MUV601 - Robin Le Couteur - Assignment 1, blog 1 - 2018


MUV601 - Robin Le Couteur - Assignment 1, blog 1 -2018

Blog 1 MUVE Platforms - OpenSimulator

In this first blog I’ll be talking about the first of two MUVE Platforms I have investigated. This platform is called OpenSimulator(OpenSim). OpenSim is not developed by one particular organization like SL, but rather by the community.

OpenSim is an open source server platform for setting up virtual worlds, so different worlds are run by different organizations and people. OpenSim is just the software. When a world is set up it can be set up by itself on a single device, or it can be separated with parts of the system with lots of locations on a ‘Grid’. A particular grid will be consistent across locations in the way it functions.

Different grids are not always fully compatible with each other because OpenSim is modular meaning that not all grids work the same. OpenSim’s modularity is quite cool because as well as being able to use most of SL’s scripting language, it is possible to create or use many other scripting engines. You can also use different physics engines, voice systems, and other systems making modularity very useful. As beforementioned, all this makes OpenSim grids less stable, and introduces incompatibilities. This isn’t an issue with SL as SL is a grid in itself.

Some other things to note is that OpenSim grids can have varying levels of content protection and even their own individual currencies. Many grids are also hypergrid compatible, which enables different grids to connect and allow avatars to travel between grids, otherwise, you would have to create a new avatar in different grids.

When you create an avatar in OpenSim, you set it up in a particular grid which becomes your home grid. Details about your avatar and inventory are stored on that grid, and if you travel to another grid while inworld and log out, you will log back in to your home grid.
The grid I joined was Osgrid (https://www.osgrid.org/) which is the largest OpenSim grid currently. It was initially set up just as a development test platform. It is still used as such but it has also become a social network similar to SL.

Upon loading in into OpenSim’s large I noticed that there was hardly anyone around. This reflects the very small userbase compared to sl. The default avatar I got was very simple, and the in general more stuff in the world seemed simpler. It was also quite slow loading and when I went to a location it took a couple of minutes before I could actually do anything. It must be noted that performance largely depends on the hosting of the particular grid.

Here’s my avatar loaded in for the first time:


There is some cool stuff I noticed though, like the existence of bots/npc’s. There were dancing bots and other bots that were scripted to perform lots of different actions. These bot’s have their own accounts, so they are not just animated objects but actual users as such. This is something I haven’t seen in SL yet.

Here’s an image of some dancing bots I saw:

 To sum it up, OpenSim is a software for creating virtual worlds. It is open source and modular, so it isn’t very stable, but it contains lots of interesting features and allows you to do stuff like host your own worlds for free unlike how in SL all the land is owned by Linden labs initially.

Links
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSimulator
http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://www.osgrid.org/

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