Fun with prim math - What would YOU do if you had 45,000 prims at your disposal?

While many of us are agonizing over how to cope with Second Life®'s upcoming 750 prim limitations for the same Openspace sims that were sold to us with 3,750 prim allocations, I can't help wondering what you would do if you had FORTY FIVE THOUSAND prims to play with on your sim.

Consider, too, that each of those 45,000 prims is scaleable to 100m....

Indeed, you can purchase a single Openlife Grid region within a private cluster for $145 with $75 monthly tier.

And yes, your ankles will often sink into the grid, your avatar may bounce dizzingly, and even endless Ctrl Alt R's (rebake) won't save your often sorry bald self from a bad case of the greys. It's not a grid for the vain. Yet.

No charge for texture uploads, either. Yet. I imagine this will change when Openlife's new economy kicks in by the end of the year.

Many thanks to Osiris Indigo who sent in this photograph of a playful moment over at one of the more viable alternatives to Second Life, the Openlife. He reports that it was "rather easy and stable," to do.


45,000 prims! by Osiris Indigo (Click to see large)

Seriously, what would you do with 45,000 prims on your sim?

Can Linden Lab stop the exodus?

I dropped in on my new friends over at the Openlife Grid this afternoon and learned that they've enjoyed 30,000 sign-ups and over 1,000 land orders, just this week.

Meanwhile, Hamlet Au (aka Wagner James Au) has just reported that in his phone conversation today with Mark Kingdon, Linden Lab's new CEO said that "in the next few days, the company will post an update to this policy which will incorporate feedback from Openspace owners."

Too little, too late?

* Second Lifers have banned together in the many thousands to protest... well over 5,000 in the SOS group alone, and that's just one of four groups that I'm aware of.
* The LeavingSecondLife email address has received dozens of fascinating emails already from people that, while not claiming that they are leaving Second Life® for keeps, have made it clear that they are upset and looking elsewhere, especially on the Opensim grids.

Is Kingdon just putting a finger in the dam?

Openlife: Is it ready for most Second Lifers? No. But that day doesn't seem so far off

Is one-year old Openlife ready for the mostly social user of virtual worlds? The fashionistas? The Universities? The VIP dOOds and the bling-ettes? Absolutely not. Yet.

You cannot teleport a friend. Instead, you have to give them a landmark, and they may not even receive it. A teleport may very likely end with a crash. Poseballs are mostly hilarious. Click to sit and you may find yourself upside down or doing an odd dance in mid-air. You can't spend a dime, there is nothing for sale (except land) and... well, you get the picture. Openlife is still in Beta.

Can you create cool content?



Most of the builds I saw during my short visit to Openlife were crap. I need further explorations to understand the limitations there, but a visit to Exodus (teleport directly from here) - created by Gino and Linda McCallister with help by Grimly Graves - was a clear demonstration of its potential.







At this point, you can't terraform beyond 15m-/+, but tier for mainland regions costs $59 a month, and each region supports 45,000 prims, and regular prims are scalable to 100m. And per my conversation with Openlife's founder and president, Steve Sima, features coming before the end of the year include:

- Support for OGRE.MESH 3D Objects (Import 3D Modelled objects)
- Avatar 2.0 (advanced next generation Avatar System, including 'real' face texture mapping)
- Python Scripting
- Avatar-to-Avatar Private Skype Calling
- In-world Spatial Audio Voice support

Importantly, Openlife also expects to have a working economy by the end of this year.



A real Community

Openlife enjoys a strong sense of community and neighborliness. Everyone I met there has a Second Life account, but most spend the bulk of their time in Openlife building this new world. They've rolled up their sleeves and are working steadily and together to make their dreams a reality here, together with their leader, Steve Sima (aka Sakai Openlife), with whom they meet once a week!

I'm thinking that NPIRL and Impossible IRL should begin to establish a presence there and welcome any thoughts on this topic from our members.

Hello OpenLife®?

I have been away from Second Life® for one week. My mother died and my sorrow as well as all the things that needed to be taken care of after her demise kept me in Real Life.

The support and the affection that I received throughout this week from my RL friends and relatives (and especially that of my students who came out in full force to be with their nasty old school marm) has made me wonder as to how wise of a thing it is from an emotional standpoint to be spending such extended periods of time in a second life, to which I am after all only connected to through this ephemeral thing called technology. One power outage, one satellite failure - and I am pretty much on my own here, aren't I?

The trouble with all of these good intentions of cutting down on my virtual life and giving my real life more of a priority is that at this point Second Life has become the place in which the very concept of creativity excites me in a way that I have not felt excited about creativity in a very long time indeed.

Real Life art and design had been leaving me thoroughly cold for quite some considerable time before I had even heard of Second Life: Real Life art I gave for the reasons here, and Real Life design for the deplorable symbol of status and income that it is. The remarkable thing that metanomics has brought about is a world in which neither the production nor the consumption of creative output is an indicator of financial resources. After all, the poorest of poor avatars can create the most stunning of outputs in a sandbox. And kitting yourself out through the acquisition of the creative output of others is not an indicator of your financial status but only of your ingenuity, your imagination and your resourcefulness. After all, in a world where the equivalent of a few real life dollars will buy you the fanciest of cars how can what your Rolex watch tells us about your wallet be of any possible consequence?

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that at this stage the Residents of Second Life are in the process of creating a social structure unique to the metaverse. But unlike the one in Real Life, what seems to me to be happening here is that (maybe even for the very first time in human history?) we may have the emergence of a true meritocracy. A meritocracy in which nothing but your imagination, your creativity and ultimately your hard work will determine your social status. Wow!

I returned to my second life this morning to find out that in the meantime all hell has broken loose. The Openspace pricing and policy changes announced earlier this week by Linden Labs are very hard to forgive indeed. Surely, Openspace abusers can be held under check through different means? How about charging such Residents based on the calculation of additional prim usage on an Openspace? And not only is this hard to forgive it is also hard to understand: Second Life is no longer a sole option. The competition is already here and it is hard core. Bett has already signed up at OpenLife®, I shall be doing so the very minute after I have posted this, especially now that I have read that OpenLife is also expected to have a working economy by the end of this year. And surely Linden Labs must be aware of the colossal resources that are spent at IBM for the development of a fully three dimensional world wide web which, as we are given to understand, will operate very much along the model of today's virtual worlds.

I am hoping that Second Life will revise this decision. Although it does not personally affect me, it bothers me: My island is an educational island and who is to say that tomorrow there will not be policy changes related to educational islands also? That what we have here today is only the thin end of a truly nasty wedge yet to come? But beyond that it bothers me since it tells me something about the governance of Second Life that makes me very uncomfortable indeed: Shortsightedness.

Openlife's Steve Sima has a message for Second Life's content creators

October 29 Update: Openlife: Is it ready for most Second Lifers? No. But that day doesn't seem so far off

As of 6pm SLT today and following Linden Lab's announcement last night that it will be raising its tier rates for OpenSpace by 65% in January, 800 new registered users signed up on the Openlife Grid. That's up to 16 times the average 24 hour sign-up rate. I was one of them.


Minutes away from my Ruthiness, this is newbie Bettina Tizzy on the Openlife Grid

OpenLife is an alternative virtual world that celebrated its first year of existence two days ago (October 26). Like Second Life®, it is built out by its residents. It also looks and feels a lot like Second Life, largely because it is built on Open Source technology that was released by Linden Lab. The User Interface is almost identical to Second Life and even Windlight is available. Most importantly, users can create content with flexis and sculpties and more, and next month, Openlife will begin to unveil features that Second Life doesn't enjoy.

I crashed a couple of times, lost my freebie hair after teleports, exchanged names and friended dozens of Second Lifers who were there to explore, and had a blast.

I also met with several warm and welcoming Openlife land owners and developers and checked out some of the spiffier content there. I'll be sharing some of my findings on that soon, but thought I'd begin with one of the highlights of my visit: a sit-down chat with the founder and President of OpenLife Grid (3DX), Steve Sima (aka Sakai Openlife).



Steve (Sakai) has this message for content creators in Second Life:

Sakai Openlife: The Openlife is both a developing and rapidly growing world. Demand is high for good quality content. And for those wanting to take their creations to the next level, our next generation features like 3D mesh objects (coming soon) mean you can get a level of detail not possible within the Second Life space. You have a chance to shape the world and grow within it.

Care to hazard a ballpark guess on when you expect to have 3D mesh objects?

Sakai Openlife: December is the current timeline... Start the new year with some fresh innovation ;)

Are people here using Skype now?

Sakai Openlife: In-world voice will come at approximately the same time, as will avatar-to-avatar Skype calling, another new feature.

In-world?

Sakai Openlife: Yes. Right click Skype Avatar.

What voice technology will you use in-world beyond Skype?

Sakai Openlife: I believe the work has been done using the Speex codec, so spacial in-world voice with an option to make a direct Skype call to an avatar if you have Skype installed and the Avatar has supplied their Skype ID.

Did you see Linden Lab's new pricing announcement last night for OpenSpaces?

Sakai Openlife: Looking at it from a users point of view, for many people this is entertainment and no one would be happy with that kind of an increase, especially in the current environment. This is a great opportunity to exercise the virtual legs and see the rest of the virtual universe. Openlife is a good example. We're happy to see new people; help them get started and listen to what they want in a virtual world.

Openlife is also expected to have a working economy by end of year.

See also:
OpenLife Grid Wiki