SecondLife + Openlifegrid = OpenSim

Having been a resident and sim owner is SecondLife ( http://secondlife.com/ ) as run by Linden labs based in part in the American West Coast, I naturally explored alternatives. RealXtend ( http://www.realxtend.org/ ) came along, and a little clunky, but techie, and a stand alone concept.

Realxtend demonstrated the use of meshes representing objects, a departure from Second Lifes Prim technology.It showed there are changes and possibilities around the corner. It was fun to create a form of Secondlife on your own pc, however, it lacks a certain something. One of the reasons Second life has done well is the sheer numbers of people using second life, this diversity creates an ever changing environment. A stand alone copy means you have it all to yourself and no visitors. Sad in a way, you can be king of the world, albeit the only one in your world. You become more like a marooned skipper, time passes and innovation comes and goes, but on your lonely island, you see nothing more than the changing of the day from day to night, and then from night to day.

I feel you need to be able to share.

Openlife Grid is good competition to Secondlife, but apart from pricing and politics, is more of the same. By that I mean its the same model, but with a very different political philosophy. Openlifegrid are talking about using meshes and ओथेर technologies to create a platform very different in feel to the Secondlife Grid.

Openlife led me to downloading my own copy of the Opensim grid, it a free download and is released by 3DXStudio under the openLifegrid banner.

It was very easy to set up, it more or less installed itself and although the documentation may be cumbersome, it took very little effort to have my own grid, 9 connected simulators to create my own Pangea.

Then, as if the lightning bolts from the ideas factory were not enough, my partner loaded it on her machine, and we hooked the pc's together to form a small network. Now we have connectivity and the sight of another avatar dropping into a sim on my own PC filled me with enough enthusiasm to need to get the next step running.

While America waged polling war between Sen. McCain and Pres Elect Mr Obama, we configured our router to port 9000 and opened ourselves up to a colleague in Belgium. She had the worlds worst internet connection and her laptop fizzled and sputtered to connect, authenticate and drop, twice , more , and again and again. In the end we gave up exceptionally happy the server here was seeing her login attempts and was confirming her account and her handshake.

Now
I need two more hurdles to pass.
1) Another grid OpenSim grid user to teleport into my Pangea and for us to teleport to their grid.
2) More importantly, the next evolve of virtual words needs to happen and for this I am wide open to any suggestion. Sooner or later, our grid has to share digital space with another grid, so that users can freely step between grids without seeing the dynamic and sometimes catastrophic teleport between worlds. For this to happen, we need to find a way of having our grid and their grid alive at the same time in the same space. I am open to suggestions and ideas.

Feel free to contact for more info, for ideas or any other reason.

River Ely