Saturday, June 25, 2011

The Imprudence Viewer 1.4.0 Beta and Open Sim ~ Interconnected and How Much So ?

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Ok any one that follow's this blog know's I love SL, and my feeling's towards LL are a bit jaded at times. But hey, someone has to do it, no butt kissing here.

     A couple of month's ago I swore off from reporting on LL's Version of Viewer2 until 2.8 is officially released. And I intend to do just that, wait until the Lab, hopefully get's it's act together.

    So let's get down to the focus of today's post, and the next few week's series. Imprudence 1.4.0 Beta, and Open Sim. Just how important and interconnected are the two of them ? And what and where is the future of Virtual World Technologies leading us too.

     Back around the first of the year, the Imprudence team made a bold announcement, they were not abandoning SL. The development team however  had made the decision to turn their focus towards Open Sim. An excellent choice in my opinion. The emerging Hyper Grid business, eventually will one day eclipse the walled garden of SecondLife. And leave the Lab smoldering in the ashes of the fire. That ironically they themselves started 3 years ago in a partnership with IBM and the now abandoned Inter-Op Project.( The ability to inter connect diverse Virtual World Grids seamlessly. Just like The World Wide Web is today ) Inter-Grid connectivity is not going to go away folk's, it's just getting started !

    So this bring's us to Imprudence, which it seems has become the  Virtual World ( VW ) Viewer of choice,  and  DeFacto Standard of the expanding Open Sim Meta-Verse. I intend to spend the next several week's using Imprudence 1.4.x ( Imp1.4 ) for the  purpose of  learning everything I can about it, Open Sim, and Hyper Grid. ( and to do some Grid Hopping )

    This is not going to be a totally new learning experience for me, as I have already dipped my toe's into the OS water's. The InWorldz, SpotOn3D and 3rdRock grids are all Open Sim based Virtual Worlds. However none of them are Hyper Grid connected. My intention's are to first, familiarize myself  with Imp1.4  And then see what the heck all this Hyper Grid business is about.

    I have recently started a new project for my SL partner Cathy. She has been having a good time as a Mermaid lately, so I decided to do something special for her. We have some spare space  beneath  the pier at our riverfront home, on the Mallard River in SecondLife. This seems like as good place as any to get to know Imp1.4 before I venture out into the wild, wild ( Open Sim ) West. ( so to speak )

    As you can see, Imprudence 1.4.0 come's right out of the box ready to explore Virtual Worlds, other than SecondLife.


















 


     The initial preference's setup menu is very straight forward and generic, which is a good thing considering the circumstances involved with crossing from one Virtual World to another.










 

     Ok now that I have taken care of the initial setup, we come to the log-in screen.


















 

 
     And now arrive at my River Front Project in SecondLife, where I will take a day or so getting comfortable with Imp1.4 These four white homes you see were all designed and built by myself over the course of the past 7 month's, using the Phoenix Viewer. ( my personal favorite for building purpose's ) So considering that, Imprudence will have to meet some pretty high standard's in order to make a good impression.



















 

     One of the first thing's that I truly fall in love with right off the bat, is the ease of which group chats I can readily choose to mute. If you happen to belong to an overly chatty group, no problem, just un-check the appropriate box.



















 

     I'm using the Gemini Skin right now, and the color scheme seems a bit difficult on my eye's, so next time around I will try one of the other 3 supplied.


















   


     Well time to descend into the river, and give this project some thought.












    As you can see, I have already started working down here using the Phoenix Viewer, and Cathy has begun setting out some Mermaid furniture. My intention's are to use Imp1.4 to finish it.



















 
 
     I am very excited about writing this forthcoming series of post's. It is something I have been wanting to do for quite some time now.

     My recent renewed interest in Open Sim was first sparked by Hypergrid Businesshttp://www.hypergridbusiness.com/  a wonderful Blog written by journalist Maria Korolov, her coverage of the emerging Open Sim phenomena is unsurpassed and quite extensive.

    The tipping point came this morning upon my reading of the Imprudence Blog. They announced the new 1.4.0 Beta Viewer, ( look for the June 22 post here http://blog.kokuaviewer.org/  And the extensive Release Notes on version 1.4.0 can be found at. http://wiki.kokuaviewer.org/wiki/Imprudence:Release_Notes/1.4.0
Needless to say, these folks are seriously devoted.

     If the thought of an inter connected Virtual World intrigue's you, may I suggest downloading the Imprudence Viewer 1.4.0 Beta, and follow along with me for the next several weeks. It should prove to be interesting.

JayR Cela :_)

P.S. I am hoping readers so inclined, will please consider making your idea's, advice, suggestion's  and questions heard, via our comment's section.  Thanks :_)


xxxx

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