Collaborative Virtual Worlds Lab

As a Chief Technology Officer of New Genres Grid i want to introduce our professional 3D hoster Dreamland Metaverse which runs the open source server system Opensimulator. Important to mention that Dreamland Metaverse has a Core Developer of OpenSim in their team. We really love the Drupal CMS front-end to manage the Grid and Regions, like you can see in the following images.

Load & Save for region (.oar) and inevntory (.iar) can be done via the webpage. The personal backup function with 4 slots is also verry helpful if you do wild stuff on your sim.

Every region you own is listed and can be restarted and more, logfiles can be shown too.

For development and hardcore experiments i use my own privat Opensimulator, Diva Distribution and Aurora-Sim running in my computer laboratory. But for a public virtual world, like NGrid it is recommendable to give it in trustable hands like Dreamland Metaverse.

There is some magic that Opensim on USB stick (sim-on-a-stick) never worked for me, even if i did the package ond the harddisk….(?). I could have a deeper look into it but as it is just for windows ist useless for me. So some “dirty” solusion is to use Virtualbox (MacOSX/Windows/Linux). It works verry well, setting ubuntu and when the virtual server is booting the /opensim/bin/OpenSim.exe is started in /etc/rc.locale and with Imprudence i connect to this virtual linux on my local computer.

Some other test where made to have a Linux Boots CD where opensim server starts and Gnome desktop environment which fires up Imprudance paralell, for now as a Proof of Concept.

(update May 2011)

Astra Viewer based on Imprudance and Meerkat (goof import/export feature).

Singularity Viewer a new nice viewer also for opensim.

I use often different SL Clients. Kirsten Viewer is a nice one and if you have the right power of the “Grafikkarte” it has shadows AND IS also for macs. The download directory is here. There is also a Cool Viewer (legacy and fast non-Windlight renderer) in town.

(following is an old post from copy & paste & published on: Dec 8, 2007)

Since the viewer source code is released on a regular basis, the official client isn’t the only one out anymore. First there is some incredible work done by Nicolaz “The Mad Patcher “Beresford. All his fixes are going into the jira, and most of them are going to be added to the Linden code base and will make it into future official releases of the viewer. (Tillie Ariantho)

The Able Edition works just like the main viewer but with one important extra: visual muting. You can right-click on a parcel or an object and the extra option of “Mute Visibility” will be available in the pie-menu. Select it and the object will be invisible to you, allowing you to photograph a scene without spinning “For Sale” signs ruining the view.

Dale Glass has worked a proximity detector into the client, allowing people to see the names of the avatars that are in the area, how old the avatar is, and whether or not they’ve registered payment information with Linden Lab. (metaversed.com)

Alternative viewers SecondLife wiki

The Imprudence Viewer

The goal of Imprudence is to greatly improve the usability of the Viewer through community involvement, thoughtful design, modern development methods, and a pro-change atmosphere.

For more information about the rationale, goals, and methods of the Imprudence project, please see our Manifesto. http://imprudenceviewer.org

Open Metaverse Viewer is a project aimed to package the Second Life(tm)viewer for Linux distributions.

Reborn viewer is a fully-rebuilt multigrid viewer. Fast, stable, secure, and over-simplified. This is the first time we worked with real designers to find “which way would be better” to put something in. In other words, Reborn is like a viewer you already knew, everything is where they have to be. It looks totally normal in the first look, but as you go deeper, you will see that almost everything is unlimited in Reborn Viewer ! Nothing is complicated, nothing is hard. Even a frog* can use it !

I dont tested this viewer, but it sounds great!

Policy on Third-Party Viewers by Linden Lab (read here)

I prefere GreenLife Emerald Viewer for now on, the download ist at modularsystems.sl

Radegast Metaverse Client

Lightweight client for connecting to Second Life and OpenSim based virtual worlds

http://radegastclient.org/

OMVViewer-light is a text only client for 3D metaverses.

METAbolt is a Linden Lab approved 3rd Party Text Client and is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.

Complete rupture? No, not exactly since most of these universes are evolution from existing services (chats, social networks, maps…). All these virtual universes bring some oxygen to sometimes unappealing concepts by providing new possibilities. But with new opportunities comes a lot of covetousness and build a very competitive environment inside which the most media covered are not the most interesting.

Read more on FredCavazza.net

Priced from $99 – $200 depending on complexity (fabjectory.com)

or BUY YOUR OWN 3D-printer http://www.dimensionprinting.com/

<- click 2 blow up (source Flickr)