Other grids, the next frontier
In the last days i’ve been exploring, exploring other metaverses (OMG! I feel like Cpt. Picard!). 
Even we all know Linden Lab’s customer policy sucks lately i think their software is quite good (although the bad performance, issues and bugs we can find sometimes), that’s why i wanted to explore other metaverses using “similar” technology. This technology is OpenSimulator, a 3D Application Server that works similar to the Second Life server application but is licensed under a BSD License. With that application you can even run a sim in your own computer. This application is considered and Alpha release so… you know, is a bit crashy and buggy.
There are a lot of grids, even some standalone sims, using that technology, you can see a list of them, but i decided to explore two of them for different reasons.
First, Openlife Grid. I’m Raul Crimsons there (i created an account before with my SL name but lost the password, so created a new one). My dear friend Eric Quimby has a Full Region there and really wanted to explore it, he offered me the possibility of building and playing in his sim and wanted to visit it. Openlife is the Opensimulator grid with more residents in this moment, around 36800, is also running right now for some months. The “general flavor” of Openlife is a bit… how to say it?… savage. I presume is like being one of the pioneers in Far West. That can be exciting but at the same time adds some “uglyness” and sensation of chaos. I presume is a bit like SL in its first times.
- Good things of Openlife: Land is cheaper than SL Grid (even you have to buy full regions for the moment), the prim allowance for sims are 40000 prims (YAY!), is a full place by users for users, uploads of images are free, they still don’t have an economy system (no money) what is good someway, specially for the ones who doesn’t like much the economy side of SL. You can choose your first and second name freely (YAY!). You can have more than one avatar in your account.
- Bad things of Openlife: No nice default avatars (well, SL ones are really cute next to Ruth and “Rutho” of Openlife), performance may be quite unstable and crashy in some moments (remember server software is alpha), even inventory is stable appearance seems to be lost at log off, so you need to wear again shape, hair, skin and clothes everytime you’re back. Friends list don’t seem to work correctly, is deleted in every log on, maybe is a temporary issue.
Was fun to be there, and create some stuff, like a decent shape, skin, some clothing, some objects and scripts… but there exist some like a loneliness, a peace what is good and bad at the same time. Didn’t see shops or even freebie areas (possibly there are some but didn’t find them).
Being there i built this big “HELLO” sign to make notice Eric my visit, hehehe, thanks god he gave me permission to build in his land. Now is even bigger and laying in the ground, so i think it will be seen soon in the map.
Also made run some simple scripts and they seem to work just fine, no much delay. The sim performance is generally better than SL Grid, having higher frame rates, not only in client side, also in server side. Although this performance is a bit unstable. Object creation and deleting is quite fast too generally, but land edition is slow (maybe was also a temporary issue).
Second, Legend City Online. Raul Crimson, like in SL there. Ana Lutetia told about that place and wanted to explore it. Having visited before Openlife i was really surprised with Legend City, even is quite “younger” seems more developed, but i think is becuase the people creating Legend City is more on the “business model” Linden Lab had some time ago (not the one now, where M is making me miss P). The people behing Legend City is contacting with SL creators and offering them the possibility of being in Legend City, so just in the Welcome Center you can find GREAT freebies from creators like Simone Stern, and mentors helping people arriving. Building in welcoming areas are quite nice and the staff is really nice and helpful. The general feeling on Legend City is more “ordenated” than Openlife, is more like SL in its middle times. They have an economy system and virtual money, you can buy it in their home page or transfer it from SL Grid in a sim called Legend City, that’s quite interesting i think, the intergrid money transfers.
- Good things of Legend City: Even you have to choose a second name from a list when creating your account you can change your name to the one you are using in SL easily with some ATM located in the SL Grid, in Legend City sim. The default avatars are really good, even i miss maybe some furry one. Staff is helpful and you can find them around easily (at least the times i was on). Land is cheap, a “Openspace” sim with 3750 prims is 25US$ per month, full sims with 20000 prims are 100 US$/month. Legend City staff works on server side updates. Appearance remains after relogs.
- Bad things of Legend City: Again stability, even is a bit better than Openlife they are using an Alpha software, so even performance uses to be quite acceptable is a bit unstable and simulators crash often. Friends list have to be fixed, is deleted in every relog. “Hair-on-bum” syndrome, not always, but it happens. Some problems with physics and collision maps (underground feet, weird legs,…).
Was nice to meet some great people in the Welcome Center (this image above). Really is a place to visit that Welcome Center, not only becuase you can meet people there, also for the freebies and is where is easier to find mentors and Legends (the staff). By the way, i bought an Openspace sim there, just to try. Is a sim called Solaris, fell free to visit (even is quite empty right now).
So this is part of my two explorations. Of course there is much more and you should explore yourself to have your own vision about it. You can use the SL viewer, the one Linden Lab releases, but you should do some changes in configuration. To avoid that i was using a viewer “resident created”, is one where you can choose what grid you want to connect in the opening screen.
This viewer is named Hippo Opensim Viewer, you can find more information about it and download it here.
After the last Linden Lab PR mistakes, like the hike on the price of Openspaces sims, like M Linden declarations about how important Premium accounts are for them (no important at all), a lot of people is trying to find new places to develope and enjoy their second life. This other grids will grow fast from now possibly, they offer better prices, friendly staff in some cases. Even the performance is a bit unstable still and physics have to be improved they will be better soon. I’m not moving for the moment, but who knows what will happen in the future? As every resident, i will decide depending the Linden Lab’s policy and relationship with their customers… all of us.
UPDATE (Dec, 28th 2008): In the last weeks some comments appeared about Legend City Online manegement and business practices, you can see about them also in the comments of this post. Please, find more information in this post by Prad Prathivi or this other or in others around the SLblogosphere.
Disagreement
I presume weather affects the mood, well, i’m sure it affects actually. Well, right now is not only the weather affecting my mood (even i’m having a big cold right now).
Sometimes is just things that happen around you, in SL and in RL. In RL there is a lot of work stress, but anyway, this blog is not about my RL. Anyway, i’ve been a bit “missing” (as the picture shows, he he he) from some social networks the last weeks in order to fix that RL tension. But this RL stress is making me feel… how to say it… more sensitive about some stuff. Normally when i see what i consider “virtual drama” i just ignore it, but lately i’m liking to analize it.
I always try to react positively, or at least in a way i consider positive. Is some like being in a “what-the-fuck” state, an state of alert. That made me notice something (noticed it before, but just ignored it), disagreement is punished. Well, that maybe because sometimes disagreement has some aggressiveness included because it tends to question your believes… and some believes seems to be dogma, specially in some social systems, including SL.
I’m not talking about political disagreement (lately we saw a lot of that with the U.S. presidential election), that is understandable and even healthy (except if it goes too personal, of course). But in an issue into SL, like the Openspaces one, some people went into hard attacks, even personal ones. I’m not talking about me, my opinion regarding that issue was inside the “general one”, but some people thought that Linden Lab reaction (i mean the first one) was right, or just expressed a total indifference about the issue, or even considered it quite stupid. The answers to that disagreements were from the simple expression of a different point of view to the personal attack, and that last is the bad part.
Under my point of view having a different opinion about something must be understood positively, but for that it has some requirements. First, the expression of disagreement must be constructive, calling people, for example, “sheep” because they have a “mainstream” opinion is rude, aggressive, not constructive at all only causes rejection on the other side (that happened some months ago relating the “Venkman issue” in SL5B). Second, the answer should be constructive too, just ideas, opinions and not going into personal (except in the case of brake of “rule 1″ but ignoring is better than starting a fight). If some one of the parts in communication (or both) fails than all fails and is not possible to communicate.
Of course i don’t pretend to be a master on human relationships and behaviour, is just my opinion, what i think is the better way to act or react. Human behaviour is not easy, not simple… but i just try to understand it… just try.
The solution to Openspace sims question, or something like that…
Finally it seems Linden Lab reacted to all the protest of Residents about the Openspace sims price hike. M Linden wrote a post in the Official Linden Blog explaining what is the solution they found.
As you may know, some days ago Jack Linden posted about a plan to increase on a 65% rate the tier on Openspace sims due the “overuse of resources” by the residents and owners of that kind of sims. The protest started, in so many and imaginative ways, from strikes and protests at the Concierge Office inworld to groups on Flickr. Residents were angry and very creative, making even videos like this one by Kyotta Spitteler:
Finally, Linden Lab reacted changing the plans. A part of the blogpost of M there is some more information about the changes in the Knowledge Base. Basically they are changing the kinds of Private Islands:
- Full Regions: The typical big ones, 15000 prims, 100 agents, same price (for the moment).
- Homesteads: The actual Openspace sims, 3750 prims, 20 agents, will increase the fee from 75 US$ to 95 US$ in January and to 125 US$ in July.
- Openspaces: The new kind with the same price, 750 prims, 10 agents, fee of 75 US$.
I think is a good solution, goes directly to the performance issue and gives options to the sim owners. But, Linden Lab shown us a really bad PR work with this issue, as i said in another post, Katt Linden possibly was on holidays or working in other stuff. Anyway, do you think is a good solution?
I just hope this issue to push Linden Lab to improve the ways of communication with the Residents.
UPDATE 06NOV08:
Reading this post again i think i was not clear enough about my point of view. I think this is a “better” solution than the original one, but is not the best one. The performance problem of the Openspaces was due bad settings made by Linden Lab themselves and now they are making Residents pay their mistake, with money or with hard use limitations.
Anyway, about this issue we all have different point of view, take a look at Vint Falken’s blog, she expresses there her point of view and has some interesting links.
Where is Katt?
I mean Katt Linden. Well, she is supposed to be the Public Relations of Linden Lab and i though, maybe i was wrong, that she was managing the relation between the Lab and the residents.
Ok, maybe she is just working now in the relation between Linden Lab and “corporate customers” (what is a hard work itself), or maybe is just the commercial policy of Linden Lab has been just too “aggressive with customers” to find an “excuse”. I really think her work must be really hard… specially lately.
Is not only the “Openspace issue”, is everything. In the last months the way Linden Lab had a really confusing and even aggressive policy with the customers. From that sentence of Philip Linden: “Bad weather, oppressive regimes, poor economic conditions — that’s what makes an SL user.” to the SL5B censorship, to the big technical and performance issues, … After all that Robin Linden said in a comment on a post of New World Notes this:
Premium subscribers — a good number of whom are landowners (but certainly not all) — are very important to us…
Oh, really? I wonder how may be things if Premium subscribers were not very important to them. Ok, maybe i seem sarcastic… but is because i am. Or maybe is Robin who was being sarcastic.
So we have Jack, M and Robin Linden making comments and posts about the last BIG conflict between Residents and the Lab, but wait… who is Linden Lab Communications Manager? Katt Linden. But where is Katt?
Recent Comments
Raul's Flickr Latest
|
Much more than 1000 comments
Some weeks ago i was checking my blog and saw i was having more than 1000 comments. Get all excited and then “plurked” about it. I’m really grateful with all the people who comments, taking the time to express one’s opinion is always something nice, so i wanted to find a way to say thanks for all the comments. I had the idea of giving a “prize” to the one who made comment #1000, and that one was the delicious Roxette Wise.
Then the question was: “What prize?”, well, i love to take SLphotographs so i though that was a good idea. Roxette and me met for a photo session and that was the result:
Someway is a personal portrait, or how i see Roxette. She is a really sweet and fun lady, and the photo session was a total delight, i know modelling may be a bit boring and she was really patient. I made also the pose thinking in her. Also took this close-up:
The best thing is she liked a lot the images, sincerly i was a bit worried to ask her to get naked for the pic, but she was just relaxed and we both enjoyed the session in the company of Osiris Pfalz who was there with us.
Again, thanks to Roxette Wise, and thanks to all the people who comments, who shares points of view.
Share this: