May happenings on OpenSim grids – Hypergrid Business

Plenty of events happening around the OpenSim metaverse this month. The big social grids have packed events calendars. Check out the InWorldz Events Calendar and the InWorldz Event Announcements Forum Page.

3rd Rock Grid and Virtual HighwayÂ also have the month of May packed full of music and other community events, as do Avination and Metropolis.

Metropolis alsoÂ celebrated its sixth birthday last month — see the photos on Daniel Voyager’s site.

Tropical Paradise Virtual World celebrates first birthday

Tropical Paradise Virtual World, a small commercial grid, Â celebrates its first birthday this month with a grid-wide hunt and musical events.

The grid’s anniversary falls on May 5, a Tuesday, so the festivities will take place on Sunday, May 3, starting at noon in-world time on the Welcome Island region.

“We will be handing out notecards with the landmarks promptly at noon,” said grid COO and co-founder Ashlie Avelino, also known as Moonfairie Baxton in-world.

(Image courtesy Tropical Paradise Virtual World.)

Musical events begin at 3 p.m. on the Storm Front region.

“We are also pleased to announce that Melonie Romano — owner of Ratmataz Animations & Poses — has joined the grid,” she told Hypergrid Business. “We wish her success in TPVW and look forward to some great animations for the grid.”

SkyLife grid adds a 100-region sea

Sailing and boating fans should rejoice — the SkyLife grid has added a megaregion the size of 100 standard regions.

Josh Boam

“SkyLife grid is boat orientedÂ as I myself create yachts and we just got Duran Marine and Breen Yachts in SkyLifeÂ so we should be getting some nice boats soon,” grid founder Josh Boam told Hypergrid Business.

Megaregions allow users to travel across a large area without hitting region crossings.

This is particularly useful for vehicles, including boats, since scripts and attachments continue to work and there are no jitters or “rubber-banding” at the region crossing areas.

A more recent alternative, varregion, is also available but only in the experimental release of OpenSim and won’t be part of the official release until the next update. In addition, megaregions work with older viewers while varregions require that users use the latest releases of Firestorm, Singularity, or Kokua viewers.

Logicamp gets new domain, upgrades hardware

The French-language hypergrid-enabled Logicamp grid has finally replaced its DynDNS Web address with a real domain — logicamp.org.

All of the grid’s hypergrid addresses are changing as well, toÂ Â logicamp.org: 8002: region name.

According to grid owner DidierÂ Preud’homme, this is due to the change in terms and conditions relating to DynDNS IP addresses.

“Because we have a VIP account, the measure does not concernÂ usÂ directlyÂ but we preferÂ to takeÂ this changeÂ to make aÂ smooth transition toÂ the newÂ logicamp.orgÂ address,” he told Hypergrid Business.

DynDNS has also been in the news lately because it stopped offering free DNS services. This is a feature that some small grid owners use when they host a grid on home computers where the IP addresses change frequently. IP addresses are the string of numbers used to identify a computer’s actual location on the Internet. The human-friendly domain name simply points to that IP address.

Logicamp does offer land rentals, starting at just 10 Euro (US $14) a month. An increase in renters has allowed the grid to upgrade its computer equipment, saidÂ Preud’homme.

“It should help alleviate overall system load and improve scalability,” he said.

In addition, it also allows the grid to roll out its new Spa-Francorchamps racing circuit on Spa Plaza. Hypergrid visitors can take a look by teleporting toÂ logicamp.org: 8002: spa1.

Littlefield parties onÂ Kentucky Derby, Memorial Day

The Littlefield grid, a mid-sized community grid, is celebrating both the Kentucky Derby and the Memorial Day holiday this month with dance parties.

Speakeasy region on the Littlefield Grid. (Image courtesy Littlefield Grid.)

The Kentucky Derby party will be held on Saturday, May 3, on the Speakeasy region. It starts at 8 p.m. pacific with mint juleps and female guests are encouraged to wear large summer hats. Hypergrid teleport toÂ lfgrid.com:8002:speakeasy.

The Memorial Day beach partyÂ and barbequeÂ will be held on Saturday, May 24, starting at 8 p.m. Pacific and will feature a life DJ, dancing, and fireworks at midnight. The party will be on the Coney Island Beach and Boardwalk regions, teleport toÂ lfgrid.com:8002:coney island.

Poets and storytellers join Kitely

The on-demand Kitely grid has seen the arrival of some poets and storytellers recently.

For example, the Seanchai Library, a well-known location in Second Life,Â now has a presence on the grid. The first story telling session is scheduled for May 2 at 7 p.m. Pacific, following an estate tour at 6:30 p.m. on the Seanchai region. The group has a central four-region megaregion on the grid as well as eight separate themed one-region islands, all open to all Kitely residents.

For even more literary happenings, check out the new Poesy region on Kitely. This region is home to the Babel On! coffee house, the virtual offices of A Poet’s ProgressÂ author Stephanie Mesler, the Poetic Good group of metaverse authors working for good causes, and the book and art shop Catalyst Designs.

The region hosts the ongoingÂ Haiku Throw-Down, weekly live poetry readings by Mesler at 3 p.m. Pacific on Sundays, and the Babel On! weekly readings by guest performers every Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. Pacific.

Oren Hurvitz

Kitely has also continued making contributions to the OpenSim code base, with patches and bug fixes. For example, KitelyÂ co-founder and VP of research and developmentÂ Oren Hurvitz, who is now a core developer on the OpenSim project, contributed several fixes to make teleports smoother. For example, currently, when an avatar wearing mesh clothing teleports from one regionÂ to another the entire mesh asset is sent over with the avatar.

“This made teleports and region crossing extremely slow, because mesh assets can take up several megabytes, and they had to be sent to each region the user visits,” he told Hypergrid Business. “And it wasn’t actually necessary, since the assets are stored on the assets server so each region can load them on its own, without slowing down the teleport or region crossing.”

Another bug fix was to prevent the sending of temporary localÂ assets to foreign grids.

“SinceÂ Â these assets aren’t even stored in the grid’s own assets server, they certainly shouldn’t be sent to foreign grids,” he said. “Sending them was just wasteful.”

Hurvitz also added a function that checks whether a particular asset already exists on the destination grid. “That eliminates the need to send large assets unnecessarily,” he said.

Hurvitz also fixed several group-related bugs. For example, when an avatar changed their active group, all nearby avatars had their group changed as well.

Finally, the Kitely Market has continued to grow, now with 5,133 variations of 2,656 different products, with 2,162 exportable to other grids.

Avalonia Estate now a BDSM adult grid, part-time rentals

Avalonia Estate continues to evolve. The adults-only hypergrid-enabled grid, which previously focused on serving the FemDom community, has now expanded its focus to the entire BDSM lifestyle and re-enabled the creation of local avatars, though hypergrid visitors from other grids are still welcome and encouraged.

Avalonia Estate's grand opening party. (Image courtesy Justin Ireman.) — Avalonia Estate’s grand opening party. (Image courtesy Justin Ireman.)

Another feature is unique to OpenSim grids — part-time rentals. Parcels and regions can be rented just for evenings, or for evenings and weekends, at a discount over regular prices.

This isn’t the same as Kitely’s metered offerings, which can be turned on and off at will. The Avalonia Estate land is billed monthly, and the part-time land would be available, say, every evening and weekend in that month. Land rentals are available both to local residents and to hypergrid visitors.