The Virtual World Technologist

OpenSim : HyperGrid : Wolf Territories Grid : Why I moved here and was it the right choice for me? / Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:29:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela :

When it became apparent that 3rd Rock grid was going to be shutting down, and several weeks before, when we were thinking the grid was still in a salvageable state. I had reached out into the Open Sim community. I was surprised at first to the response I got. So many people ( grid owners ) offered to help out, actually to many too list here, and believe me when I say thank you to everyone that did offer support. This brings me my meeting Lone Wolf, the owner of WolfGrid Territories Grid, ( WTG ) we ended up having several chats and a couple of voice discussions and I was impressed, adding to this, I had already met and was friends with one of the Admins, she had been telling about this grid for a few months, I was impressed. This grid was cutting edge, and I wanted to check it out.

So far the experience has been really positive. Not to mention the incredible 2 regions for the cost of 1 deal that had already been negotiated between 3rd Rock and Wolf, and was turned down, so I lucked out. I now have 2 joined 4x4 regions devoted as a parks & recreation area all for the price of one.

I'll be honest with you. There have been some glitches along the way, and and my regions disappearing unexpectedly, this is a cutting edge grid, but I have to tell ya, and this is no bull-crap, this grid "self heals" itself, at least most of the time, and that is the only simple explanation I can come up with. If one of my regions acts up, I just log off for a bit and come back, and everything is fine. The few times my regions have totally crashed, it was taken care of promptly.

Also the server load balancing technology Lone Wolf ( I will refer to him as "Wolf" from here on ) has been employing and continuously fine tweaking recently is amazing.

There are other things I am amazed by since I became a resident here. Once I settled in, I had originally thought that the grid wise "Tidal System" or the rising and lowering of the water levels as the natural tide shifts would be an amazing thing to work with, and boy I was wrong, I did not like it, at least in my particular use case. After 2 months of testing my boats and attempting to landscape the water front, I determined that the,"Tidal System" was not going to work for my purposes. I expressed this observation while attending one of my first monthly meetings in Wolf Territories Grid ("WTG") and a few days later Wolf had set up an entire area of his grid devoted to non-tidal regions. I have to say that this was mindbogglingly to me, the rapid response time was amazing, and it does not stop there. It seems to me that if you make a reasonable request for a feature or anything to Wolf, he investigates it and if a solution is possible he implements it and requests feedback. The more I got to know Wolf, he began asking me for more feedback on how things were working out. I do have a basic ,working knowledge of computer networks from years past and. Wolf knows this and he actually asks me for opinions or feedback, so I keep giving it to him. In my mind this is a really good reason to be a part of this grid. This man actually listens to you, and is really into tweaking the system. Be forewarned "Cutting Edge" technology can or sometimes break unexpectedly, but the grid self heals. This in itself just blows my mind.

My OpenSim hobby is high performance power sports, until recently I have focused on speed boat racers, I am also now working with land based vehicles and the ubODE physics engine. There are several things that interest me the most, the #1 is high speed region crossing, #2 is entering the next region graphics draw in distance lag time ( how long does it take to draw the new region into your viewer ) this is in my mind is extremely important for multi region crossings. ( a lot of this also has to do with your hardware ) I will make a long story short here, after a visit to one my of my regions regions and a conversation with Wolf about my thoughts. In a mater of days he had made some adjustments to the grid and was asking for my feedback. After several back and forth chats, it's amazing. I have no hard statistics or hard numbers to back up my perceived difference in the overall performance of my vehicles. It is defiantly noticeable, depending on what needs to be rendered in the background I have seen FPS response up to 109 FPS best and a bare minimum of 27 FPS.

The goal is to provide the best possible working environment for anyone to be able to enjoy, and also very importantly full perm vehicles to share and pass around for future modifications to anyone interested. So I was expressing to him my observations related to region crossings and draw distance. I'll be dam if a few days later he was telling me about some adjustments he was currently testing on the grids most recent load balancing adjustments he was experimenting with. I don't know about you, but for me this is fantastic. Wolf actually cares about what I or "YOU" or anyone is trying to accomplish here on WTG, this goes back to his "Facilitate not Dictate" philosophy for running the grid.

I really like this approach, I also like the constant tweaking or fine tuning going on in the background and being asked for my feedback. A few crashes here and there is OK, when you consider the reasonable amount of region tools available via your web browser. This is a new to me concept, I am unaware of other grids currently offering this ease of use option to managing your regions. I am sure there are others.

Coming up the next time I am able to post, I will have some pictures to show off.

OpenSim - HyperGrid : And my "X" formerly Twitter account. How are these things related ?

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 10:39:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela:

How are OpenSim and "X" the social platform related to one in other? The answer is simple, they are not related in any way shape or form, at least they no longer are. The "X" platform has devolved into a cesspool of hate filled individuals I no longer wish to be associated with for any possible reasons whatsoever. Therefore I have begun the process of deactivating my "X" account today.

Goodbye "X" and you can "Kiss my ASS" Elon.

JayR Cela

OpenSim : HyperGrid : Hanging out in Wolf's Grid

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 00:44:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

I'm just hanging out with my new 1965 Mustang.

OpenSim : HyperGrid : Presenting the new "3rd Rock Lakes" and the "Great Central Lake 2" on the "Wolf Territories Grid"

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 13:26:00 +0000

hop://grid.wolfterritories.org:8002/Great%20Central%20Lake%202/258/862/25

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual World Life after 3rd Rock Grids Closure : Part 9 : the WrapUp

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Fri, 29 Nov 2024 13:26:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

This will be my final kiss goodbye to 3rd Rock Grid. I was not happy when my longtime grid decided to shut down. I am very grateful for the warning and proper shutdown procedures that were provided to all of the residents. Unfortunately my attempts on influencing the ultimate migration decision failed. So I decided to write a series of blog posts that would describe the decision process as accurately as possible, and without introducing to many, or obvious on my part, conflicts or criticisms of the final choice made. This is the reason I simply posted the community meeting transcripts as they unfolded.

So today I have the last meeting transcript held in 3rd Rock Grid. I have to say for myself, this was the final straw that broke the back of this migration to ZetaWorlds. Never-mind the rampant child role play present on this grid. We got screwed, plain and simple. The fantastic AMD based dedicated server we were promised, "suddenly" was no longer available. So the only obvious solution at this late in the game, turned out we got one giant Estate region. Yes you read that right, no separate server, no anything that had been promised. I don't know exactly what went down behind the scenes, nor does it matter what I think. I do know this much, everyone that wanted their .OAR and .IAR files were able to get copies of them from the 3RG personnel left in charge of the shutdown. So in reality that is all that matters.

David7 Bravin: Looks like everyone has arrived. Let's get started.For the record everyone please say "Here"

PurplePenny Broome: Here

Han BoShi: here

Nila Shvaress: here

Alia Soulstar: here

Dawn Greymyst: here

Georgina Mills: Here

Prim Ativ: Here

JayR Cela: here

Ellemir Maven: here

Michel Farrell: Here

David7 Bravin: Thanks everyone. Welcome to the Final 3RG Community Meeting.

David7 Bravin: I understand that Prim has an announcement ....

Prim Ativ: Hey Everyone, We are going to be holding a 'transition dance party' right after the community meeting is done today. First we will be dancing at the Shooting Star venue, Where the Starfleet Boogie is held, with DJ Elle for 30 minutes. And then move over to 3rd Wind's Shooting Star venue as a group and continue the party there. Lets say our goodbyes to 3RG and celebrate our community's next chapter. If you need LMs please let me know! Thank You, End.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that Prim. Alia - would you like to give us all an update on the migration to ZetaWorlds please.

Alia Soulstar: yes,thank you David.

Alia Soulstar: I can report on the asset migration first, We have now moved 80 percent of our lands (via OAR in most cases) and have a high degree of fidelity in terms of things rezzing properly and working as they should. A lot of us are in a happy place with our avatars too — many thanks to Eldo for providing IARs and Zeta (Ed and Vincent) for loading them, there are inevitable minor transition issues of course… some arise from switching physics’ engines, some from moving from one OpenSim code base to another, and a few are OSSL variations. Positional scripts all need amending and LMs need replacing. We found note-carded and call-up scripts, NPCs, dance balls, vehicles and mesh collisions are our main problems, we are working on restoring all these things. Astro and BoShi are particularly active in finding us solutions to script issues and they are documenting/sharing the solutions they find. So… if stuff isn’t working the way it used to, let us know. There are solutions for all these issues in the pipeline. We can’t fix everything for you today but we will do all we can to make sure that everything will be fixed. For collision and vehicle issues we can revert your region to Bullet if ubODE is the problem. Earlier the week I sent out an email to land owners about estate tools… on why we don’t have them and how we can work around this issue by assigning them temporarily… I won’t re-litigate the “why”, that was explained in full in my mail which anyone who missed it is welcome to a copy of, but…

***********************************************************************************

Alia Soulstar : I want to remind you that all the 3rd Wind land is treated collectively as the “estate” with our dedicated server set-up, unlike the usual land purchase of a region, so when you are assigned that temporary management tool and you make a global change to estate settings, the change propagates to all our lands, options like land textures only affect your parcel, but some estate access tools can create havoc on other parcels, as we have discovered already, so please avoid “global” features.

***********************************************************************************

Alia Soulstar: second Item is Financials. Amazingly we have been able to cover our server costs through land sales alone—thank you to all who have purchased land in our community and made this situation viable. On top of this financial stability is the amazing generosity of those who have donated as patrons. Because of that generosity we find ourselves in a position to pick up a number of the performer contracts that 3RG established. Supporting the arts is an important pillar of our legacy. It has been central to the 3RG vision right from its inception. All of which means we can move our favourite artists with us to Zeta and continue our relationship with them. This is fantastic news and a huge relief! I think it’s fantastic that we are able to actually pay artists and show our support for the creative economy. This is a huge credit to our 3rd Wind Community it's a point of difference for us in opensim. Obviously we don’t have unlimited resources, there are budget constraints, so without generating more income, we can’t consider new community contracts at this point, or extend our payments beyond an established group of live artists, we can't yet include DJs for example, or guest speakers, but in Zeta we can still support them, tipping artists has returned to the menu. I hope people continue to support them, especially those like Tek, Laz and Rosy who have been so generous with their talents for so long. Finally, I want to thank some people who stood up to save our collective bacon at just the right time. Elle has beavered behind the scenes to enable 3rd Wind—and that’s not JUST a jab at her Canadian origins, we are where we are right now largely thanks to her. She worked hard to assemble our options and she mobilised the moment we settled on one. Thanks to her we were able to build and prepare our new home before we lost this one. Nila has been fantastic too, by taking on the job of treasurer and handling the homestead portfolio… it’s a lot more work than we imagined and it required a lot of creativity on her part. She’s been a godsend and we are beyond lucky to have her services. Astro’s timing in rejoining us at this moment is Swiss (which is probably an insult to a Dane) Cometh the hour, cometh the back-end expertise we need. He and Boshi are toiling away at the dark under-the-hood arts, making the details of this transition work. I want to give a shout out too, to David, who has organised and chaired all our community meetings for so long i can’t even recall when he started, and he’s done it with his distinctive aplomb, he gets my vote as cat-herder of the decade. And I want to acknowledge our friends who administered 3RG for us.

David7 Bravin: smiles

Alia Soulstar: The final outcome of closing 3RG is sad for us all, but it is heartbreaking for them, Alia Soulstar: heartbreak on heartbreak when you consider losing Kira, spare them a thought.

JayR Cela: may Kira R.I.P.

Alia Soulstar: I am glimpsing some of the work and commitment required to host a community and my respect for what they achieved—which was high to begin with—is now off the charts. It makes me personally very very happy that we have not yet seen the last of them. Although Eldo is taking far too much pleasure in sending me help desk tickets in our new home. I hope revenge tastes as sweet as they say it does

Alia Soulstar: When David has closed this meeting, I hope everyone will join us at the Shooting Star Club :) End

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that update Alia - and on behalf of everyonehere many thanks for the work that you and your team have done on our behalf

JayR Cela: raise hand

Michel Farrell: raise hand

David7 Bravin: Yes JayR

JayR Cela: Concerning the Great Central Lake region / it transfered over intact / however if we want to use the uBoDe physics engine / is not to much of a problem / the jetski's / zodiac's will need to be replaced or rescripted / the speed boats work fine with a minor adjustment to my bump wave system, however if we convert that region back to Bullet Sim physics all that is required is some simple script resets, also I have a new version of the clubhouse and boat docks I would like to bring over to get things up to date, and thats about all I have to say / thank you. End

David7 Bravin: Thanks JayR, I think that the points you made have been noted.

David7 Bravin: Michel please

Michel Farrell: How will it go with the community meetings in ZetaWorlds ? End

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Alia Soulstar: We are planning to make the meetings monthly. This will allow us/our treasurer to prepare a financial report to be tabled among other things, we will use our meetings to steer the direction of the community, vote for leaders, etc... so they are events we should all try to make... the first will be within a few weeks, we are really self governing now. End

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia. Are there any more questions or comments ?

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Alia Soulstar: here is our community event Calendar... it's on the "fun" tab of the main page on our website: https://3rdwc.com/event/events.html

JayR Cela: ahhh / looks nice.

Alia Soulstar: there are a couple of omissions, i need to get a schedule from Rosy to add her and we may still need to tweak a few events to fit with the Zeta events calendar, and for those who missed it our move was written up by Thirza, nice article here: https://hgsafari.blogspot.com/2024/05/into-3rd-wind.html?sc=1715220841070#c7569527300269296528

Alia Soulstar: end

David7 Bravin: Thanks for that Alia. Are there any more questions or comments ?

JayR Cela: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes JayR

JayR Cela: I'm gonna log off in a few minutes and log back into Zeta / someone TP me to Prims party please / and It's been a great pleasure to call all of you friends. Thanks. END

David7 Bravin: Bye JayR - take care

Light Sprite: bye Jayr

This brings to a close a long chapter in my virtual life. I had spent 13 years in 3rd Rock Grid, the last 9 or 10 years working on my Great Central Lake. That project was preserved and is still present in the 3rd Wind Community located in Zetaworlds grid. Myself, I have moved to the Wolf Territories Grid with my new Great Central Lake 2, and 3rd Rock Lakes 4x4 regions there. Although I have attended all the subsequent monthly 3WC meetings in Zeta, I did not offer any additional monetary support beyond my initial donation during the November 11 2024 meeting and officially resigned from any future related projects besides on an occasional assistance or advice basis. 6 months was all the time I had allotted myself to observe how things would progress, and I see no additional good coming from further coverage of this grids migration debacle.

My hope in publishing this series of transcripts is as a learning experience for myself, and perhaps others that may suddenly find themselves in a similar situation. A longtime and well established grids closure can become devastating to a virtual community. I am truly happy for all my friends that were able to get their prized virtual inventories preserved and intact at the new home in Zetaworlds grid. During the coming months, I will begin my coverage of the Wolf Territories Grid, my new home in OpenSim.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 8 : 3RG begins the move to ZetaWorlds.

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 15:02:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela : Continuing until the very end, 3rd Rock Grid held their next to last in world meeting. The following is an edited (for readability) transcript, so first we have a bit of before meeting chat, followed by the meeting it's self.

May 4 2024

Alia Soulstar: seems there's a mixed view on when the meeting starts but as we are here does anyone have any issues with their junk over on Zeta?

Georgina Mills: I uploaded my IAR file but so far still waiting for it to install, they must be very busy with us all migrating

Alia Soulstar: did you send them a ticket Georgina?

Georgina Mills: Yes

Alia Soulstar: two things then... log off and on to restart your inventory and...

Georgina Mills: Clear cache? inventory cache

Alia Soulstar: the IAR stuff will be below your trash can, not in folders like clothes and body above the line, cache won't affect it. You need to move your items back to where they were before.

Georgina Mills: Not enough files for it to be there so far.

Alia Soulstar: did you log off and on? and did you get an email saying it was loaded?

Georgina Mills: Logging on a second time now, Not yet

Alia Soulstar: then it isn't loaded,they email you on completion.

Georgina Mills: I have been checking emails for a few hours.

Alia Soulstar: do you have a big inventory?

Dolfke Barbosa: I am unable to set my Home, "Set Home to Here"

Georgina Mills: Big enough

Alia Soulstar: in other news we discovered my starship hulls were compressed. If you have items with single prims larger than 245m, we will need to reset the parameters on your region

Alia Soulstar: on which region Dol?

Georgina Mills: Earlier nowhere had been set to group so we can't set home until the land is deeded to the group.That will be Starfleet Infinity land I guess.

Alia Soulstar: you should be able to set home on Myst... Starfleet has not been group deeded yet. When we do that you can set home there.We are holding off on deeding until all the scripts and kinks are ironed out.

Georgina Mills: Myst 1 2 3 etc, or Myst Prime?

Alia Soulstar: you have one Myst Var on Zeta Dol. When you have your OARs we can nestle them into that Var

Dolfke Barbosa: I did not already tried Myst,as its still pretty circular

Alia Soulstar: yes,like a dome.

Aviana Pacem: I'm early. Should i come back in half an hour?

Alia Soulstar: and we are trouble shooting too, if you have any issues on Zeta :)

Han BoShi: although there is still much known work to do

Aviana Pacem: some problems with outfits sticking and skins being visible in the welcome area, but i'd guess that's a known issue.

Alia Soulstar: obviously any scripted thing that points to location co-ordinates on this grid will be a bit random over there...yes i saw the outfit sticking. My bunny ears wouldn't remove. A relog fixed it but that seems like a bug to monitor and report if it persists

PurplePenny Broome: Haha - my transfer portals will be sending me all over the place!

T'Preea Stro: it is very interesting to try to teleport and end up on ground level below the water... what a refreshing way to start your day

Alia Soulstar: one thing I have noticed is tolerance settings... has anyone else noticed overlap flicker on items there that were fine here?

T'Preea Stro: I had seen a few things flickering when i was doing a walk about on land but I had thought it was just me

Alia Soulstar: I see pictures on walls flickering, for example, fixed by moving the surfaces further apart, the flicker might become an issue with some meshes. Easy to fix on just prims.

Dolfke Barbosa: Some of the TP destinations would have to reset again, Penny

PurplePenny Broome: I think they probably all will Dol, and I have a lot!

Alia Soulstar: our teleporters have been weaponised

PurplePenny Broome: I wonder how my free roaming creatures will react. They might feel a bit lost :)

***********************************************************************************

David7 Bravin: Well it looks like everyone is here that is coming to the meeting. So let's get started..Greetings and welcome everyone......can everyone say "Here" for the record.

Alia Soulstar: here

PurplePenny Broome: here

Han BoShi: here

Aviana Pacem: here

JayR Cela: here

Nila Shvaress: here

Michel Farrell: Here

Dolfke Barbosa: here

Ellemir Maven: here

Georgina Mills: Here

T'Preea Stro: here, i think

Thoria Millgrove: here

David7 Bravin: Thanks everyone. I will shortly ask Alia to give us an update on how things have progressed in ZetaWorlds.......... please wait till Alia has finished before asking questions and ....by way of a reminder - if you want to speak - please "Raise a Hand" and wait to be called. Okay Alia please

Alia Soulstar: thanks David. Rather than filling up chat log I have prepared a fairly short document that updates where we are with the migration of assets and with the financials...Perhaps we could read it and then have a Q&A? The doc is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ki26wDUJXqcqdP_KNdJGxqR1le41Z8K6GQlAeuJtPc0/edit

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia

Dolfke Barbosa: looks great, Alia, congrats and thx for all your hard work (with Elle)

Alia Soulstar: thx Dol, Elle is a trooper

Ellemir Maven: scoffs

Alia Soulstar: and Astro and BoShi have been working hard to fix scripts and other issues

Dolfke Barbosa: applauds for Han and Astro

PurplePenny Broome: I've read it, and had a couple of questions as I was reading it. But my memory is rubbish, so I hope someone else asks whatever it was I thought of...

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for producing the document Alia

Alia Soulstar: my pleasure, well, sort of, just before this meeting I discovered the starships and presumably space station, hulls have compressed. The settings for prim max sizes here is 1024m. On Zeta the default is 256m So if you are porting giant objects in your OARs, tell me or ticket Zeta to upgrade the setting on your Var. end, open for questions

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia

PurplePenny Broome: Raises hand

David7 Bravin: Yes Penny

Aviana Pacem raises hand

PurplePenny Broome: Will PayPal be set up the way it used to be - to automatically take the payment, or will we need to remember once every six months? End

Alia Soulstar: If you pay using your paypal account or bank, then you can set up automated payment. If you use the credit card portal we will send you an invoice reminder before the due date.

Ellemir Maven: Question

PurplePenny Broome: Thanks

Alia Soulstar: Elle?

Ellemir Maven: Are we just going to fix the max prim size on all regions and do we then need to re-import Infinity (and possibly other oars)

Dolfke Barbosa: comment

Alia Soulstar: it's a region by region thing in the set up file. I only asked Vincent for Starfleet and will request it for HAL9000 too. Gigantic prims are pretty rare and I was the first person to ask Zeta to upgrade so...size tends to be a blender builder fetish. (but if anyone wants this we can ask for it, they are very accommodating)

Ellemir Maven: Question

David7 Bravin: Yes Ellemir

Ellemir Maven: Okay Alia, we have a treasurer, a rate card for land costs, and a paypal account. When can people start sending their money?

Alia Soulstar: Super good question... we will just make sure all the ducks are in a row and then email everyone with land or patronage. I expect this to be within 48 hours. Just want to make sure all the tracking systems are in place

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia. Any more questions for Alia ?

Georgina Mills: raises hand

Patrice Charmann: Raises hand

David7 Bravin: Yes Georgina

Georgina Mills: Since the grid we are moving to has it's own welcome area will we have a portal so we can get people logging onto our welcome area if they specifically want to join 3rd Wind in future? in ZetaWorlds of course. end : oh sorry, grid within a grid - end

Alia Soulstar: good question Georgina. the answer is we will ask Zeta to include a portal at their welcome... they have been good about everything else and I'm sure they will agree...we have ported in our Welcome from here but of course it's full of 3RG info and LMs, so we're working to modify it for 3rd wind to be our landing point. It will have a map and links to our full regions

Michel Farrell: Rasiing hands

Dolfke Barbosa: question

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, Patrice please

Patrice Charmann: Regarding payments via PayPal... will we need to discontinue automatic payments to 3RG or will they just stop or transfer to 3rd Wind. I'm still having payments come out to 3RG

Alia Soulstar: My understanding is...

Dolfke Barbosa: comment

Alia Soulstar: 3RG are refunding any payments from a month ago, yes, you need to stop a/ps here, no they don't transfer.

Patrice Charmann: Okay, thank you!

Alia Soulstar: yes please set up with 3rd wind

Patrice Charmann: Link or e-mail to do that?

Alia Soulstar: we will email you with your options (within 48 hours)

Patrice Charmann: Perfect!

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, Michel please

Michel Farrell: Will the website of 3rg get a message that it closes and that we move to ZetaWorlds ? End

Alia Soulstar: Can I pass on that question, perhaps Dol or Tara know?

David7 Bravin: I think that is something for members of the Board to answer

Dolfke Barbosa: I commented earlier

David7 Bravin: Please go ahead Dolfke

Dolfke Barbosa: first @ Patrice / 3RG can't stop any Paypal payments herself, only the Paypal owner can do that, so pls stop any more payments.

Patrice Charmann: Thank you, I will.

Dolfke Barbosa: With the last funds on our Paypal account we will be able to make a final payment (donation) to our Artists who contributed here many times a month.

Dolfke Barbosa: second @website / we will try to do that, if we still can find the access to that page, you know, Kira did all those stuff for us earlier.

David7 Bravin: Thanks Dolfke

Alia Soulstar: good to hear about the artist payments Dol

David7 Bravin: If I may ask ?........ Is there anyway for the 3RG Board to inform everyone directly about the migration to ZetaWorlds and the need to join 3rd Wind please ?

Dolfke Barbosa: comment

David7 Bravin: Go ahead please Dolfke

Dolfke Barbosa: I have emailed all the paying customers who owned and payed for their Region(s) I do not have any list of the other emails from our residents who are free members without any land they pay for. : end

David7 Bravin: Thanks Dolfke, Georgina please

Georgina Mills: Do we still have a community meeting in Zetaworlds or just attend their meetings in future? Are we independent as a grid still?

Alia Soulstar: we will have monthly meetings (cont) 3RD Wind will operate as a not for profit although we are not seeking the legal standing of a NFP. Nevertheless we are handling your funds and selling you services so we believe it is beholden on us to be completely transparent with our accounts.... they will be presented at meetings. Also... We are a self governing community that after this transition phase will be electing it's leadership and making decisions by consensus. These things require meetings and voting and what not. I hope everyone attends them. end

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia. Just checking Dolfke - that you are wanting to comment on what Aia has just said, (as Michel is next to speak)

Dolfke Barbosa: comment to Alia

David7 Bravin: Go ahead please Dolfke

Dolfke Barbosa: don't call it payments for services, but "donations", Alia

Nila Shvaress: I had a comment about the email notification topic which may have been missed

David7 Bravin: Thanks Dolfke

Alia Soulstar: yes, fair point Dolfke, donations and favours not services

David7 Bravin: I must have missed you Nila - please make your comment now

Nila Shvaress: I can email the Starfleet people about the migration, but I do think it's also a good idea for Captains in 3RG to remind their crew about it

David7 Bravin: Thanks Nila, Michel please.

Alia Soulstar: good point, we haven't sighted a few crew people in Zeta yet

Michel Farrell: We can still post on facebook and mewe to inform people. And maybe Hypergrid Business ? End

Alia Soulstar: Michel...Thanks for that, yes quite right. I am talking to Thirza who has an extensive OS network with her blogs. We can write an article for HG Business, an excellent idea

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, I haven't anyone else on my list waiting to speak (unless I have missed anyone)

PurplePenny Broome: Raises hand

David7 Bravin: Yes Penny

PurplePenny Broome: I coudl ask asaffia in SL whether she wants to run an article in Prim Perfcet. It used to cover other worlds but I haven't read it recently. *Saffia, *Prim Perfect

Alia Soulstar: Please do Penny

PurplePenny Broome: OK, will do.

David7 Bravin: As there are no more questions - Would you care to sum up Alia ?

Alia Soulstar: thanks David. Thanks to the really hard work of Ellemir and our other helpers, this move has been a lot smoother than I anticipated. The admins at Zeta are very helpful and accommodating and willing to try novel solutions and the fps speeds we're getting over there are great... and we are making contacts with nice people over there and extanding our circle, which again is great... hopefully within a week or two we will be having events, running missions and all the normal stuff, so, I'm very optimistic we made the right group choice last weekend, a big ups to you all, thanks !!!

Dolfke Barbosa: comment

David7 Bravin: Many thanks Alia - and to all your helpers

Ellemir Maven: Comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Dolfke

Dolfke Barbosa: The USS Einstein will fly again Monday May 20th. end

David7 Bravin: Thanks Dolfke, Yes Ellemir?

Ellemir Maven: So far, those we met at zeta have been nothing but friendly and welcoming. We had about five people come to the weekly celtic capers on Friday and then join us at the beach afterparty, five people not from here I meant.

David7 Bravin: understood - thanks Eleemir

David7 Bravin: I now declare the meeting over

JayR Cela: is there a meeting next week here in 3RG ?

Alia Soulstar: yes, might be the last.

Ellemir Maven: Our last one before the 5 servers shut down. When is the drop dead date Dol?

Dolfke Barbosa: May 14th, but they are payed for one month more, so they will still be available for us when needed till June.

Alia Soulstar: oh yeah, And Eldo will hold OARs for some time after it has closed if they are needed.

David7 Bravin: Bye everyone - take care.

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 9

OpenSim HyperGrid : OnGoing massive Attack to Multiple OpenSIm Sights

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:12:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

September 12 - 8:12 pm est

: Breaking News : Multiple independent Open Sim based grids, and their web sites seem to be under a massive DDNS attact.

Open Sim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 7 : and The Decision Is..... ??

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 00:12:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela : opening statement taken from David7's weekly meeting summary notecard.

On Sunday 28th April a Special 3RG Community Meeting was held to consider and decide upon which Grid the Community should move to once 3rd Rock Grid closes on 14th May.

Prior to the meeting, Alia Soulstar had distributed the following link :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AQpkl4qYa27joSJ57P-uO0kh0tUrjzCEROTMLzzyJAI/edit

to the document entitled 3rd Wind Community, which gives information about the four Grids that had given presentations to previous Community Meetings and a summary of the options under consideration.

Alia gave an informative presentation about the 3rd Wind Community document, answered questions and listened to comments.

During the discussions it was agreed that two of the Grids, namely Alternate Metaverse and Barefoot Dreamers, should be discounted.

A vote was then made on the remaining two Grids, namely, ZetaWorlds and Wolf Territories, which ZetaWorlds was chosen as the preferred choice with a clear majority of 17 to 2.

As such, Alia explained that she would be contacting ZetaWorlds Grid to move things forward.

The next 3RG Community Meeting will be on Saturday 4th May at 1.00 pm (grid time).

***********************************************************************************

This was a long meeting and towards the end became almost unmanageable, with participants sometimes texting over one in other. As usual a slightly edited Chat Log of the meeting follows:

Alia Soulstar: it's a long document so skip to the synopsis if you haven't had time to read it

David7 Bravin: Greetings and welcome everyone........Thanks for coming to this special 3RG Community meeting at such short notice.....I hope everyone has had a chance to look at the 3rd Wind Community document that has been produced - as amongst other things, it sets the pros and cons of the four Grids that have given their presentations - and gives us an ideal framework for our discussions today. Thanks Alia and everyone involved in producing that document....Before we start - can everyone say "Here" for the record.

Han BoShi: here

Alia Soulstar: here

Michel Farrell: Here

Lannorra Sion: here

Astro Balut: here

Georgina Mills: Here

Patrice Charmann: Here

PurplePenny Broome: here

Oola Quan: here

Wolfton Foulsbane: Here

Tek Bachman: here

JayR Cela: here

Aviana Pacem: here

Sunbeam Magic: Here

Ellemir Maven: here

Nila Shvaress: here

Kestral Roffo: Here

Thoria Millgrove: here

Dolfke Barbosa: here

David7 Bravin: Thanks everyone. I will shortly ask Alia to start the discussions.. But before I do - By way of a reminder - if you want to speak - please "Raise a Hand" and wait to be called.. Okay Alia please.

Alia Soulstar: thank you David,and I apologize in advance, there's a lot of ground to cover, I will try to be brief,but brevity is not my superpower. I will firstly repeat something I said last night as it is the most important thing... we are going to make a choice about which grid we will move to, we have narrowed it to 4 But our choice isn't really “which grid?”. There is a deeper choice we need to make. Will we move together, as a community, and preserve our lands, our character and our friendships? The things that bind us as 3RG, or will we disperse and go where our individual impulses take us? That is the real choice… if we choose to merge into a grid without our community assets, then it doesn’t really matter which grid we choose or even if we all choose the same grid. The work we have done... seeking out suitable grids, talking to owners...hasn't been random, we have been focused on finding a way to migrate en mass. So that we can reform and still be together, as a family and a support network, because we all share the values that brought us here in the first place. Grids that offered only private lands from their rate card gave us no mechanism for supporting our assets. They represent the second choice, dispersal, and we did not bother to ask a number of those grids to present here. Grids that offered us dedicated servers, however, offered us a pathway to incorporating our community lands in our migration, we can carve up a server between paid and unpaid lands and still provide private lands at reasonable prices. I'll go into details on that in a second but I want to do a little segue first. You would have noticed the 3rd Wind logo at the top of that document...The name and logo “3rd Rock Grid” is the intellectual property of Stichting Cultural Harbour, who retired the property to protect its legacy. We, the community, don’t own it. 3RG is anyway the name of a grid. And we are no longer a grid. We don’t own servers or have a real world address or operate as a service provider or have terms of service. We are a community, independent of servers, that can exist anywhere. So the name “3rd Wind” is a rebranding that is specific to our community… it is an identity thing. Most cultures talk somewhere in their creation stories about the elements. Earth, Water, Wind and Fire. Rock is Earth, 3rd Fire and 3rd Water are kinda lame but, “Second Wind” means “a new strength or energy to continue something that is an effort”, and a “Third Wind” is when you think you are completely run out but you go on anyway. Often used when something really bad has happened and you think you are finished, but you find unexpected strength. It is clearly a strong metaphor for our situation.

Astro Balut: :)

David7 Bravin: nods

Aviana Pacem: agrees

Kestral Roffo: nods

Alia Soulstar: The preface “3rd” acts as our link to “3rd Rock” and we will memorialise our history through our assets, our builds and our people so the link will live despite the name tweak. And as a nice aside, A search on google for 3rd Rock or 3rd Rock Community will always deliver 20 pages of results pointing at the US Sitcom “3rd Rock from the Sun” A search for “3rd Wind Community” will land on us at the top of every search engine list.

Aviana Pacem: claps (well done)

JayR Cela: lol

Sunbeam Magic: Smiles

Alia Soulstar: anyway, I wanted to clarify the thinking around it in case people had qualms.

Lannorra Sion: :)

Astro Balut: Amazing thinking

JayR Cela: wild conclusion but it works

Alia Soulstar: Back to the grids and the offers we received. AMV offered us a dedicated server but it was $500, more that twice as much as other grid offers, and they gave very little flexibility in land size or prim count, as an aside to this they have since become aware we had much better pricing from other grids and indicated they would engage in a pricing war... I have two things to say about that, the best price we received was $110 for that service. If AMV can suddenly find $400 of fat to trim from their "best" offer, then there is a game going on in the wings, we asked them for their best offer in the first instance.

Aviana Pacem: yup

Astro Balut: yes, and how long will the discount last?

Sunbeam Magic: Nods

Patrice Charmann: It has to feel right from the start!

Alia Soulstar: And I personally feel uncomfortable about dealing with that level of flexibility

JayR Cela: Alia has the floor

Sunbeam Magic: If they are already Greedy we know their personality which we should consider too dealing with the servers' owners we should consider imho

Alia Soulstar: That's OK Jay, I don't mind comments, just don't ask questions yet :)

David7 Bravin: Please keep comments till Alia has finished

Alia Soulstar: On the basis of the offer that AMV originally made... our only affordable path with them was to dump our community lands completely and buy privately, off their general rate card. And that makes AMV a grid you disperse into with no traces of 3RG with their new posturing... as I mentioned, I feel uncomfortable about them... So I would like to clear the air now.. I move here to scratch AMV from our decision process ... can we have a show of hands on this please? say Aye if you agree with the motion to remove AMV from further consideration and Nay if you do not.

Patrice Charmann: aye

Aviana Pacem: Second

Tek Bachman: aye

Michel Farrell: Aye

JayR Cela: second

Sunbeam Magic: Aye

David7 Bravin: AYE

PurplePenny Broome: aye

Aviana Pacem: aye

Lannorra Sion: aye

Ellemir Maven: Aye

Dolfke Barbosa: aye

Wolfton Foulsbane: Aye

Thoria Millgrove: aye

Oola Quan: aye

Nila Shvaress: aye

Astro Balut: aye

Kestral Roffo: Aye

Alia Soulstar: I think that is unanimous, thank you. That makes the process a little easier. Let’s strike AMV from the list

Kestral Roffo: Aye

Alia Soulstar: Moving on…that leaves us with two grids that both supply a dedicated server and one that offers mega mega regions and a 4x4 as a community zone. Wolf Territories offered us a 4x4 for community and otherwise buying off his rate card. It's actually not a bad offer and again there has been further movement on this... He offered today to match any other offer we have.

Kestral Roffo: nods

Alia Soulstar: but, that is not as simple as it sounds, Wolf has a different set up, his smallest region size is a 4x4 Var, even if he supplies a server at the sort of prices that the others have, our ability to carve up that server is extremely limited. To match the other offers he needs to match the way they handle server deployment which seems unlikely, so we would need to spend some time talking to him about what exactly he means and if he realizes what the cost is to him of matching other grids. I suspect he does not, on his rate card Wolf's cheapest region is $25.40. Being able to bring all our people with us is affected by the prices we can negotiate, and the ways that we can self-organise. We wondered if we could make Wolf work by buying 12 x 12s off the top of his rate card and squishing community lands into them, but…

1. a million prims and numberless scripts crammed on even the fastest servers will create death by lag.

2. the regions become complicated OARs with multiple ownerships and are later impossible to extract.

3. And we still have to pay for these lands on top of our private land purchases… we would, in effect, be taxing you to run community lands in this set up.

Sunbeam Magic: I move here to scratch Wolf Territories from our decision process

Kestral Roffo: second

Tek Bachman: third

Aviana Pacem: aye

Patrice Charmann: aye

JayR Cela: nay

Dolfke Barbosa: aggrees

Michel Farrell: Aye

PurplePenny Broome: nay

David7 Bravin: AYE

Nila Shvaress: aye

Astro Balut: has there been a vote?

Ellemir Maven: Aye

Aviana Pacem: ?

Dolfke Barbosa: a spontaneous vote, Aviana

Aviana Pacem: I'd like to hear Purple's thoughts.

Alia Soulstar: it's a great indication but I wasn't actually going to suggest scratching Wolf unless people want to do that themselves of course.

Astro Balut: aye if the question I didn't see was of the same type as the first, hehehe.

Thoria Millgrove: ((the meeting chair has gone along with a vote, so yes there seems to be))

Thoria Millgrove: aye

Sunbeam Magic: Too many red flags I see with them

Lannorra Sion: aye

Dolfke Barbosa: I also would like Penny's opinion on her nay.

Han BoShi: o/

JayR Cela: I said nay also

Aviana Pacem: atm it's apples and oranges, but would like to hear from Penny

Dolfke Barbosa: and JayR's

Aviana Pacem: …and Jay

Sunbeam Magic: nods

David7 Bravin: Alia - how would you like to proceed ?

Alia Soulstar: Ok sooo... we could leave Wolf in the hat for the final vote or scratch the grid, I don't think he has the numbers on what I just saw... there is a little more I can add to what I was saying, the bit I was about to get to was. Ruling out the distraction of an offer to "match any other offer" when no one really knows what that means and looking just at his initial offer... We have a model with Wolf where we have a token community center, a 4x4 and private ownership clustered around it. In the other two offers we have a model where we can have 200 community regions and cheaper land prices for members. In contrast to Wolf’s $25.40, in both the other grids you can own private land starting at $2.50. That is one tenth the entry point on Wolf Territories. So the grids offering full community (server) options are not only cheaper overall and keeping far more of our community lands intact, they are more inclusive. We are not leaving people behind on the basis of cost. I personally don't see any comparison in those offers but there are features of his grid that are appealing. Onto the other two then...

Alia Soulstar: Zeta have offered us a good quality dedicated server managed by a professional hosting company in Germany for $108 month. On a spec for dollar pricing that is pretty much at cost.

Sunbeam Magic: my thoughts were to move us along to get to the 2 in contenders.. Zeta and Barefoot and looks like most agreed Wolf is not a match for what we are envisioning.

Alia Soulstar: In fact Elle has gone crazy trying to work out how they make any profit.

Ellemir Maven: grumbles.

Alia Soulstar: We can design our community on that server any way we choose and carry a very large community asset (around 200 SL regions) And we can still sell our members private lands at prices that are lower than any professional grid’s rate card (including Zetas) If we choose Zeta, we already have a business plan and a community model on the drawing board. We already have the financial resources in place to pull the trigger today. We have a system to seamlessly rebuild our lands, we have a crew in place to handle the transition, we have relationships in place with the owners.

Alia Soulstar: The BDG offer is much the same… except:

• BDG’s server will cost us $266 month.

• The smaller size of the grid won’t add a lot of extra audience for our performers and venues.

• The grid infrastructure is not amazing… this is a grid running in someone’s spare room with a ceiling fan as its cooling system…

Sunbeam Magic: good point

Alia Soulstar: it is a risky choice on the IT front. And… if we choose BDG we need to find another $100 month to pay for it. We do not have sufficient financial commitment at this point that lets us pull the trigger. So if you do favor this option, please think about how You can contribute to make it cost-viable. I point again to the document you have and the summary at the end. back to David... questions and discussion.

Lannorra Sion: raises hand

Wolfton Foulsbane: raises his hand as well.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks Alia, Bravin: Okay...

Kestral Roffo: Raises hand

Sunbeam Magic: raises hand

David7 Bravin: Kestral please

Lannorra Sion: ?

Aviana Pacem: raises hand

Kestral Roffo: so from looking at all plans i feel business plan 1 is the one, remember we have two weeks only till 3rd rock closes.

David7 Bravin: Thanks Kestral

Alia Soulstar: (Plan 1 is Zeta in the document, just to clarify)

David7 Bravin: Sunbeam please

Sunbeam Magic: I am partial to Zeta too... when I co owned 3rd Life grid they were our servers IT and responded quickly to any technical difficulties we had... plus they have 11 years experience. One more thing, they are open to discussion if you feel their policies effect you.

Georgina Mills: raises hand

David7 Bravin: Thanks Sunbeam, Lannora - You have a question?

Lannorra Sion: Do we have any time limit guarantees on the costs from any of the candidates? My fear is a good deal will end up being a bait and switch.

**** Please Take Note of the above comment from Lannora Sion **** "My fear is a good deal will end up being a bait and switch." *****

David7 Bravin: Can you answer that Alia ?

Alia Soulstar: That is a great question Lannorra, yes, I can give a semi answer. In terms of the three offers the one we had to double check was Zeta's because of the unbelievable cost so... Elle went directly to the Zeta's provider to find out exactly what server set ups they offer and pricing. Zeta is selling us a direct price set by the server company. It's a big company, I don't see them doing across the board price hikes.

JayR Cela: ("face palms")

Ellemir Maven: ((They "have your own server" price is right on the web site. But when we spoke to them, they gave us a menu of choices and we picked the best one))

Alia Soulstar: We have no guarantees but I see that as a form of surety.

Ellemir Maven: Comment to that

Sunbeam Magic: comment, in the few years we were with Zeta they only raised cost once.

Ellemir Maven: Two things. One, I found a datacenter in the Netherlands that has a server with exactly the same specifications as Zeta, for 175 euros a month (so 50%) more. And I see no harm in asking any of these grids where we would get a server or land for say a 12 month guaranteed price)

David7 Bravin: Thanks Ellemir, Please go ahead Alia.

Alia Soulstar: Elle and Lannorra make great points. Nothing stops us from asking our host to lock their price for a year and I will personally do that when we have decided on the host.

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, Aviana please

Aviana Pacem: The history of promising-looking OS grids closing down is extensive. I think current longevity is an important factor. That gives a plus to Zeta.

Sunbeam Magic: Agree

Wolfton Foulsbane: still has his hand up too.

David7 Bravin: Thanks Aviana. Did I miss you Wolfton ? Please go ahead.

Wolfton Foulsbane: I'd like to add that I did my independent, blind review of all the grids mentioned last night. For me, Zeta was the clear winner. Not only does the support seem to be at least as good as the support we are used to here, they offer the lowest prices, and they allow ages 13 and up so I can be more present since my kids can log on. I do not intend to offer UFS a foothold but my kids do want our own Star Trek community (no offense to Starfleet Infinity) as well as some other virtual experiences not tied to Star Trek. I'm prepared to move to Zeta with or without 3rd Wind, but I do miss hanging out with several of you that I've known for well over ten years. Now, I'd also like to offer my professional services as a Business Analyst. I write IT contracts for the government (State of Arizona) so I can help with eliciting requirements as well as contracts - should we need it.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that Wolfton, Georgina please.

Georgina Mills: What is the bandwidth of the Zetaworlds server? At that price will there be lag? As Lannorra said, is it 'bait and switch' with that server price increasing once they have us? At that low price there must be megalag as the pipe bandwidth will surely be low? Is that low price feasible and permanent in practice?

David7 Bravin: Can you answer that Alia ?

Alia Soulstar: Can I ask Elle to address that question, she is an expert on that.

Ellemir Maven: I can't comment directly. We know that Zeta is hosted in a german datacenter (you can see that on their web site) Data centers usually have impressive network performance. They provide an impressive number of server/network statistics at their welcome point for anyone to review.

Wolfton Foulsbane: has a comment

Thoria Millgrove: ((3RG is currently hosted in a German datacentre, for comparison))

Georgina Mills: comment

David7 Bravin: Thanks Ellemir

********************************************************************************

Alia Soulstar: also this is the spec: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X - 128GB - 2 x NVMe 3,84 TB, somewhat specced up from our 3RG current settings.

********************************************************************************

**************** please note the above "To good to be true" server spec promised**************

David7 Bravin: Sunbeam please

Sunbeam Magic: The number of grids they service may give them lower prices on servers, there for they can pass those along.

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Alia Soulstar: I cannot say this with knowledge but I am related to Sherlock Holmes through my mothers great aunt.... ZetaWorld uses the datacentre Zetamex. I suspect they are related and the the server price is low to them for a reason, something about the prefix...

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia

Sunbeam Magic: Smiles

David7 Bravin: JayR please

JayR Cela: I was at the WTG meeting just before this meeting.... I want to move forward not lateral..... WTG is currently the cutting edge and I want to be there.... if we decide to move as a group to Zeta, I will commit a 12 month silver registration in order to move and preserve what's left of 3RG.... however.... on April 30th, I have all ready made arrangements to lease a 4x4 on WTG / taking advantage of his discount.... so what ever is decided / I can commit $120 US to the move.

Sunbeam Magic: In what ways are they on "the cutting edge" there ?

David7 Bravin: Thanks for that commitment JayR

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Michel Farrell: Comment

Georgina Mills: still waiting to comment

Alia Soulstar: Jay makes a solid point. Wolf does seem to be pioneering tech. I have an avatar on that grid too and i really like his AI interface. Zeta are a testing and development grid and are leading edge too.

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, Georgina please

Georgina Mills: I have seen cheap land for sale before with low bandwidth, if you pay more you get lag free.

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Ellemir Maven: ((I can also comment))

Alia Soulstar: Lag is not just bandwidth. It is the number of prims on a region, the number and complexities of scripts, the number of regions crammed on a server. If we are allocating server resources we control much of that... (cont)

Sunbeam Magic: it can also be affected by your own internet service ... lag

Alia Soulstar: another thing that is death by lag is the function of servers calling up information from other servers. If an endpoint goes offline then the call-up goes into a loop that can kill a set of regions. Zeta assured us yesterday they actively block the sort of amateur grids that create this problem so they seem to have a good grasp of performance curation.

Kestral Roffo: Raises hand

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, Ellemir please

Dolfke Barbosa: comment

Ellemir Maven: I wonder at the underlying issue here. I have no reason to think that a server in a pro data center is going to be better or worse than wherever any of the other grids are (other than the ones in someone's basement). The server Zeta is offering is about triple the performance of what 3RG is running on right now (more) Also, Zeta was pioneering things like load balancing robust before some of these other grids were even a thing, so I don't consider them "inferior" in their technology to anyone. end

David7 Bravin: Thanks Ellemir, Kestral please

Kestral Roffo: ok so i do not understand Tech stuff. but i believe in Alia and Elle's judgment, therefore we have two to choose, let us take it to the vote ****end****

David7 Bravin: Thanks Kestral, Dolfke please

Dolfke Barbosa: I was at Zeta a week earlier, and had the highest FPS I ever had ...

David7 Bravin: I do not have any more names waiting to speak on my list (unless I have missed anyone)

Alia Soulstar: comment

JayR Cela: raise hand

David7 Bravin: Alia please

Alia Soulstar: After Jay has spoken I suggest we have a vote. We are sufficient in numbers here to represent the community as a quorum. My suggestion is that each person simply say their preferred grid name and we tally them. I have been asked by Laz and Lorin to present their proxy vote. end

David7 Bravin: Understood - thanks Alia, JayR please

Kestral Roffo: I have Oolas proxy

JayR Cela: my main concern obviously is to preserver the Great Central Lake region in the upcoming 3rd Wind initiative / I will also be rebuilding a new Lake on WTG with some extra land available for anyone interested. If I am able to remain estate manager for the Lake in the new 3rd Wind Is OK with me.

David7 Bravin: Alia has suggested that we now put it to the vote. Do I have a seconder on that ?

Kestral Roffo: I second

David7 Bravin: Thanks Kestral, So please say the name of the Grid you would like to vote for.

Astro Balut: zeta

JayR Cela: Wolf

Nila Shvaress: Zeta

Aviana Pacem: Zeta

Patrice Charmann: Zeta

Sunbeam Magic: ZetaWorlds

Michel Farrell: ZetaWorlds

Wolfton Foulsbane: Zeta - and I do not need anything from here backed up or transferred. I'm interested in a 3x3 and I'll start from scratch.

Alia Soulstar: Zeta

Georgina Mills: Wolf

David7 Bravin: ZetaWorlds

Tek Bachman: Zeta

Lannorra Sion: abstain

Ellemir Maven: Zeta

Kestral Roffo: [Oola proxy] Zeta

PurplePenny Broome: Wolf

Alia Soulstar: [Laz proxy] Zeta

Kestral Roffo: Zeta

Thoria Millgrove: Zeta

Alia Soulstar: [Lorin proxy] Zeta

Georgina Mills: abstain!

Dolfke Barbosa: zeta

Slash Godard: I abstain- because I'm leaving

JayR Cela: tell me when and how to pay the $ amount

David7 Bravin: Thanks everyone

Lannorra Sion: Alia, I would also like to do a patronage

Kestral Roffo: me also

Aviana Pacem : ty David, and ty Alia, and everyone who put so much work into this.

Alia Soulstar: comment

Sunbeam Magic: Yes and how to set up our Patron status... or should we wait on that until after the move ?

David7 Bravin: Alia - would you care to say any more ?

Alia Soulstar: thanks David and thanks everyone....

Ellemir Maven: I just want to comment. Before anyone has any buyer's remorse. It may turn out that whatever grid we choose is not the right one. In a year we say "this is not working for us" And as a community we can decide to move.

Patrice Charmann: Thank you to all of you who have put so much into this!

Sunbeam Magic: That's the glory of choice Ellemir, well said!

Aviana Pacem: Also… thank you for the 3WC name and logo. Beautiful. I love them.

Alia Soulstar: firstly. Those who voted against and abstained, you are still absolutely welcome to be part of the Zeta community and to join our events, groups and the community itself as members, and I truly wish you success on whatever grids you make your home...

Sunbeam Magic: Hear hear!!!

Kestral Roffo: yep

Wolfton Foulsbane: thumbs up "[13:50] Ellemir Maven: I just want to comment. Before anyone has any buyer's remorse. It may turn out that whatever grid we choose is not the right one. In a year we say "this is not working for us" And as a community we can decide to move."

Tek Bachman: let me know when the transition will take place and what I need to do

Ellemir Maven: Have you asked admin for your oar and Iar tek?

Tek Bachman: yes i have it

Alia Soulstar: secondly, we are going to set up all the financials, that was waiting for a result from this process, the moment we do we can start processing patrons and land owners so if you have not already talked to me about land or patronage, please IM me and/or email me.

Lannorra Sion: I have never hid the fact that I have my own non commercial grid. That led to my bias against Zeta where, I may not even be able to visit you all. But I will commit to a patronage to help.

Alia Soulstar: thirdly... we now have to manage the transition,,, we can help you move your assets and inventories to Zeta... if you need that help, please IM Elle. fourth... we will talk to Zeta today and get the ball rolling, the moment we have paid for it and got it set up, we will inform everyone. fifth...

Han BoShi: Lannorra, you should talk to Zeta about getting an exception for your grid. We talked yesterday after you left that they often make exceptions once they get to know more about the situation.

Alia Soulstar: fifth... go here to join the community: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cqeLtT-kU4N0MI-z0j5thR7YJjC95DUtAegnbFiJ03Q

Georgina Mills: I have to have a Google account to join the group ?

Lannorra Sion: Thank you Han. I am not sure my ideals jive with theirs

Kestral Roffo: easy enough Georgina

Ellemir Maven: You do not Georgina. Ignore the save settings at the top and just fill in your name and email at the bottom. Artifact of stupid google forms.

Astro Balut: https://zetaworlds.com/home

David7 Bravin: Wolfton please go ahead

Sunbeam Magic: raises hand

Wolfton Foulsbane: I haven't seen the charter. May I have a link, please?

Thoria Millgrove: https://3rdwc.com/charter/index4.html

Michel Farrell: I am forced to login in order to fill in the form ?

David7 Bravin: Sunbeam please go ahead

Sunbeam Magic: I have a 3 x 3 now but only saw 5 x 5 on Zeta docs ? and also do we sign up each avatar we have here ?

Alia Soulstar: This website was prefilled Zeta but would have changed with another vote: https://3rdwc.com It has all the links.

Wolfton Foulsbane: raises hand

Sunbeam Magic: did I get an answer ?

David7 Bravin: Yes Wolfton

David7 Bravin: Alia can you answer Sunbeams question please

Alia Soulstar: Yes....

Sunbeam Magic: thank you

Wolfton Foulsbane: Two questions - What do you mean 1x1 to 5x5. For example, is a 5x5 with 20k prims $20 or $250? and is that 20k prims each or total?

Alia Soulstar: Sunbeam, please buy your land through us, not through the Zeta website. Our land is cheaper, more flexible, any size you want and in our cluster. Just give me your order, IM or email and we'll set you up. as for alts....

Sunbeam Magic: doesn't it make a difference when transferring OAR that lands match ?

Wolfton Foulsbane: *$500?

Thoria Millgrove: no, as long as the destination is the same size or larger

Alia Soulstar: Zeta restricts alts to 3 but we are negotiating for more as we have RP groups and the like. You don't need to sign alts up to the community, we only issue one community ID and your alts can use that

Sunbeam Magic: okies

David7 Bravin: Alia or Ellemir - can you answer Wolfton's question please?

Alia Soulstar: Wolfton...

Sunbeam Magic: one more thing though, okay AAcme may have different ID than me and Venus ??? no ??

Alia Soulstar: we are not charging on size, you choose the size and tell us. $20 is 50k prims any sized land. Sunbeam.... Your ID is the number you vote with and it protects your identity in fiscal matters so, we can't issue them to the non living or to alts, but these alts are of course free range members of the community.

Sunbeam Magic: thank you Alia ...

Thoria Millgrove: I'm Thoria Millgrove in SL and Zeta

JayR Cela: raise hand

David7 Bravin: Yes JayR

JayR Cela: so when ya gonna pull the trigger and actually need some RL $ in order to do this ?

Alia Soulstar: JayR... we will set up banking asap and inform everyone of the details... within days, depends on the banking system.

Lannorra Sion: Its been an honor and a privilege to have served with you all for the 3RG community and now the 3rd Wind. I must leave. See you all soon I hope.

Ellemir Maven: Like Alia I am probably getting the same questions.

Nila Shvaress: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Nila

Ellemir Maven: So this is the sequence I think if I may?

Nila Shvaress: I just wanted to say that a party is in the works, it will be on 3RG before it closes.

Michel Farrell: when ?

David7 Bravin: Thanks Nila

Ellemir Maven: First we are sorting out who wants what and how much it costs. Payment will probably be Paypal and we are trying to figure out how much they charge as a premium. (more)

Nila Shvaress: we don't have date set yet that I am aware of

JayR Cela: PayPal is a No Go for me, Mastercard only.

Ellemir Maven: I am sure we can find something else then JayR.

David7 Bravin: It looks like the meeting is finishing ......so before I close the meeting....

Thoria Millgrove: (you can pay Mastercard through Paypal without a Paypal account)

Ellemir Maven: So next step is we order the server from Zeta, and they need a day or two to prep it, and the first month rent in advance

David7 Bravin: On behalf of everyone here (and those that have already left)..

JayR Cela: next meeting is when ???

Kestral Roffo: visa or Mastercard is my preference but i can work with paypal well Oola can smiles.

Ellemir Maven: Next, we are drawing a map, what regions go where, what size are they, etc.

David7 Bravin: may I thank Alia and Ellemir for giving us the necessary information so that we could make the right choice.

Ellemir Maven: Once we have the map, we pass that info to Zeta and they build out the regions with the right sizes, prims etc.. then after all that, you open a ticket with Zeta, upload your oar and iar and they load it up for you. You move in, we have a party.

Thoria Millgrove: wooo!

David7 Bravin: I presume that we will be having another Community meeting next Saturday ????

JayR Cela: how about if I don't own the .OAR file it is owned by 3RG

Ellemir Maven: So what you should do in the meantime, is create an account on Zeta. Dolfke can you authorize Jay getting a copy of his lakes region oar?

Thoria Millgrove: I think the board will need to clear it, but I'm sure we will.

Dolfke Barbosa: That will need a board decision, Elle

Thoria Millgrove: As a member of the 3RG board, as well as a long time community member here, I will say 3rd Wind gives me hope. Well done all, and especially Alia and Elle!

Ellemir Maven: Okay, is there any reason it won't be like any other community lands?

PurplePenny Broome: If we have an alt, and a partner who rarely comes in world and also has an alt would they load their IARs as well?

Dolfke Barbosa: but pls ask Eldovar for one, or let Alia make the request, I vote positive for it

Alia Soulstar: in terms of IARs....

Ellemir Maven: Alia can you answer that? I think its best to grab and import all those IAR Penny.

PurplePenny Broome: yes, I given Eldo the relevant information.

Alia Soulstar: they are a way to move an inventory. We can load your IAR in Zeta through their ticket system but I would add one point...

Ellemir Maven: No Alia, I think she means should she ask for all three.

Alia Soulstar: an IAR can take a while to extract from the servers and Eldo has to do it. I have an IAR of my avatar but I won't task him for my alts, I can remake them easily enough. It's just a to give the poor man a break.

David7 Bravin: I PRESUME THAT WE WILL BE HOLDING ANOTHER COMMUNITY MEETING NEXT SATURDAY ??????/

Alia Soulstar: YES

Nila Shvaress: I won't need IARs for any of my avatars. I can transfer what I need

Alia Soulstar: and a giant leaving party

Wolfton Foulsbane: raises hand

JayR Cela: sounds good

Aviana Pacem: lol

Astro Balut: Hi friends, it's late in Denmark. I will follow up on this tomorrow. Thanks for this great meeting and the hard work you did.

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia, Yes Wolfton

Wolfton Foulsbane: Does 3WC have a discord server?

Thoria Millgrove: They do Wolfton

Dolfke Barbosa: AND a grand new Wind party too at Zeta

Thoria Millgrove: I just joined it

Aviana Pacem: votes for a Discord server

Thoria Millgrove: Create an account with Zeta, and then you can request to join their Discord

Ellemir Maven: I will start the discord server right now

David7 Bravin: The I think it is time for me to say "MEETING CLOSED"

As you all ready know the decision to migrate 3rd Rock Grid over to ZetaWorlds was made and the wheels of progress were quickly set into motion. Once the migration began the initial results were ????

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 8

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 6 : The Urgency of Decision

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sun, 21 Jul 2024 19:33:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela :

Immediately following the April 27 meeting with Zeta Worlds, there was the now usual after-meeting. Unlike the three previous Grid's presentations. This time there was a sense of extreme urgency. The clock was ticking. 3rd Rocks Grid's final day would be May 15 2024. Final, end of that story, and an important chapter in future OpenSim history books would close forever.

And so the meeting continues :

Alia Soulstar: David, do you think everyone will decide at one meeting? I can talk to you right now and offer clarity but it will take half an hour at least.

David7 Bravin: If we inform everyone in advance - giving them the information - it could work.

Georgina Mills: So we have a week to examine the small print of their websites, don't get caught out. Remember Willy Wonka.

Alia Soulstar: there are 4 websites to scrutinise Georgina.

Georgina Mills: Yes

Alia Soulstar: The document I linked you to is the relevant information.

Georgina Mills: Caveat Emptor, buyer beware

Alia Soulstar: and that can be disseminated to all our members, but it still needs unpacking.

PurplePenny Broome: An email to fee paying landowners should be a priority. I only found out because I read the MInutes of the last two meetings

Alia Soulstar: my point Penny

David7 Bravin: WE could just send out the link to the document with an explanation

Alia Soulstar: We understand the stresses the board are under but there should be communication

Dolfke Barbosa: We need to decide fast David, the grid will close in 2 weeks

David7 Bravin: understood

Dolfke Barbosa: so a meeting tomorrow is primordial

Lorin Tone: I can't be here tomorrow, but I'm just a shadow under Alia's avatar, so my votes go with hers, lol. Whichever choice or choices made by this grid's community, I'll get involved with them.

Dolfke Barbosa: we need a decision to what Grid we want to move

PurplePenny Broome: Are transcripts of the earlier presentations available? Not the minutes, the actual chat log?

Alia Soulstar: and we need time to make sure everyone has OARs and avatars to transfer to and who wants land and all that once the decision is made

Dolfke Barbosa: only Eldovar has the OAR's, and only he can make any IAR

David7 Bravin: The Minutes of those presenations ate essentially the chat logs. Penny - I do have the Chat Logs as well - but they won't say anything different.

Dolfke Barbosa: Everything is coverd in Alia's Document, Penny : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AQpkl4qYa27joSJ57P-uO0kh0tUrjzCEROTMLzzyJAI/edit

Dolfke Barbosa: May I summarise a little ?

PurplePenny Broome: Yes, but there is a lot to learn from the chat about the personalities of the grid's personnel, not just what they presented.

Dolfke Barbosa: Wolf Territories does not provide us an option of getting our own server

PurplePenny Broome: And that is important to me

Dolfke Barbosa: AMV neither

Ellemir Maven: Incorrect Dolfke, AMV does have a server option.

Dolfke Barbosa: Barefoot and Zeta offer us our own server.

Ellemir Maven: but its either very expensive, or shared

Alia Soulstar: What I will say is this... We are going to make a choice about which grid we will move to, we have narrowed it to 4...But our choice isn't really “which grid?”. There is a deeper choice. Will we move together, as a community, and preserve our lands, our character and our friendships? or will we disperse and go where our individual impulses take us? That's the real choice and that is what you have to read as a subtext into the offers that have been presented to us.

Lorin Tone: "All of the above" is usually my answer to that question, because it's possible

Alia Soulstar: if we choose to merge into a grid without our community assets, then it doesn’t really matter which grid we choose or even if we all choose the same grid

Alia Soulstar: anyway, Please read the document. I am happy to help anyone who needs help deciphering it, though the language is not that technical.

Michel Farrell: Will read that tomorrow.

Alia Soulstar: I'm the least technical person here.

PurplePenny Broome: So are we meeting tomorrow at noon?

Alia Soulstar: I will be here, we can ask our starfleet people to be here, we have their emails.

The next day's meeting would prove to be... ?

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 7

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 5 : Zeta Worlds Grid

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 18:13:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela :

On April 27 we had a visit from the Zeta Worlds grid team, this is what they were offering.

David7 Bravin: OKay - it looks like everyone is here that's coming...... Greetings and welcome Everyone.This is another special Community meeting to continue considering the future of the 3RG Community. We have special visitors here today from ZetaWorlds Grid, who will be giving us a presentation shortly. I would now like to welcome and introduce Vincent.Sylvester and Edison.Rex from ZetaWorlda Grid.Please do not interrupt their presentation and keep any questions to the end - not forgetting to "Raise a Hand" first - and wait to be called. Vincent and Edison - Please go ahead.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: okay, well. I think we can start with the history of Zetaworlds. Zetaworlds is over 11 years old now, We have servers in both North America and Europe. Our grid runs on Opensim software based on core, but modified.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: It originally started just as a way for testing things, not really doing much headway in community. It evolved over the years into what it is now.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: We've had a free land programme for years now, and we also allow self hosting. I'll let Vincent tak about our approach to grid management.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds: These days the focus is on stability and being a good neighbor in the wider community. I highly value education and try to provide a lot of information both technical and in terms of how we approach the metaverse

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: if you've seen our website you can see how we build on what is there.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: As it evolved out of a testing platform for new features the aim was always to bring movement into OpenSim itself so over the years we have worked to build a working relationship with the core team

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we were early adopters of ubODE physics, for example

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: In terms of community though I leave most of those things to Ed and Kelly here, with a mostly hands-off approach as the saying goes live and let live. It's my goal to allow communities to build how they would like to build and not interfere much unless I have to

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: as to that, the terms of service guides that

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com:8002: For going on 15 years now I have been on and off running communities and engaging with OpenSim, which is what has led to that approach as I think there is much value in providing an open platform like we have. That said I suspect there are some that have heard about some of the policies implemented on our end. The restrictions we put in place to some degree. They are the result of the aforementioned wish to educate on good practices and equally as measure to protect our end. I'm aware that does feel strong handed in some regard, but it is a difficult thing for us to work out. Trying to prevent detrimental effects and staying as open as possible. There is a lot of potential and good in OpenSim and that's worth protecting and fostering, but it needs information. It sounds cliche but knowledge does make a big difference in that regard and over the years it has shown us that it goes such a long way to create a community that critically thinks about problems and seeks solutions that work for everyone. Nobody is perfect and both Ed and Kelly have shown me that there is always things to work on and think about, constant flux if you will. That is why it strikes me very much when I heard about what happened to you. It was almost like a constant that I had relied on suddenly went away. I did send Ed out to see what was needed at first. It was surprising to me to see you reaching out to us, but from the conversations I have had so far it seems that I probably should not have been. While things never align perfectly I do agree that there is quite a bit of overlap in the approach to things, but the extent only time will tell, though I hope regardless of the decisions made that you all find a home your are comfortable with no matter where.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: and with that, we're open to questions.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that presentation Vincent and Edison - very interesting......

Are there any questions ?

JayR Cela: I see that your grid is using ubODE physics engine Grid Wide ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: yes, we moved to ubODE early on

JayR Cela: have you been able to resolve the many problems that seem to be associated with using the ubODE physics engine and Mesh Building structures ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: that's all down to physics hulls.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Outside of specific needs that is the default. While Bullet is still available it isn't maintained in core it is still there. It is meant to get updates according to misterblue, but they have not materialized yet.

JayR Cela: your website says open water and land and air travel are possible or is this a standard feature ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we have a very large series of regions contiguously joined set up as ocean, and by very large, well over 20 miles each direction last I saw.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: That's part of the policies specific to the Ocean project that Ed maintains yes, it's meant to make sure you don't hit banlines, but of course if there is a need for privacy that isn't set in stone either. The regions themselves are all open though for any vehicles

David7 Bravin: Thanks

Jedburgh Dagger: Can you tell me about your server backup plan, and include how often you verify those are good and working?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: over to Vincent for this comment:

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Every 8 hours a auto backup is made, those are moved daily to a backup location and replicated to an offsite storage as well. They are the basic asset-less oars from the auto backup module. Full database backups of all regions are made daily as well. Manual full oars can be issued via the website for anyone that owns a region. From time to time OpenSim hiccups do result in rolling back stuff, so far that has not failed.

David7 Bravin: Are there any more questions ?

Dolfke Barbosa: on your Website I read, the creation of alternate accounts is discouraged. Creating more than 3 accounts is prohibited and will result in suspension of some or all accounts. For Starfleet we have many ships, and every ship has his own crew, read: alts ..., can that be arranged ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: TL;DR, yes

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Some of the education customers we have create a lot of accounts for their students so if there is good reason for more accounts to exist that is generally not a problem. The rule mainly exists for those that utilize them for less than nice purposes. The policy is aimed toward abusers.

Dolfke Barbosa: Understood, a second question, are ppl from a dreamworldgrid welcome to your grid, via HG ?

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: This goes toward the restrictions I mentioned. A problem that isn't well understood in the metaverse surrounding how OpenSim handles hypergrid data. We found a lot of these installations pop up and create data endpoints that then disappear overnight, which causes OpenSim to fish in the dark trying and locking up its pipes to reach them. The detrimental effects can go as far as preventing teleports to regions in extreme cases. Similarly you have issues with DNS caching not following TTL times and such. It's caused us to restrict access to certain known dynamic dns providers as they failed to update in time.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: if you've got friends lists and group lists which you can't remove yourself from, because that grid is gone, or assets with missing parts.

Georgina Mills: So if I turn off the grid at night it creates a new connection that's different?

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: The other thing that goes into this is a legal one. As these setups are open from the start they allow new registrations, which can be used to evade bans or create other havoc. By default they don't provide any way to contact the owners of them or even list who they are. Trying to then resolve problems becomes ten times more difficult and it worries me greatly to whether the operates understand the risks and liabilities of running their grids. We restrict those with a link to more information about those things to try and resolve these. Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: On windows famously DNS ttl times are just completely ignored. It caches the ip for a domain until you reboot, which can lead to all sorts of funky things. The problem is that if OpenSim cannot connect to an endpoint it keeps trying for 30 seconds and there is only so many spots in the queue for those requests to get stuck in. After a while it just breaks down and kills the http connection, which can lock you out of a region in the worst case. In many cases things like friends, creator data of prims and other stuff can cause these issues and leaving these endpoints around not understanding the gravity of what it might cause. Sure they can be cleaned up on our end, but that's time and effort and it is hard to track where it might be needed.

Ellemir Maven: Sorry, I just want to follow that for a moment. Because although we got a big long answer, I am not sure if it was a No. I think it was (more) As far as I know there are two kinds of Dreamgrid. One is a home computer behind a dynamic DNS that might get turned on when someone feels like it. Those are typically outworldz.com systems I think The second kind is actual servers, with actual domain namwes that are on the Internet 24 x 7, with Dreamgrid just used as a nice graphical interface to OpenSim. Does your answer apply to both kinds? And confirm the answer is no? And then I have my real question.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: again, Vincent will write something, be patient ;)

Ellemir Maven: Of course. Edison I think you can answer my question though. I know the import IAR and OAR are manual (open a ticket). Can people backup their region to an OAR on their own or is that a ticket request ?

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: When a grid pops up we check their website and see what we are dealing with. If it is dynamic dns then yes those do get blocked and usually stay that way unless it becomes clear they maintain a high availability, which is what the known grids page we have is partly for as well. In terms of new grids that don't use dynamic dns it comes down to their terms of service, if they have at least an email address to contact them under in case there is something we need to let them know. If that's not the case they get blocked, which often results in them contacting us to resolve it. I'd say in 75% of cases they understand the reasoning and supply that information

Ellemir Maven: Thank you. So the answer to Georgina's question, for the part time grids, is NO they can not HG to Zeta.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: OARs can be requested via the web panel directly, that does not involve a ticket. If an IAR is needed, that's done on ticket request.

Ellemir Maven: and thank you Vincent. People can backup their region any time they want.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Correct, we encourage people to do that.

David7 Bravin: Georgina - do you still have a question?

Georgina Mills: Same domain name and fixed IP from my ISP but outworldz domain is banned anyway, I can use an avatar from another grid and join Zetaworlds ?

Lannorra Sion: I am not very technical and your answers to this dreamgrid thing is perplexing for me. It seems that you are saying you ban first, then if someone contacts you, you MAY allow them, is that right? and i have follow up.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Vincent will answer this, be patient.

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: May I say something to this?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: please do Kelly

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: The word Ban is incorrect, they get a blocked message, If they read the pop up it directs them to the issue, Then they can fix it.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: We always deal with anybody who is willing to work with us

Lannorra Sion: What is the issue, that they can fix ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Our website lists them

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: Most times basic web site info

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: any basic contact info

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: When they appear as new in the tracked list then we check what their setup is. In most cases with these setups they provide no contact information and within a day the amount of time online vs offline rarely exceeds 50% so to prevent us having to clear tons of dead endpoints from friends entries, creator data etc. then a restriction is put in place that informs them as to why they are being blocked. The problem we face is we don't want to just blankly remove anyone, but without contact information there is no way to let them know about the potential issues it can cause.

Sunbeam Magic: I have 2 questions: 1) what currency systems does Zeta use 2) how many regions per server are alloted ? and comment follow up on how many avatars one can have, do we need to write someone to get permission for more than 3 (on AAcme City I use 4, 2 are my husband's who passed away a year ago... ) each have different textures and items needed to maintain and such Thank you.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: We use Gloebits, that's our currency. We maintain a direct relationship with Chris Colosi. Vincent can answer 2, and on 3, you would speak with us. As we said the policy is aimed at abusers.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: I track the server performance and if there is enough capacity left regions get deployed on them, if they are full new server or another one it is. Usually try to keep at least 30% headroom on them.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we have existing roleplay groups, they've spoken with us and we allow multiple alts for that purpose. What we don't like is someone who is a pest, making alts and being more of a pest. We've crossed paths with some real characters.

Sunbeam Magic: AAcme City is not a Role Play city.

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: I watch for and check alts. If for RP I dont need to watch them, If they seek free land or other options I do

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we do not allow alts to take free land if the original has free land, for instance, that's cheating.

Jedburgh Dagger: What are their policies on copybotted items brought in from other grids?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: define copybotted, first without a takedown notice from a real creator we wouldn't know.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: What you do on your region is your thing. I don't play content policy. If we receive valid takedown requests for content they are investigated and acted upon accordingly. That's the legal requirement we have based on the jurisdiction, but I see regions as private property like any rented apartment so I don't go barge in unless there is good reason for it.

Han BoShi: Back to the locked accounts for DreamWorld grids, I suspect the white listing is then by grid, once one person goes through the process anyone else on that same grid is fine.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Han is correct for that grid

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Yes. If we can see that a conscious effort is made to understand the implications of grid operation and the hypergrid then there is no reason to restrict them

Ellemir Maven: Someone (I think Sunbeam) was asking about regions per server. Three of the four grids we have had present, have offered an option where we would get a dedicated server, just for our community. In the case of Zeta, that server would accommodate up to 32 regions.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: in our original conversations we discussed that, our answers here in this meeting are more general.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Up to and starting at being the key words there. Depending on the scale you need there are different options. Also not out of the option to change hardware if it ends up being too small or not suited well. It's hard to nail that down to numbers when you can have 100 empty regions that use barely any resources or two regions require a whole server in themselves.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: depends on how much land impact, how many scripts and how many people, how much area too.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: I did look at some options that would work and their prices already, would help to have information on how many regions you have now and what resources they consume on the machines they sit on.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: for example we have 120 simulators running the ocean, each with 4 4x4s. but that's kind of extreme, it's not overloaded though. I hope this was helpful. I meant to say to JayR Cela, we can accommodate a Bullet region on its own, although moving scripts is kind of my personal project.

JayR Cela: I have 3 questions please..... 1. Do you offer an in world voice solution(s)? 2. Were you recently affected by the infamous grief-er Priscilla and if so how was this situation dealt with ? 3. Can a region owner move their region to another place on the world map ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: ah yes, what to do post-vivox, hehe, Vincent will take number 2 and 3. yes. you have to put in a ticket. Priscilla was an interesting one to defeat. I'll let Vincent explain.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Oh heh that one is funny. We had some fun with that on one of the estate regions, though that's easy to deal with just deleting their objects via console. It amused me greatly, reminds me of the old SL days. Just not leaving rezz rights on is all you need to combat that, though course did ban them as well

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: for 1. we're all working to find a good inworld successor to Vivox

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com:8002: I gave Ed a number of different ban hammers to play with if they want to be crafty.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: and I spend a lot of time tracking those kinds of miscreants

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: A new voice in SL is already being tested, when that comes to OpenSim remains to be seen. I been working with core to try and find a way to implement it, but webrtc is a big beast to tackle and we don't yet have a full understanding of the protocol. I suspect that will take some time to resolve and not be as easy as vivox was, though it should offer much better quality. It's been discussed on mantis quite a bit and we are aware that a solution is needed now that SL is pushing it :)

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we would be likely to adopt it early though.

Lorin Tone: OK, it was more a comment on the Vivox issue or lack thereof. As an inworld sounds guy, I've been keeping up on that topic and a number of potential fixes are in the works, can be in touch all around on that. end

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: thank you

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Vivox should still work, we don't blankly offer that. In the past we just set the registration details up when those that wanted it registered. So if you still have those we can put them in.

Alia Soulstar: First I’d like to thank Vincent, Ed and Kelly for taking the time to speak to us and answer our questions , very kind of you, thank you, you three…

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: you're welcome!

Alia Soulstar: And to say that I have a full summary of Zeta’s offer to us and how we would look to work with it, plus those of the other grids we heard from, when I say full, 27 pages of information and analysis, some of which is subtle, so plenty to digest. And as Zeta is the last grid to present we are in a position to move after this meeting to discuss and come to a decision. We should make that decision within a few days. And I think it would be prudent to have another meeting this weekend, perhaps tomorrow if that can be arranged as we will all be better informed.

David7 Bravin: THanks Alia, Vincent and Edison - Thanks again for your presentation and answering our questions (including Kelly) .......... On behalf of everyone here, please accept our thanks for coming here today - much appreciated.

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 6

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 4 : Barefoot Dreamers Grid.

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 13:51:00 +0000

On April 20 the crew from the Barefoot Dreamers Grid stopped bye for a visit, Gabe and Hugga were very nice folks and it was a pleasure to meet them.

David7 Bravin: So let's get started... Greetings and welcome Everyone. This is another special Community meeting to continue considering the future of the 3RG Community. We have special visitors here today from Barefoot Dreamers Grid, who will be giving us a presentation. I would now like to welcome and introduce Huga.Bug and Gabe. Collingwood from Barefoot Dreamers Grid, who will be giving us a presentation. Please do not interrupt their presentation and keep any questions to the end - not forgetting to "Raise a Hand" first - and wait to be called.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you David

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Hello First I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to be here today. Gabe & I are the Owners of barefoot dreamers grid, Barefoot is a Dream grid which was created by Fred Bechausen who is also our tech support when needed. I run contabo servers that are based in the USA, they are Windows based as Dream is not designed for Linux, they are 2022 & i back up daily I also have backups offsite as well as with backups on contabo & my self. We do have events we range from 5-20 on any given event our top number was 35 for Gabes birthday & we can hold them all with no lag,we respect our residents privacy, as our residents come to relax & just take a break from all their creativity & other virtual world situations they may come into. What we can offer is a server for 3rd rock residents that is exclusive to you,comparable pricing, we have /use discord to get a hold of us 24/7 should you run into a situation, being a smaller grid we offer our personal touch I am very hands on. I have a great support team should we have any questions to keep our grid running smooth. We have an open door policy and we make ourselves available to all residents not just a select few.

I have been running barefoot dreamers for over 4 yrs now & I also feel it would be a win win situation with your residents & role play members you would have a home & we would grow. We are a smaller grid with loads of potential. We would like you to visit us & see what we have too offer. thank you again for this opportunity & your time.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that presentation Huga, Has anyone got a question ?

JayR Cela: several questions please / Your head Technician is Fred Ferguson ?... Who are or how many backup Techs...and how many Admins do you have ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: I run the servers if there is any major issues Fred helps get us back on track. I am the only one in the servers, Gabe Rayne & I are the staff since we are small. Fred Bechausen is his name.

Jedburgh Dagger: About how many regions do you currently host?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: 93 total.

Lannorra Sion: I just have a comment. I have a non-commercial grid, Phantom Rose, that is also a DreamGrid. It came on line in Jan 2019 and has been running 24/7, since then with very little down time. I have the equivalent of 83 sims and I just want to say, I think DreamGrids are very successful. And a lot more robust than many people realize.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Thank you Lannora,we agree.

Alia Soulstar: Can i ask what the pricing would be for a dedicated server, what is its capacity regions/prims and what are the limits in terms of Var sizing?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes one moment.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: for 16 cores it is 266$usd,var sizing we have had 4 10x10's no issue. We also have had 2 farms no issues,the prims depending size go to 80000. There really is not a limit on prims on the regions that is just a base number

Alia Soulstar: right, so would we purchase the server and give you details of land allocation or would you just create our lands off your ratecard and poke them on that server?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we would purchase the server.

Alia Soulstar: yes, I meant hire it off you

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we will place lands & place them accordingly.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: correct

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes Alia great question

David7 Bravin: and the pricing ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: for land? or server?

David7 Bravin: for both please

Alia Soulstar: ok so just to clarify, that $266 is the cost to us and we fill it though you?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: 1x1 is 5$ 2x2 is 10$ 3x3 is 20$ 4x4 is 35$ 5x5 are 50$

David7 Bravin: Thanks

Ellemir Maven: This is just a follow to the server questing. For 266 a month, you add a sixteen core physical server to the grid, and that's just for our use (not shared with others) and we can have as many regions on there as we want (to some practical limit)

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: correct

Ellemir Maven: Based on the little I know about Dream Grid, if you lost your primary server, your approach for recovery would be to replace the server, reinstall Dreamgrid and then restore the backups. True?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes

Georgina Mills: How many prims on the 1x1 2x2 3x3 etc? Avatar limits? How many avatars allowed?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: all regions begin with 40,000 then can be added without extra fees, we can hold 35 with no lag.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: as many as you want

JayR Cela: Do you have a preferred physics engine or is this select able by the region owner - estate manager ?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: you can select it as you want or need .

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: as for engine if you have a preference you just let me know.

Alia Soulstar: What is your average daily traffic like Huga or Gabe? On non event days?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we get most of our traffic to our huge mall about 20+ daily

Alia Soulstar: and do you have a busy event calendar?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: not at the moment we have 2 days week at moment

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: we had a dj /resident pass away

Jedburgh Dagger: Because it is a topic on everyone's mind, do you have a contingency plan in case of incapacity or unavailability for the servers Gabe?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes we do,great question.

JayR Cela: how is event scheduling and posting them to the BFDreamers event calendar handled ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: rayne does our posting & makes sure calender is up to date

JayR Cela: posting trouble tickets on the BFDremers grids website is handled how ?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: you would use discord we have a help channel

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: I check those continuously through the day

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: and other channels, we both have discord on our phones also to be reached.

JayR Cela: so is the posting of a trouble Ticket handled thru a Discord account or the BFDreamers website or both ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: both

Thoria Millgrove: Could you give a bit more background on your contingency planning? You have to understand that we are very sensitive to that here due to recent events

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Gabe is my backup for the servers

Thoria Millgrove: Meaning he has full access to them if necessary?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Rayne is my right hand so if I were to become ill or an able to do my part they know how to run the gird, yes.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes

JayR Cela: I just want to say that for myself I find Discord can be a nightmare to get working properly / I must be behind the times.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: JayR i use skype also.

JayR Cela: the point I was trying to make is 1 way to initiate a support ticket / the 1 standard properly supported way,not 2 or 3 or 4 ways.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: discord is handled quickest, I use website for those who do not use discord.

Prim Ativ: Two Questions.... what are your thoughts on the community of barefoot dreamers socially integrating with 3rd Rock Grid? i.e. events, etc.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: I have no issues with that.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: I feel we would fit well, as friendly as you all are & we are open & friendly they would welcome others to make barefoot their home.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: i see no problems.

Prim Ativ: Second...what do you feel you could bring to 3RG?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: a home

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we could bring open end opportunities to grow, a place to flourish and keep your dreams moving forward.

JayR Cela: 3 questions on BFDremers grid policies .....

1. How do you deal with griefer attacks....

2. your policies on child like avatars......

3. copybotters or copybotted goods on your grid.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: well we first would double check our securities that are in place, clean up their mess & block them all ways possible.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we have had some visitors that are small kids in families we do not put up with pedophilia in anyway

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: if they are residing on our grid all copy botters have been banned for use

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: child avis are only allowed in certain areas

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: if the creators come to me & inform me of their product it are removed on the spot.

Han BoShi: Do you have any active RP on your grid? Any cultural facilities like our Nuna art gallery? Any educational regions, like our Blender courses?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: not at this moment, we hope to grow to have those available to others if you are here you'd be the first.

Alia Soulstar: Well comment, not a question. I’d just like to thank Gabe and Huga for making this effort to come here today. It was kind of them and very appreciated. And what i’ve seen of their grid i can confirm what they say to be true—friendly people and a personal touch in how it is run. One of the nicer grids out there. :)

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you so much means a lot.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you that is very kind.

David7 Bravin: Huga and Gabe - Thanks again for your presentation and answering our questions. On behalf of everyone here, please accept our thanks for coming here today - much appreciated.

So my feelings so far from the 3 presentations were all positive, we still had 1 more to go before we needed to make a decision.

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 5

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid's Closure - Part 3 - Alternate Metaverse Grid presentation to 3RG : UPDATE !!

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:43:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela :

My sincere appoligies to Cataplexia and Clifford for leaving out thier excellent presentation, before this article was first posted earlier today.

So on April 13 we had our next meeting with the Alternate Metaverse or AMV grid, whom I had heard quite a bit about in the past year or so, due to the large number of events they regularly schedule on a daily basis. I had attended several in the recent past,and being impressed I was anxious to see their presentation. After an impressive and lengthly presentation of what AMV had to offer, the floor was open to questions from the 3RG attendees. Some of these questions and supplied answers, left more than one of us head scratching.

Greetings everyone and welcome to our presentation of Alternate Metaverse, Our Virtual World Grid in OpenSim. Alternate Metaverse is one of the largest and fastest growing and most stable grids in all of OpenSim. We are the two owners of Alternate Metaverse which we commonly call AMV,

HISTORY

Alternate Metaverse began as a company founded by Cataplexia Numbers in Second life back in 2007, which included Stores and SL Marketplace Items which were her personal creations. As she added more and more goods and services, Alternate Metaverse grew and expanded into InWorldz and OpenSim.

In 2019 when Cataplexia Numbers and Clifford Hanger became partners in the virtual world, they decided to do so business-wise as well.

Clifford had started a small Semi private Grid named VWorld and had been working on making it more established and very secure before going public with it.

Once married in August 2019, they changed the name of VWorld and made the newly emerging and fast growing Alternate Metaverse Grid a joint effort.

OUR GRID

Alternate Metaverse Opened our doors to the public on Dec. 5th 2019 and is a very stable grid running on very reliable dedicated servers.

We are using cutting edge OpenSim Code with modifications to incorporate Gloebits, eZombie and parts of LaNanni code, all new code is tested on our Test Grid and here on our Yeti regions [3, 5x5s] We use bulletsim as standard, regions can choose to use UBODE on request.

On May 1st we will be rolling out the new Nessie Code throughout our grid. It has been tested on our Test grid for months first to ensure reliability and stability and the tests have yielded excellent results. Cliff has been adding more and more features on the technical level, and creating innovative scripts and HUDs as Cat has been adding more regions and features within the livable grid and aiding our residents in navigating them.

We are recognized in OpenSim as the fastest growing grid in the metaverse.

Our grid is Adults only and filled with a wide variety of clubs, schools, art galleries, Free shopping areas & Malls, Holiday & Seasonal regions, beaches with swimming and surfing (including 3 clothing optional beaches), castles and fantasy areas!

We are for the most part, a very large and close knit family on AMV, welcoming to visitors and newcomers from all over the world. We are a very safe and inclusive environment without discrimination of race, gender, sexual orientation and choices.

We do not open our doors to child Avatars as we once did due to numerous problems with sexual age play and children approaching adults to adopt and finance them.

We do not ban other grids on the Hypergrid easily but have when attacked with copybot viewers causing damage to regions. We now detect Copybot viewers and ban entry to our grid to those who use them.

In our events, we all watch out for other scheduled events and avoid stacking multiple events at one time to ensure a greater number of people attending these events. As opensim grows more we shall expand on that because there will be more attendees.

We celebrate and respect the individual rights of creators to give free content or charge if they decide to. If you created it, you should have the right to choose whatever you wish to do with it. Despite this fact, most content is free on AMV or very low cost in a few circumstances.

WELCOME

We welcome you to Alternate Metaverse Grid, a warm friendly Adults-Only grid with Sail-able Open Waters & Air.

Copy and Save your own OAR from our website, Self Restarts & Rollbacks.

Self serve performance check.

Low cost land packages, Regional God powers available, Super fast Land Creation & Customer Service. Large reliable servers. Online since 2019, FREE HOMESTEADS, 2 FREE weeks on your first land purchase, and a choice of many FREE pre-built regions you can have put on your land.

AMV is a community grid filled with Parks, Beaches, Diverse types of Roleplay including GOT & Adult, Arts, Performers & DJs Daily, Karaoke, Open Mic, Zoos, Galleries, Community Areas, Clubs, Luxury Cruise Ship, Spas, Several Malls & Stores, Raceway Island Regions, Amusement Park, Zombie Hunt, Adult Getaways, Dinkies World, Memorial, Spiritual & Chakra Exploration & Education, Game Nights and countless places to Explore & Enjoy!

Own a region for as low as 5$ USD monthly! The Home of The Arts, Chakras In Motion, Mystical Paths, Prana, Samsara, Serenity Chapel and Koryphon Academy.

OUR OFFERING TO 3RD ROCK GRID MIGRANTS

For the current expansion proposal we are prepared to Offer:

A) Exclusive use of a whole new dedicated Region server will run 60 to 70 regions of mixed size @ $500 per month, or

B) Use of 50% of the above @ $285 per month, or

C) Free regions for your “Nuna” gallery region, Free Educational regions and new regions at our current rates for up to 5x5 regions, and specials by negotiation prim count, size, god mode.

If you do choose option C. - Cliff and I would like to make an offer to 3RD Rock Grid migrators, to house Nuna Gallery and your school at zero cost. We support the Arts and Education very strongly. We could integrate your existing classes into Koryphon Academy if you wish, or provide you with free land to house your school on. Frankly I feel that integrating with Koryphon Academy would provide an inlet into the community here so it might be a good path to follow, but the choice is up to you, we are fine with whatever you decide.

For many reasons we feel that the 3RD Rock Grid residents would find a happy and peaceful new home in our world and we would equally be happy to expand our AMV Family!

A place like Alternate Metaverse feels incomplete without Space RP, it is almost as if we were waiting for your amazing Starfleet RP to make us whole!

SAFETY – ON A SAFE GRID, NO ONE LOSES

Our expansion into grid creation, we decided to create a place that will allow the consumer freedom. I came from InWorldz and I lost a lot there as one of the biggest creators in InWorldz. I owned many different stores filled with my original content – including a texture store where I lost many of my textures... lost a lot of my art.

We wanted to create a place where people don’t lose....period

PERSONAL INFO & DATA - AMV takes only an email address from customers NO Personal, Credit or financial info ever hits our servers, we do not even ask for your real name, avatar names only.

MONEY - We arranged for money to not be handled by the grid...We use PayPal and Gloebits...So people never lose cash here...they can redeem cash and Gloebits externally to AMV.

LAND - We set up Cold storage so people if in the hospital or on vacation or extended leave will NEVER lose land that they have built on as well as the ability to save their regions at any time to their hard drive. We allow all residents to do their own OAR downloads, Region Restarts, Region Rollbacks AND have regional god powers if they choose to do so.

SAFE is freedom from risk of financial loss, we neither collect or store any private information other than your email in order to contact you, this is linked to your Grid Avatar and securely encrypted password. This means it is impossible to be financially hacked.

SAFE means we allow you to copy OAR files of your regions and to rollback 24 or 48 hrs automatically and on request rollbacks for up to 6 months.

SAFE means we scan every login to our grid and prevent access to copybot viewers, known copybotters and griefers.

All of these things are geared towards the resident suffering zero loss.

AMV currently runs on a modified 0.9.2 version of opensim with mods for EZombie and some time saving mods by the late Lananni Sundara.

In May 2024 the grid will be updated to run on the more efficient Nessie 0.9.3 latest stable dev release. AMV currently uses 7 large dedicated servers in a Chicago data center with excellent and fast connection to data highways. The First one of our 7 dedicated servers is our GRID Server, the other 6 are Region Servers. All our servers are interconnected by LAN to provide fast communication with each other. Our server provider maintains our servers which are wholly owned by them.

All important drives are protected by RAID configurations allowing replacement of faulty drives with no downtime. Our grid server runs typically at 6-12% cpu so we have lots of wriggle room.

We use file based Assets stored on a large raid configured drive, they are backed up over the LAN daily to two separate copies on our biggest region server.

Grid server databases are backed up locally every 3 hours and are immediately synced to our cloud server.

We store database copies for 2 days worth in the data center and in the cloud.

REGION SERVERS

Using large dedicated servers allows us to host regions efficiently and means we can offer Residents regions up to 10x10.

Regions are backed up to OAR files daily, stored on the Region server and synced to the cloud. Region databases are also saved every 4 hours and synced to the cloud and stored for two days. Regions are auto restarted every 24 hours when empty, tested hourly. Regions can be restarted manually on our website.

OARS on our cloud server mirror the Region servers plus weekly copies are stored for 2 months, after this monthly copies are stored for 6 months, then monthly files over 6 months are downloaded and stored at Cliff’s home.

Our regions are backed up as OAR files daily on the region servers, available for customer download or rollback (last 2-3 days).

AMV will load existing OAR Files onto any land you purchase at no cost to you.

We provide our residents with an avenue on our website where they can download their existing land OARs to their hard drive themselves at no cost

Residents may also perform rollbacks themselves within 2 days of and accidental terraform or building mishaps. Please be aware that all changes to the region will be lost that were made in between the rollback and the date of the region you are rolling back to.

Residents also have the power to restart their own regions – Log into Website, find the region in your profile tab.

Residents can also check how their region is running on our website.

IAR files can be backed up for you upon request and be made available for you to download, including large ones. Please be aware that they do take time to load and will take time to download onto a hard drive or other avatar as well.

An example of a very large IAR is Myself, Cataplexia Numbers. My inventory is roughly 315,000 items at my recent IAR. It took nearly 2 days to save, cost Cliff a lot of work to load and set into an alt avatar and was 132Gb in size.

I highly recommend you do not ever let your inventory exceed 150,000. This is where you begin to lose access to mass quantities of content and start having serious issues loading your inventory…..these are the reasons WHY I had to back mine up into an alt. I lose access to content often.

Clean and organize your inventory!

Clean your SUITCASE weekly and after every power shopping spree or it will slow you down and inhibit your teleporting and crash you often. It is meant to be a TEMPORARY storage so that you can travel lightly without loading your entire inventory!!

FIX IT BEFORE IT IS BROKEN

When our grid server died, and admittedly it did, we were back on our feet within less than 25 hours...with a brand new server, running perfectly – With ZERO losses suffered!

We keep assets doubly stored - so we lost NOTHING.

This is our ENTIRE OUTLOOK...the resident loses NOTHING...Period.

I was so adamant about that when I signed on for this because of what InWorldz did to me and countless friends

Everything breaks at some point - it’s how you recover that is important

everything breaks - you need to expect that - if not it leaves you unprepared and vulnerable.

GRID STATISTICS

copied from our website on 4/10/24

GridStatus: ONLINE Online_Now: 718

HG_Visitors_Last_30_Days: 1,487

Local_Users_Last_30_Days: 496

Total_Active_Last_30_Days: 1,983

Registered_Users: 3,673

Regions: 856 Var_Regions: 526 Single_Regions: 330 Total_LandSize(km2): 667 Login_URL: http://alternatemetaverse.com:8002

Website: https://alternatemetaverse.com

Login_Screen: https://alternatemetaverse.com

Version: 2020110101

LOGGING IN FOR THE FIRST TIME

Logging in to our Grid

Our web address is https://alternatemetaverse.com

Joining is free and open to all who accept our terms and pricay policy.

You will need a Viewer. We strongly recommend Firestorm for Open Simulator as your viewer which you can find on the “about “ tab of our website.

Our Grid is recognized by Firestorm, go back to your log in screen and type your name (first and last) and password, and choose Alternate Metaverse as the grid.

All residents get a free Mesh Avatar - there are about 20 to choose from. You may change this in any way once you have entered the grid.

Send in your email confirmation, if you cannot find it, wait a few minutes and check other folders such as spam, promotions etc. as sometimes email programs try resorting mail.

We have an external chat IM program which allows live text chat to our mentor and management team if you have any issues logging in.

As you enter you will be on AMV Welcome, and can travel all over the grid and Hypergrid from this point.

GRID STAFFING

Where each grid has generally one owner who runs around doing it all, we have two, and a huge well Trained & Educated staff of Mentors and Management. Our mentors even create land and answer support calls with knowledgeable and informative answers 24/7

MEET AMV STAFF AS OF APRIL 10, 2024

Clifford Hanger - Grid Owner & Technical Administrator

Cataplexia Numbers - Grid Owner/ Aesthetics, Content & Community Administrator Chris McCracken - Grid Manager / Senior Mentor

Lilie Finesmith - Grid Manager - Mall Manager & Lead Mentor

April McKenna - Assistant Grid Manager / Dean Of Education / Special Projects /Housing Sofee Supermarine - Publicist / Greeter

Ted Junior - Special Projects Manager/ Senior Mentor

Taffy Starr - AMV Mayor / Greeter/ Yardsale Manager

Desy Graywolf - Senior Mentor / Staff Educator /Housing Manager

Tyler Mathews - Housing Manager / Senior Mentor

Doc Mercury - Senior Mentor / Special Projects Staff

Chris Dayellis - Senior Mentor

Tingting Parx - Senior Mentor

Serenity Graywolf - Mentor

Winona Evergarden - Mentor

FREE HOUSING AVAILABLE

AMV provides Free Housing to all in need unless they chose not to. Free private homes are available on request at the following Homestead regions:

Homestead Riverville 1 Homestead Riverville 2 Homestead Riverville 3

Tiki Cove

AMV Neighborhood

We also have housing at AMV Community Farm – A community farming co-op housing and work project

ENTERTAINMENT, FESTIVALS & THE ARTS

We greatly support the arts by housing several Art Galleries, The Live Poets Society, OpenMic & Karaoke venues, and Live Theater venues on AMV. We provide support and celebration of visual, poetic, performing and multi-media arts.

For entertainment, Alternate Metaverse throws an annual Festivals of the Arts & Carnival, Fashion shows, Koryphon Academy Events & Classes, Burns Night events, Halloween, Christmas & New Years Events as \ well as Annual Winterfest, Autumnfest, AMV Birthday Parties, Valentines Parties, Easter egg hunts and Easter parties.

We have daily Late Night & Early morning parties @ AMV Welcome featuring some of the greatest Live Djs on the Hypergrid! We also feature grid sponsored bi-weekly live performances by the incredible Beccca Baxton, MrMikie String, Icky and Sum, BG Singer, joao Frazao, Mavenn Live, Khiron Ametza and Zoree Jupiter at various venues.

Additionally we provide our residents and HG visitors with several live performers and DJ events weekly, Check our website’s Grid Calendar tab and Opensim World events for dates/times & Events. We are open to all who wish to call Alternate Metaverse Grid their home!

EDUCATION

We teach not only residents but visitors as well for free at AMV’s Education Center, Koryphon Academy. We also have extensions to Koryphon Academy called Chakras In Motion and The Seed, which both are of a more Spiritual and New Age type of teachings (Chakras In Motion). The Seed features our weekly meetings of exploring home & self, meditation and inner growth both individually and as a grid community. We also have the Avatar Education Center for new/learning avatars.

Prim Building and Advanced Building Classes run through Autumn/Winter seasons with Rique Giano and are incredibly popular.

We offer a sound usage class every two weeks taught by Lorin Tone.

There is also Bible study education at Serenity Chapel and a school of Arts Magicans at Mystical Paths, both owned by private owners.

ROLEPLAY

Alternate Metaverse supports on-grid roleplay and is the home to the largest Game Of Thrones Roleplay venue in OpenSim. We also have Meridian- Mer meets human RP, Lycan & Gothic RP, Medieval fantasy RP & Heaven & Hell RP at Mythical Realms, Gilligan’s island /Fantasy & Gypsy Roleplay at Metasea, Zombie hunting Roleplay and Adult RP The Rendezvous. We do not have any Space themed Roleplay and quite frankly we look forward to that coming here, should Starfleet be joining Alternate Metaverse.

FOR THE SECOND LIFE REFUGEE

If you have made the adventurous journey from Second Life to Alternate Metaverse, you will notice right away that prim count availability is off the charts compared to Second Life. Add that to Open waters & Air, Attractive Mesh starter avatars, free Downloads and uploads, free shopping, free spacious homes available, free photos, free self partnering and de-partnering, Self OAR Saves/Rollbacks & Restarts via our website, God Mode availability, Free Education, and travel throughout the hypergrid to countless grids. You will feel as if you have finally found your happy place just sign up and THAT is free too!

THE FUTURE

Our main goal is to provide all of our residents with an inclusive, happy and creative atmosphere that they can feel comfortable to live in, with great entertainment and amenities already built into the grid, and they of course are free to build and add what they wish to add to this community.

We offer education and supportive chat on many levels such as our Talk To feature on our website for help, Discord Servers for both AMV & Koryphon Academy with AI sites in Mid Journey and Wambo for creating art, and Mumble Group Chat as well as in world voice. AMV has a very dedicated, supportive and well educated staff who is always happy to help newcomers, visitors and long term residents around the clock. We hold occasional Town hall meetings where everyone is free to contribute and inform our residents about new Grid Features, Events and plans for the future of AMV.

Happy Residents and Visitors make a happy grid, Simple Ethos!

BUYING LAND ON AMV

We provide land packages that we feel are very fairly priced, with the first two weeks of your land tier free credited! For a list of land prices and options such as water surrounds, isolated regions and god powers, Visit the land tab on our website at https://alternatemetaverse.com

We have pre-built regions we call Demos, some with homes, some only landscaping. These are available at ZERO COST to you when you purchase your land to place them on! We have several available from nature to beach themes and even fantasy!

The lowest land packages are 5 USD.

Billing options include invoice or AutoPay

Optional God Mode features are available.

We have open water /air features available as well.

For those without land, we provide starter parcels/houses free for residents to use in what we call Homesteads. Ask our staff if you are interested!

Overcrowding is prevented by simple rules over region placement:

No-one shall have populated regions adjacent unless both owners agree.

Grid connected regions will have “water” regions adjacent at least the same size as their region. Water regions are navigable by residents and visitors, vehicles my be used on all water regions by Residents.

ALL residents are free to use our open Air & Water regions for boating, flying, traveling and exploring!

AMV also offers audio streams (shoutcast or icecast) and video streams (suitable for teaching aids, movies and karaoke, in that all viewers see the same thing at the same time unlike YouTube style media).

Please take a look and let us know if you wish to be a part of our growing community!"

David7 thanked Cataplexia for the presentation and asked if anyone would like to ask any questions.

The very first question was from..

: Dolfke Barbosa: 1. do you use load balancing, and how many servers do you have at the data centre, I understood 7, but I may have misunderstood.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we do not use load balancing.

: Dolfke Barbosa: how do you move regions from one server to another pls ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse by copying the db and config files we rarely have to.

: Dolfke Barbosa: my second question is more basic,how much do you ask for a region and a VAR pls?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : a 1x1 with 10k prims is $5, vars vary with size and water surrounds.

: Dolfke Barbosa: lets say a 4x4 VAR with 30.000 prims?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : but 1 5z5 fully surrounded with sail-able water with 85k prims is $55,our standard 4x4 hs 70k prims at $40.

: Jedburgh Dagger : What sort of 'bench depth' do you have for your technical team, just as a worst case scenario, since having a succession plan is a very important issue given our current circumstances.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : our mentors can solve most tech issues,in terms of disaster mitigation, Cat and i share our passwords and our phone numbers are known to managers,the datacenter takes calls 24/7

: Jedburgh Dagger : My other question is about your backup plan. Do you restore from backups as a test to confirm integrity periodically, or have other processes in place to ensure they work?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse: we recently restored a dead grid server from raid drives,we periodically test rebuilding dbs from OAR files. 3 yrs ago we were hacked,we had to rebuild the grid server from backups, we lost 30 minutes of creation, and were back up in 4 hours.

: Michel Farrell : I have 3 questions. 1. We are used to meetings in text here, in that case people can read back minutes later who have not been able to attend the meeting. That is not possible with voice. How is that done in AMV when people are not able to attend the meeting ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse: we create a pre meeting notecard. When town hall meetings are conducted, distributed to attendees, I have a very detailed notecard, in a box for all to take, and on request to any resident.

: Michel Farrell : 2. What is God mode ? 3. What is the advantage of God mode ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : my stock answer is, if you need to ask, you don’t need it! but I let Cat explain.

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : Ok i shall give an example, I lived on Kitely for awhile, several stores, 17 regions, when i moved out i could not change perms on my own creations i made from scratch. I was stuck with huge beautiful castles i could not give away. When i went to OS Grid, I have my own servers and land, and ALL osg residents have God Mode. So I was able to make all of my stuff full perm again. Admittedly, i went to SL with a copybot viewer, to get MY OWN CREATIONS, i could not export them, because several megaprims were in the builds, and THOSE were created by others, so i had to copybot my own stuff. I luckily did not get caught.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : in AMV region owners can ask for god mode to be removed completely, then no-one can copy incl. grid owners, not even upper management. And illegal viewers cannot gain god mode.

: David7 Bravin: You said that the Grid is "Adults only"...... How do establish if someone is an "adult" - especially as said that you do not require people to use their Real Life names to register ?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : We get child avs all the time, that sign the TOS as adults, they do not make it past staff, We had so many visit that were all interested in two things, sex or cash from adults. We decided to ban them all. When i see a child come in, I say, Are you a child or an adult in a child av? If they say they are, and I direct them to leave and come back as an adult, as we do not accept children on the grid period. If they refuse and return as child avs, they are banned, if they tp away to another region...same.

: David7 Bravin: So it is Adult avatars only .…rather than RL Adults only?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : There are some adults that are not like this but like Child avs, One is singer Rosy oGrady who LIVES THERE. We make her dress as an adult out on the grid, knowing she truly is an adult.

: Dolfke Barbosa: what about when a 10 year old child comes online as an adult ?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : We cannot see them in RL if they are lying, we take them at their word and TOS agreement, we have no choice.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : but if we have suspicions we can interview them

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : but if we were to hear someone on voice...yes we interview.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : but as Cat says it is difficult to prove. Its not the most important thing on the grid.

: Alia Soulstar: If, for example, we took half a server, approx 32 regions, what would the total prim loading be for us to distribute between our regions? And what tools would we have at our disposal to self-organise?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we would use the model we have currently, each region owner or manager has access to a read only console. And can see real time CPU usage on our website, prims at 40-90k per region.

: Alia Soulstar: Yes, so how does taking a server differ from just using your rate card?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : we normally create regions only up to 10x10, beyond that brings immeasurable lag no matter what grid you are on.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : its not usually prims that create poor server performance, its bad scripts.

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : 10 x 10 VAR REGION - Equal to 100 SL Sims (2560x2560)

10 A) includes 1 10x10 VAR Region (the equivalent of 100 single regions) with Management Control of your region and regional God Mode rights.

10 B) Same as 10 A with a single edge connection to sailable waters.

Prim Allowance = 125,000 Prims

Cost for Package 10 A or 10 B - $125 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : That is our going rate for a 10x10

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : 5x5 VAR REGION (1280x1280)

5A) includes 1 5x5 VAR Region (the equivalent of 25 single regions) with Management Control of your region and regional God Mode rights.

5C) as 5A with a single edge connection to sailable waters.

Prim Allowance = 80,000 Prims

5B ) - as above plus, fully surrounded with sailable 5x5s [8] waters

Cost for Package 5A and 5C - 45 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

Cost for Package 5B - 55 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : 4x4 VAR Region (1024x1024)

4A) includes 1 4x4 VAR Region (the equivalent of 16 single regions) with Management Control of your region and regional God Mode rights.

4C) as 4A with a single edge connection to sailable waters.

Prim Allowance = 70,000 Prims

4B ) - as above plus, fully surrounded with sailable 4x4s [8] waters

Cost for Package 4A and 4C - 40 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

Cost for Package 4B - 50 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

: Alia Soalstar : So $500 is the top of your rate card?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : its not on our rate card

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : the server at $500 will run upto 70 regions

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : its a special offer to your grid

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : total cost

: Alia Soulstar: I have read the rate card Cat, that's not my question. So if we buy a server we might want to make a 5x5, a 4x4 a 6x6, and so on with different prim loadings, no?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse :8002: correct

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : We do not offer a million or more prims, that is highly impractical as you are paying MORE for the prims, and will be so lagged out you cannot use that many.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : you can use whatever sized regions you wish, but if you use the prim counts from our rate cards, then a mixed offering would support 70 regions. But not if they were all heavily scripted 10x10s

: Alia Soulstar: What tools do we have to manage that globally as the buyer of the server, to organize our community estates and private estates is my question

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : You have staff to create them for you, just tell them what you want, we create any sized land super fast.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : if you were to come to us, would you be integrating your regions with our "connected" grid? Or wanting a separate area?

: Alia Soulstar: There are different options but yes, we would integrate but, with a server or part server option we would look to enclave within your community with open borders of course

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse.com:8002: ok, we have studied opensim region crossings and some "old" rules are pertinent, regarding edge cases, "no region can have more than one region on any edge" we stick to that always, it means we can put 20 people on a boat and your grid crossings regions with minimal hiccups.

: Georgina Mills: You also have ready made OAR files you can lay down on different sized regions for users still? They were nicely landscaped already when I saw the website ages ago.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we do

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : they are still there and many more added to

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : there are more now.

: Ellemir Maven: Cliff, this is a bit deep for most of this group, but does your grid use a one region per simulator model?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : for residential regions yes, we use multiple regions per simulator for water/interconnect regions.

: Ellemir Maven: then let me be more specific. If we were to get a full of 1/2 server, would it be one simulator per region.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : yes excepting water regions. We limit those to 1000 prims.

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : Does anyone have any other questions?

: JayR Cela: 2 quick ones please / your server software / WIndows or Linux based is first ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : linux

: JayR Cela: #2 any particular reasons you are not currently employing any load balancing support?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we have never seen the need.

: Thoria Millgrove: Aside from the basic open sim source, how much of your platform is FOSS?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : I have never used FOSS knowingly, we use ubuntu20.04 currently.

: Thoria Millgrove: Huh? FOSS = Free and Open Source Software, open sim is FOSS.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : ok, all our software is open source. Ubuntu, apache, mysql, php, mono are our main tools.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : sorry i thought i saw a software company called FOSS.

: Thoria Millgrove: OK, thanks.

: David7 Bravin: If there are no more questions,Then on behalf of everyone here - Please accept our thanks Cataplexia and Clifford for the presentation, and answering the many questions - much appreciated !

After that, we had a rather lengthy after meeting. I will leave how that went to your imagination.

The next two weeks had two more presentations in store, before a decision was made.

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : part 4

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid’s Closure - Part 2 - Wolf Territories Grid presentation to 3RG

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Tue, 28 May 2024 22:04:00 +0000

By Avatar : JayR Cela :

The first of 4 seperate Grid presentations to the residents of the soon to be closed 3rd Rock Grid. : a continuation of, “My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid’s Closure” : May 20 2024

On April 6 2024, we had the pleasure of a presentation by Lone Wolf of ‘Wolf Territories Grid’, and it was impressive, he explained some of the history and expansion, also some unique features and technologies used, server locations, technical staff ect...

: Lone Wolf : "Thanks so much everyone for inviting me, so let's start with a bit of history....

Wolf grid was actually started as 3 low prim sims on second life doing a wild west role play - we outgrew that, then we grid hopped getting bigger each time and eventually moved to our own grid. We went from a few servers to a full hyper-converged cluster, which is what we have now, with over 28000 second life equivalent regions, and 5400 or so visitors to our grid each month, which is growing daily.

About our tech - so this might not mean a lot...... Our servers are all based in a data center in Frankfurt in Germany. The servers and cluster was built by 2 experts in the field, who actually work with the grid - one of them works in the data center. Our grid has a lot of features you won't find on other grids, but one of our main features is how it deals with issues. On Wednesday one of our servers died and the other servers took over running the things that were running on that server, keeping us up and running - so that's what having a hyper-converged infrastructure is about for users. We have a powerful control panel, that includes everything from renaming your region, to our terrain generator that can create a random terrain for your region.

Our staff : we have 3 tech guys: Myself - I've been a programmer since I was 15, I have a high functioning autism; Busty who works in the data center in Frankfurt; and Daja who manages the day to day running of the servers - although 999% of it is completely automated. We have 3 grid admins including myself who provide oversight and 32 volunteer peacekeepers, who are always available to help someone who needs it, plus of course Bobby our AI who knows all about everything.

The grid is made up of a lot of communities, some from different countries, some based on other things. We have 2 universities using our grid, who have moved from Second Life - the University of Texas working on climate change, and the University of Colorado who are just getting things together ! We also have a number of charities, including the VWEC group - Virtual Worlds Education Consortium and a charity that helps people with disabilities access virtual worlds - so we're really busy with both of them. We have a motto on this grid "Don't dominate, facilitate" - so we're here to make people's dreams come true! We have some incredible builds as well, from Luxor through to Jimmy Olsen's Europa. I've listed 6 here but obviously the size of the grid means we have a *LOT* of things to visit.

More about the features : So we have a pretty extensive control panel for users and also regions. There is a video on my YouTube to demonstrate it, you can see the AI terrain generator, we have this live streaming facility you can stream anything on your computer in-world. So for instance, you could share a movie with some friends, demonstrate how to use blender, all in-world. We also have tidal water, so our water goes from 18.5 meters to 20 meters, you can turn this off in the control panel. It means you can build a beach and it works, the tide goes in and out, you could have a road that goes under water when the tide is in. We have a network of star-gates that you can add your regions to by using the control panel, an easy to use events system, a marketplace that can import the products from your region - you just fill in the blanks. We own our own mastodon social networking site, www.opensimsocial.com, and of course Bobby AI integrated into the grid is Bobby who knows a lot about everything, he can write scripts,write a poem, translate it into Chinese,he can tell you where the popular places are right now, etc...

In terms of what we could offer you if you feel that this is a good fit :-) We as a grid would like to gift you a 4x4 region with 1.2 million prims for you to set up a Welcome area. We want to offer you free prim bonuses, so if you rent a basic region say with 20k prims we'll boost it up to 50k to support in moving over, like we've done with a few other grids that became part of us, but maintaining their own identity. So if you wish we would create an area and put your regions there and link them with ocean regions. The whole grid is joined by ocean regions, which means you can sail from one end to another, but it takes hours.

We hope that you find the right place to move to and we just want to help in any way we can. We have something pretty unique in terms of what we are doing and becoming part of that journey is really exciting! Oh and this is a community run grid as well, so we have a once monthly community meeting (it's tomorrow @ 11am ) that anyone is welcome to, where we share ideas and some of our best developments have come from there."

It was at this point into the meeting I had a 90% chance of moving to WTG regardless, and Lone Wolf's presentation impressed me, I think the other 3RG residents attending the meeting were as well. David thanked Lone Wolf for a very interesting and informative presentation and invited questions, which Lone.Wolf answered as follows :-

Slash asked about "Prices".

Lone.Wolf : "All our regions are 1024x1024 4x4, we can do 8x8 and 12x12 on request. For 20000 prims its £20 uk about $24 a month, 50000 £40 uk about $54 a month, 1.2 million prims £60 or $74 i think a month. But as a special offer, we will upgrade you from the one you purchase, so if you buy a 20k region we'll upgrade it to 50k till the end of April :-) The grid will instantly build your region and then we can find a place for you if you would like it moved".

JayR asked "Earlier today you and I discussed your ability to migrate an existing region from 3RG even if it was smaller than a 4x4 and make it all work / can you explain this please ?"

Lone.Wolf : "if you have a region say its smaller than a 4x4 we can load the oar anywhere into the 4x4 - in fact you can use our control panel to load the oars yourself and merge them. We're here to help you with whatever you need". JayR then asked "Please explain the ability to seamlessly traverse the grid".

Lone.Wolf : "We do have region crossings like any grid, however because we own our own local network in the data centre, they are very fast, when you cross a region crossing you are moving from one server to another so 2 things are important - database latency and network speed so that's all very highly tuned".

Prim asked "Thank you for giving us your presentation, I've visited WTG a number of times and the tech is mind blowingly fantastic... However, my question is more about administration... Is there any sort of succession plan if anything were to happen to you? I ask because our previous system admin passed away, leading to this need".

Lone.Wolf : "Yes. In fact we have a full disaster recovery plan being written right now, the other 2 techs are both qualified and able to take over the tech, and as we grow we will start employing more, with the appropriate security. This is a properly run UK Limited company and our dealings with universities etc mean we have to answer questions like that all the time !"

Dolfke asked "What is your Policy concerning IAR's pls ?"

Lone.Wolf : "IARs cause a problem because they HAMMER the region they are running on, right now we are building a new IAR loading server. So the policy is we want to help with it but we need to preserve the load on the rest of the grid, although we do have 40 robust servers lol, so we will have a dedicated region server just for loading iars that will be done probably Monday/Tuesday. OARS you can load yourself".

Dolfke added "I meant more the one time import of our IAR's from here in 3RG".

Lone.Wolf : "That's fine - that's what our new server will do".

Lannorra asked "Do your residents have land rentals?"

Lone.Wolf : "When you rent land from us you can do what you like with it, including renting out land if you wish".

Lannorra then asked "Is there any capacity to have a single sim? separate from a 4x4?"

Lone.Wolf : "We don't do 256x256's because we run each sim on its own simulator so it's not really financially worthwhile".

Thoria asked " First, what's the difference between a tech and an admin?"

Lone.Wolf : "A tech is someone who deals with the tech stuff and admins are more like the day to day running on the actual grid - people who've been with us a long time, although it's actually more about being there and assisting".

Thoria then asked "Second, what version of OpenSim are you using, how often do you upgrade, and do you have significant grid-specific modifications?"

Lone.Wolf : "We are using Open NGC 9.2.2 something, so there are a lot of fixes in it. Upgrades are seamless and we do those after a new release comes out.We are working directly with the NGC devs in fact. Plus we are also working with a new viewer build called the crystal frost viewer, which will run on linux, mac, and windows"

JayR asked "What are the major differences between the official OS core being developed mainly by uBit of OSGrid and the NGC version of OS?"

Lone.Wolf : "The NGC is a fork of the OSGRID version, which basically means the osgrid version feeds into ngc. ngc's differences are a lot to do with things like we use a much faster database driver. It's like 40% faster, so its things like that. You can read on the opensim ngc github if required. (ngc is open source)"

Thoria asked "How does your "hyperconverged" fail-over work, and what is your backup model?"

Lone.Wolf : "Basically it means we don't care where things run. We have a pile of servers and a pile of processes that are replicated across all the servers. If a server fails, it fails over backups are held in two places. Our main cluster is in Frankfurt,we have backups in Dusseldorf and of course striped across international servers using cloudflare r2 storage. Every 15 minutes the whole grid is replicated across all the servers basically".

Jedburgh asked "Do you ever do a forced failover test to confirm it is working, and do you restore from backup to confirm that the backup integrity is solid?"Lone.Wolf: "Yes. In fact the backups are held on a proxmox backup server, so it verifies the backups once a day and we do restores once a week to check everything is good, although tbh we should never need to use them because of the replication going on".

Rhia asked "What is your stance on Copybotting ?"

Lone.Wolf: "I hate it. We want to encourage creators and it's a constant discussion on how to protect IP. and not something that will be solved overnight. However we do have Luna Lunarias main store on our grid and she's doing pretty well with her amazing builds".

Dolfke asked: "Do you have a download location for your viewer pls (so we could test) ?"

Lone.Wolf: "We're sponsoring the viewer at the moment, if you sign up for the crystal frost patreon there is the occasional download, but deffo worth having a look at youtube on it you'll be blown away. https://www.patreon.com/CrystalFrostViewer : This is not the only viewer we are working with but I think it's the most promising".

Slash asked "Concerning copy bots - do you prohibit exports from your grid?"

Lone.Wolf : "No, we don't prohibit exports. HOWEVER these things are always up for discussion and part of the opensim ngc discussions are around this. I think the plan is to implement the export flag so creators can lock them down on the next release of ngc"

Rhia asked "Who are the devs for NGC ?"

Lone.Wolf : "There are quite a few https://github.com/OpenSim-NGC/OpenSim-Sasquatch its here somewhere. Mike and Balpien are involved and quite a few grid owners are involved as well".

David thanked Lone.Wolf on behalf of everyone for giving a very informative presentation and answering all the questions. Allia added her thanks to Lone.Wolf and later went on to say that the owners of 3 more major OpenSim Grids would be attending our last community meetings. If your curious to find out who they were, then...

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : part 3 next week.

JayR Cela

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid's Closure

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Tue, 21 May 2024 01:58:00 +0000

OpenSim : HyperGrid : by Avatar JayR Cela

My virtual life after the recent closure of 3rd Rock Grid is looking rather good right now. On May 15 2024 my home grid for the past 13 years sadly bit the dust. This unfortunate event was something I saw coming about 2 years ago, with the attempt to make a successful upgrade to our OpenSim code from the, 0.8.x to 0.9.x series of open-simulator's main branch went badly. It is not worth going into the details of what,why or who dropped the ball on this move, things did not work out well. It was back in January I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to move to another grid again,and soon.

And so my search began, which grid to choose,who were the people operating the numerous OS-HyperGrid’s out there. I certainly had,had my fill of small grids run by acquaintances, friends and so called OS experts. I wanted cutting edge yet stable modern back-end hardware,and software along with a solid tech team to back up my newly inspired enthusiasm,so I started doing a lot of grid hopping and research. My goal was not only to find just the right for me grid to join, but more importantly, which grids to avoid.

When the final news was announced that 3RG was closing down for good,4 meetings with different grid owners were arraigned to visit our community,and have their presentations of why we should migrate to that specific grids operations base. In the mean time back in March I just so happened to become friends with one of the admins in the ‘Wolf Territories Grid’or "WTG", and the things she was telling me about WTG were intriguing to say the least. It was at this point I decided to create my ‘JayR Cela’ avatar there,and began transferring portions of my 3RG inventory.

Several weeks later we had our first Grid Owner's presentation in 3rd Rock Grid…..

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : part 2 next week.

https://jayrcelasecondlifetechnologist.blogspot.com/2024/05/opensim-hypergrid-my-virtual-life-after_28.html

JayR Cela

3rd Rock Grid : Will CLOSE on May 15 2024 !!

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 15:20:00 +0000

By Avatar : JayR Cela

Impromptu, Unscheduled 3rd Rock Grid Community Meeting, March 30 2024 @1:00pm grid time.

Location :: hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/Community%20Bravo/122/127/...

In case some 3rd Rock Grid residents that may still not be aware that the grid WILL CLOSE ! on May 15 2024 !

Efforts are currently underway to preserve some portions of 3RG and move what we can onto another grid. This hopefully will include as much as possible, however this may also require some additional work on our (current residents) part, to make this transition as seamless as possible. In order to do so it is important that if you are interested, that you attend this meeting, and the subsequent weekly meetings now scheduled thru April and part of May 2024

Please note these meetings are for current and or past 3rd Rock Grid residents only, unless you have been specifically invited as a guest speaker then, please attempt to contact your current friend(s) in 3RG and request an invitation.

Thank you.

JayR Cela

3RD Rock Grid : 3rd oldest Open Sim Grid Slated for closure May 15 2024

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 16:54:00 +0000

By Avatar: JayR Cela

I am very sad to announce what seems to be the inevitable closure of the historical 3RD Rock Grid in OpenSim. I say historical because it is notable as being the 3rd official OpenSim grid to open for business many,many years ago. I joined 3RD Rock in early 2011, shortly after it opening and have been calling it my virtual home away from home since then. Due to a recent series of cascading events our servers are inaccessible by our Adim team, below I will post a portion of my transcript copied during our last community meeting date March 23 2024.

[13:09] David7 Bravin: 5. GRID ISSUES.

[13:10] David7 Bravin: Anyone ?

[13:11] David7 Bravin: If not .....

[13:11] David7 Bravin: moving on to...

[13:11] David7 Bravin: 6. ANY OTHER BUSINESS

[13:11] David7 Bravin: Eldovar ?

[13:11] Eldovar Lamilton: yes, thank you

[13:12] Eldovar Lamilton: As all of you have noticed of the past one and a half years, fate has hit us hard during the past time.

[13:13] Eldovar Lamilton: 1. It all started when we lost our system administrator from one day to the other without any further notice. We were left without access and documentation to the grid, and the person refused any further contact. To the day we have no idea why he reacted as he did, because from our perspective there was no reason at all to do so, our relationship seemed good, he received much more than the money he requested for the work he did.

[13:14] Eldovar Lamilton: It took us a long time to get access to the servers again. And the biggest problem that remained was, that he had rewritten (and improved) a few core parts of the Opensim software, but other than agreed, he never gave us the source code of those program parts.

[13:15] Eldovar Lamilton: 2. In October last year we lost one of our most important servers: the one that was running the Starfleet regions and many more important regions, we call it server 107. Kira Tiponi worked hard to get that server replaced and managed to restore all the regions that were there and finally, at the beginning of January this year, she succeeded. The plan was, that she shows nme everything she has done and gives me full access to the new server 107 at the beginning of February this year.

[13:16] Eldovar Lamilton: 3. In January, we got the sad message, that Kira has passed away. She did not have time to pass over all the information that she had and that was necessary to access the new server.

[13:16] Eldovar Lamilton: This was the final stroke to the grid as well.

[13:17] Eldovar Lamilton: Despite all our efforts, the situation now is, that we don't have access to all the servers - I still try to get access to the server housing company where the physical bare metal servers are running. Even with that, we do not have access to all our servers, those few that we have access to, we cannot manage because the system administrator that helped us move from the Florida servers to the new servers in Europe, has rewritten some crucial part of the software, and we don't have the source code to it (as mentioned above).

[13:18] Eldovar Lamilton: To summarize the situation: this grid is not manageable anymore.

[13:18] Eldovar Lamilton: As a consequence, we have decided heavy heartedly, to shut down 3RG.

[13:19] Eldovar Lamilton: end

[13:20] Thoria Millgrove: Next month will make 15 years since I rezzed in 3rd Rock Grid

[13:20] Georgina Mills: 3rd oldest Opensim grid closes, I wish it wasn't so!

So in a nutshell that’s the story. If there is any assistance or advice you may have to offer, please feel free to contact me at

jayr.cela@gmail.com

I will present any information during our next community meeting scheduled for April 6 2024 at 1:00pm grid time, 3rd Rock Grid is tentatively scheduled for official closure May 15th 2024

Thank you.

JayR Cela

3rd Rock Grid : The Great Central Lake : August 2023 update

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 01:00:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

I have been working on this project in 3rd Rock, the OpenSim grid, for about 8 years or longer, all that time I have been trying to recreate a conglomeration of some of the many wondrous places I was able to visit and explore across the USA in my youth. I have to admit that I enjoy the beauty of nature, especially lakes and rivers, creeks and so on. I also enjoy boating, especially power boats and other high performance watercraft.

The problem is I can not afford any sort of life other than the one I have, fixed income, low rent subsidised apartment, and it is not to bad, I have nothing to complain about. So I wanted to create my fantasy world. I have been gradually working on this project, and I doubt if it will ever end.

I want to honor a deceased friend and one of the founders of 3rd Rock Grid, and the Great Central Lake

Zinnia Frenzy : may she RIP

Without her similar vision to mine, this project would have never become the project is becoming. Also thanks to Dolfke Barbosa, Thoria Millgrove, Kira Tiponi, and way to many other people to list here, also special thanks to Emerson Ronas, and Light Sprite. So I say thank you everyone for contributing your ideas and making available so many free building assets.

I am just waiting to show off - share some pictures of the recently completed North East shore lines, with special thanks to all of the other friends I have met over the years, and now, I invite you for a look at the pictures and a visit.

There are many full perm assets available.

JayR Cela :_)

grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002:Great Central Lake

Open Sim : Firestorm Viewer : Linux : Voice : and the Flatpak installation BLOCKED ! Updated mid September 2023

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 23:51:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

Article Update : mid September 2023 the link is working properly again too install the latest available viewer.

___________________________________________________________________________________

I don't get riled up very often about much of anything, however sometimes I do get a bit pissed off at narrow minded idiotic reactions to people just trying to use some OPEN SOURCE software in order to actually be able to use the Voice function while using the FireStorm virtual world viewer software while in a Linux desktop environment

A bit of a background, several years ago the company that supplies the Vivox voice services made a decision to no longer support the Linux platform. This resulted in the loss of the Voice feature in OpenSim and SecondLife for all Linux users.

This problem was able to be solved by using the Wine https://www.winehq.org/ Windows programs compatibility layer to run native Windows based programs while using your Linux desktop, and for the most part it works well.

There are a number of questionable issues that are of concern, this Flatpak, that is no longer working will download several window manager packages that are no longer supported and labeled so, at this point things get kinda weird, and it depends on which fork of the FireStorm project you download and use.

It seems to me that the Flathub Firestorm download is currently not only Broken it is : FORBIDDEN

─ $ ▶ flatpak update

Looking for updates…

ID Branch Op Remote Download

1. [✗] org.firestormviewer.FirestormViewer stable u flathub 1.0 kB / 168.3 MB

Error: While downloading https://downloads.firestormviewer.org/linux/Phoenix-FirestormOS-Releasex64-6-6-8-68380.tar.xz: Server returned status 403: Forbidden

Updates complete.

error: There were one or more errors

jayr @ action1 ~

└─ $ ▶

What pisses me off is, I can not use Voice while using a Linux based computer, without the ridiculous workaround of installing WINE in order to have it function properly.

I guess that the Firestorm team is following Redhat when they will no longer allow access to the source code.

This is just DUMB....

Jessica Lyon / please help us.

Article Update : mid September 2023 the link is working properly again too install the latest available viewer.

Open Sim supposed friends who scam you,or were they just in over their head bragging?

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 17:52:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

I really needed to relax before I finally decided to post this. Yes my home grid, the one I consider home after being a resident for 12 years was ripped off by two people, one of them who was a long time trusted resident. I guess we should have known better that when you meet a know it all wind bag, you need to watch out before paying them any type of real currency to do a job they were not qualified to undertake in the first place, so shame on us. I will not be publishing the names of the persons involved or my home grids name.

JayR :_(

Open Sim : Hypergrid : Scam Artists and Con Men : What do you do?

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 08:36:00 +0000

By Avatar AjayR Cela

This is a subject I really thought I would never have to bring up here in Open Sim. I am talking about people that perpetuate a persona of them actually believing they are the Master Guru in OS and He or She possess's such vast amounts of knowledge in the Open Sim Universe, no one can compare.

Or is this person a con artist ?

The best part is when they sell you their non-existence services, and once they make numerous excuses, for why things are not working you are left holding the bag.

These are scams.

I am about to expose a major one.

OpenSim : Hypergrid : Firestorm Viewer for Linux now available as a Flatpak

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 17:21:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela :

If you are a Linux user more than likely your familiar with the Flatpak application distribution method of publishing user applications, along with others such as Snaps and App Images. There are pros and cons to all three methods, my personal feelings favor Flatpaks over the later two, and I recently found the Firestorm viewer available on FlatHub : the Firestorm Viewer page. : https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.firestormviewer.FirestormViewer. This page does list an older and SL specific version of FS, however as is typical with Flatpak apps, the most recent version and with Opensim logins enabled is the one used during installation. It also seems that Vivox voice is working natively in Linux again as I can see the voice indicator dot operate correctly above my avatars head as I key up the mic. I have not had a chance to test this with someone yet.

And this info is listed in the viewer Help > About Firestorm menu.

Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.02.07

Dullahan: 1.12.2.202202071031

CEF: 91.1.23+g04c8d56+chromium-91.0.4472.164

Chromium: 91.0.4472.164

LibVLC Version: Using gstreamer 1.0

Voice Server Version: Vivox 3.2.0002.10426

If so this would mean no more having to use the Windows version of FS via WINE, just in order to use the voice feature again. Yay :_)

One thing I need to mention here is the Firestorm team does not recommend the download and installation of their viewers from anywhere other than those linked on the official FS Web site. You have been warned.

My experience using Flathub and Flatpaks via my distributions Application Store over the past two years have been good, problems encountered so far were minimal and minor, also Flatpaks by design are run in a sandboxed environment, so the likelihood of a virus or trojan infecting you system are extremely low. As always do a full system backup before any unrecommended application install, and you should be fine.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : Hypergrid : Griefer Defense the Easyway for Estate Managers

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 19:33:00 +0000

Opensim has traditionally been considered by many resident's as being griefer free, or close to it. This is not the case recently, unfortunately one or more bad actors are spreading pain around the Hypergrid. Why they do it is not worth debate, what is worth talking about is how easy it can be to thwart, discourage and prevent it from happening to you. I am assuming that you have estate manager privileges and the land is set to a particular group with by invitation only group membership.

Once all of these parameters are verified, simply go into your about land settings and select options, in the everyone section turn off the build, object entry and run scripts check box's.

This is your best and easiest way to implement a solution that I know of.

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim~HyperGrid : Update : New Graphics Card for OpenSim on a $300.00 Budget

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 18:55:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

Recently I was talking about my new PNY-Nvidia-Quadro T600 video card and how it works in OpenSim environments. This thing is a monster for my 3rd Generation Intel i7 3770 with 16 Gig of ram computer, it seems to be a good match for the computer a DELL Optiplex 7010 MT, with no discernable bottlenecks between the the 8 year old Intel i7 and the new GPU, it was an easy way to upgrade my HyperGrid user experience,while not emptying my bank account on an overpriced Nvidia RTX or AMD XT based card along with a power supply upgrade too.

I paid $269.95+tax at NewEgg online and $24 for two Mini Display Port to DVI adaptors, so I was just a bit over my budget, I am very impressed with the results I am getting in OpenSim. In closing I would like to say, depending on your circumstances I would highly recommend the card.

JayR Cela :_)

Upgrading my Graphics Card for OpenSim on a Budget

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 22:32:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela :

Wow the words "on a budget" in current video card deals is a bad joke at best. I have purchased a new Nvidia T600 video graphics card recently / it is the same Tensor Core silicon used in the 20xx and 30xx series of cards / it is designed for entry level workstation graphics production and has by current standards a low price tag / it has 640 CUDA cores / 128 bit 4gig GDDR6 memory and 1.709 TFLOPS and 4 MiniDisplay Port outputs / it is state of the art low priced brand new card and is already being sold for prices way above MSRP / I paid $300 US for mine and is currently going for $400 US / was it worth it ? / yes and no / in OpenSim I did gain about 10 to 15 FPS for some situations / others not so much / in other non OpenSim related graphics programs ( retro game emulation ) it is a huge improvement from my previous Nvidia GT730 1 Gig DDR3 card / the thing I like the best about this particular card is that it does not require any additional power besides that supplied by the PCIe slot, and will work in low profile computer cases as well.

I'm just passing this information along/ for opensim use only and at $300 US was a bit expensive, however I feel it was worth it.

JayR Cela :_)

To any of the people that have read this Blog over the years

noreply@blogger.com (JayR Cela) — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 23:42:00 +0000

By Avatar JayR Cela

Please get vaccinated for this Covid virus.

you owe this to your fellow human beings, and it's your duty to help out.

PLEASE Get Vaccinated

JayR Cela