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.

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