#opensim

You know I can never pass up a train ride, especially when I see one that’s coming along built by Gabe Sterling. He has some of the nicest and most realistic trains in the whole grid.

I was standing in the Calleta Hobo Infohub when I heard that loud and distinctive horn from a freight train, but, wait!... this ACTUALLY sounded like I was standing there IRL and a train was appraoching. So curiosity got the better of me, and lo and behold, it was Gabe’s newest train he was testing out! So I jumped ont one of the wells and took a seat. I was instantly noticed by the engineer )Gabe) and he once again greeted me to come along for the ride.

Our final destination was Bhaga Station, and about half way there Gabe informed me that the Conductor’s seat was available in the engine’s cab, so I anxiously took it and hung my head out the window for a nice breeze.

All I did was trade a headache for emotional distress.

The entire scene is full of nazis and pedos. If it's not LoStorm where the entire fucking page is one "we're fine and safe we swear! Dont think too deeply on the email handle or the promo images or the program name!" plausible deniability shit- then it's HydraStorm whose creator uploaded a racist and transphobic screed to their Youtube channel, who has said in their Discord server how they are friends with known pedophile Tapple Gao. And yes, the viewer is one big "mcu nazi" reference.

okay so apparently the creeps and predators are in the OpenSim grid system too. Somehow I was naieve enough to never considered this.

Art theft is one [tbh very very minor] thing, this is just... its own brand of hell. And the fragmented nature of OpenSim means there's about the same [near zero] chance of anything being done about them as there was on SecondLife.

... Editing this to add that while it's still awful, there is some admittedly cold comfort to be found.

OpenSim isn't one grid, or even a service. *It is a tool set*, freely given to let users host and run their own virtual worlds. The fragmentation-by-design means my chance of running into someone again is near zero, unlike SecondLife and its walled garden approach. Sooner or later you would end up seeing the same people over and over.

Also the report/block system seems to work here so that's a plus. Now, whether a grid owner would *pay attention* to any of that- There's a thousand other spaces, so one dropping the ball isn't the end of the world.

We rely on SL for updates to various crucial parts; the skeletal system, the environment, the coding. Sure there's minor differences, like needing to have our own physics engine[s], hopping between grids, and the ability to natively save worlds or inventory as files directly on a pc... but where it really matters, OpenSim cannot go it's own way. Hell, the big thing right now is how SecondLife is losing access to an ancient ingame voice chat, and so it and by extension OpenSim are scrambling to seek replacements.

In making my animals for OpenSim, I myself have to trawl forums by SL users- because that houses all the information on rigging, on animation, on best practices for creation. There is one space in particular I know will have a vast repository of exactly what I need to continue- and yet there's a 50% chance I left that place explicitly stating I would never come back.