nostalgia.

Until somebody else proves I’m not intitled to this one, I claim to be the first (really) female user on OpenSim. =d It seems Nadine Nozaki as well as Dandellion Kimban have beaten me to it. *sobs* And for those who want to skip the travel report and connect to OpenSim Ruth themselves, driving directions in human language at the bottom of this blogpost! ;)

Concerning the looks, the first thing I did was uploading a decent top texture. Rejeanne did not look that bad together with the red pants, but after a while I felt like I needed a more sexy pair of pants too. The standard skin for females is ok-ish, but I do think the guys (and girls/ruths) can use some more clothing and (hawt male) skins. So dear designers, if you have some old textures lying around, or freebie textures, please talk to the guys. That way if you ever go to opensim, at least you’ll have something decent to wear. As far my shape, Vint Falken is a self created shape, so I need to write down my slider values in Second Life, so I can adjust those next time I go to Ruth. I’ll also drop the people at Hybrids a note to ask if I may have my skin to export, if it’s for personal use on OpenSim only. (Update: Got a very non-positive reaction from Hybrids’ Philo Sion on that question.) Yes, there are other means to do that, but I prefer the legal, friendly way. ;)

I think I’ll be hanging out more on Ruth, especially if I want to test my clothing textures. The 3D preview programs I use at the moment let you only preview the textures on a standard sized avie. If I upload them to OpenSim - for the neat upload fee of -1L$ - I can test them on all different kind of sliders values in peace. (That is, if I ignore the guys and their terminology in main chat. ;))

The plywood in OpenSim is strange. It’s reddish and less plywoodish. *grins* It was shocking to notice how much confusion I felt when rezzing a new cube and seeing it appear, more red tinted and more classic looking then our modern, cheap looking plywood. It felt like a disturbance in routine.

As I already knew, terraforming is fun, although the project ‘write Vint’s name in the sand’ was quickly abandonned. I ended up with only a small mountain. Which was a good resting spot though.

It was neat to see how my avatar instantly decided to assume sitting pose on the mountain. I wonder if it would do the same in Second Life. As for as I recall, I always fall off mountains there.

As physics is not enabled on Ruth, I was unable to push someone. At all. You just walk through the person or the object. Strange thing, but it does make things look funny from time to time.

For instance, if two users rezz in exactly the same beginning spot, it seems like Ganesha just entered the open sim. :p

And last but not least, I was able to pose the familiar question: ‘does my butt look normal to you?’ They might not have prim shoes to end up in your ass (yet), but Dalien’s client took care of the necessary SLoddity to feel right at home.

If you want to try Ruth out for yourself, and test the OpenSim, Testa User to Testz User are available for your exploration pleasures. This is how you do it:

• If you have a shortcut to the Second Life client on your desktop, copy it and name it ‘Second Life OpenSim Ruth’. If not, create one.
• Right click it and look at it it’s properties. Normally under ‘Target’ it says: “C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe” -set SystemLanguage en-us. Just add -loginuri http://ruth.petitbe.be:9000/ to the end of it, so you get “C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe” -set SystemLanguage en-us -loginuri http://ruth.petitbe.be:9000/.
• Use that shortcut to open the Second Life client. You should automatically connect to Ruth. As user name you can choose from Testa User up to Testz User, and the pass for all is ‘test’.

If you see any Vint Falken running around, you can assume safely that’s me, so say ‘hi’. ;)

Zion - run by me (Dalien Talbot). Should be not too laggy (well, minus bugs, if they are there) - good server not doing much more than just opensim, and fast connectivity. At the moment no physics to keep it more stable. Loginuri: http://ruth.petitbe.be:9000/; usernames: “Testa User” through “Testz User”, password “test” .

Tags: exploring, open sim
Categories: Exploring, OpenSim
20 Comments »

OpenSim? What’s that? Well, Dandellion started to explain what OpenSim is all about - reversed engineering Second Life’s server code, btw - in a way it’s understandable for normal humans, furries, goreans and neko’s in her recent series of blogposts. She started by listing some basic information about the OpenSim project and the benefits it offers.

I assume you’ve read those by now, and we can proceed to the next piece of information: SLOpenID. What’s that again? SLOpenID as you might guess, is a way to combine Second Life with OpenID. This allows you to take control of, and own your identity on the web when using sites that support the OpenID protocol.

You give the people your Second Life Resident Name and your Resident UUID and you get a neat multi-purpose ID in return. If you look at the many possible implementations for OpenID, I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of SLOpenID yet. As soon as I find out how to, you’ll probably be able to use your SLopenID to comment on this blog. (Somebody, help on getting the OpenID running here? :d)

(Just wondering, is there any cooperation with someone on the Teen grid, so they can get their own SLOpenID too, which could be transfered to a main grid avie when they reach age 18?)

And for the imagination part? I think OpenSim is a kick ass project but I shall not leave Second Life. Why not? The friends? Partly, although lately even avatars have mail addresses and I’m sure most of them would love to give OpenSim a try too. But it’s that darned inventory. I’m not a materialistic person, I claim. Yet I am grown attached to my guns, clothes, skins, clublights, skybox, … . I feel like somehow they define ‘Vint Falken’ as much as what I write here does. I know LL will not (and probably never) let us - not without violating ToS that is - take the stuff out of whatever place they keep our inventories, although they claim we own them, but for OpenSim, it might be different:

What if they could somehow provide you with a sort of ‘OpenID’ for OpenSim which you could use to log on the different sims. Or there would be a possibility to link your avatars on those different sims to that ID.

The ID represents - amongst others - your inventory, somewhere stored. Be it on an own server, or on a server which you pay for depending on how much ‘closet space’ your inventory takes. So, although you travel through different sims, which do not need to be connected at all, you can still take your inventory along, as it’s not limited to one netwerk of sims. Creators could then choose to set ‘transsim’ or ‘not-transsim’ for their objects, depending on if they want them to travel or not. So I think that would force the object to know also if you own it on all sims, or just on a specific one. But as ‘open sims’ will be less ’sure of existence’ for starters, that would be a good way to make sure you do not loose your inventory when a sim or group of sims ceases to exist.

The ID could also be used to back up claims like ‘I am avie-X on sim-Y’, to run cross-sim groups, to support a general currency (if the different sims would feel like creating a ‘Euro’), … .

I know it’s asked a lot of probably impossible stuff from a project that does not even have a male population yet, but it would be neat, nah? =)

Tags: open sim, SLOpenID
Categories: OpenSim
18 Comments »

Spread the word:

Folks,

If you are creating animations, or you know someone who creates animations, here’s the deal:

There are some animations built into the client. However, we all know that they slightly.. ummm.. re simplistic. Moreover, there is some uncertainty regarding the licenses at this point.

So, here’s the chance for you or your friend: you can make the animations that would be used by the opensim codebase.

Indeed, there’s no any explicit financial “payment” or “ongoing license fee” for that - you have to agree upfront you will not have any right to claim anything except being credited as an author of these animations - because the entire work is BSD-licensed.

However, as a token of personal appreciation for that, if the animations are great, I’m setting the bounty of L$10000. Please leave the sign of yourself in the comments if you are doing animations - otherwise feel free to spread the message :) I’ll keep it open for a week to see if there are any folks interested to do this, and then we can start :-)

Animations wanted:

• Standing
• Flying
• Walking

Obviously standing and flying may come either in singles (gender-independent), or in packs (male+female) - which will avoid the need to have the AO in opensim altogether.

More information at ‘Animators wanted for OpenSim!!!‘.

Tags: animations, contest, open sim
Categories: Building, OpenSim
5 Comments »