#outworldz

Exploring the worlds of Opensim today, I decided to stop by the meeting that the Kitely crew were having. I am very new to actually venturing into opensim, and have actually spent my years in Second Life.

I recently installed and setup the free installer for Outworldz and have been running my own region. (You can get the free Outworldz installer at http://outworldz.com/Outworldz_installer/ )

With this opensource ability, you can own your own sim, on a local machine, that connects you to the entire hypergrid, and not have to pay access to anyone else! You can also determine how large your region is and how many regions you have. It is all limited only by your computer!

Anyway, back to my post... while still immensely enjoying Second Life, I wanted a little more freedom to actually build and try out some new things, without having to watch my prims and pay upload fees to LL. Since you’re running your own sim, there is no prim limits, and no upload fees. Also, in the hypergrid, almost everything you’re paying for inworld at SL, you can find free all over MANY other grids. There may be some restrictions for permissions on those items, of course, but they are free!

Second Life operates within its own, enclosed bubble of sorts, but within the hypergrid world of opensim, you can explore so manay different and varied regions all built by others. A lot of the places will also allow you to claim land and regions for free, so you don’t have to pay a tier at all.

If you wanna get help for installation (as I needed some things worked out at first for being able to hop to other regions) the Google community has been awesome in support: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/100189142861137606972

For now, I will still have Second Life and my railroad stations, but I will ALSO have my own region(s) within the opensim world. It’s all about exploration and building and sharing.

Another thing that I was pretty surprised about were the actual amount of people that I came in contact with in some of the grids. While before I had heard that opensim was fairly dead as far as people being online, I actually came in contact with a lot of people in several regions. Plus I attended a show and tell session for builders at another sim (more in a different blog entry). It is refreshing to see others around the grid, and know that it is alive and kicking!

I won’t go into a lot of detail about the meeting at Kitely, but the gist of it was the owner discussing plans and directions for the sim in general, as well as the direction that large sims are going in particular. It was fascinating and enlightening.

So in closing, I may not have my region online 24/7 simply because I run it from my own, local machine. However, it is listed on http://opensimworld.com so if you decide to visit, you can always see the online status of my server. And of course, the direct link to get there is http://wedjlok.outworldz.net:8002

“Phaze”ing Out of Second Life

One thing you quickly learn about Second Life, is that nothing is forever. Our favorite stores, designers or builders come and go, leaving behind heartbroken residents. Running a business in Second Life is expensive and time consuming, not to mention the hassles and grief you get from disgruntled, drama-prone customers. Creating can be rewarding and fulfilling, but not always easy.

One such…