Friday, November 29, 2024

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual World Life after 3rd Rock Grids Closure : Part 9 : the WrapUp

 By Avatar JayR Cela

    This will be my final kiss goodbye to 3rd Rock Grid. I was not happy when my longtime grid decided to shut down. I am very grateful for the warning and proper shutdown procedures that were provided to all of the residents. Unfortunately my attempts on influencing the ultimate migration decision failed. So I decided to write a series of blog posts that would describe the decision process as accurately as possible, and without introducing to many, or obvious on my part, conflicts or criticisms of the final choice made. This is the reason I simply posted the community meeting transcripts as they unfolded.

    So today I have the last meeting transcript held in 3rd Rock Grid. I have to say for myself, this was the final straw that broke the back of this migration to ZetaWorlds. Never-mind the rampant child role play present on this grid. We got screwed, plain and simple. The fantastic AMD based dedicated server we were promised, "suddenly" was no longer available.  So the only obvious solution at this late in the game, turned out we got one giant Estate region. Yes you read that right, no separate server, no anything that had been promised. I don't know exactly what went down behind the scenes, nor does it matter what I think. I do know this much, everyone that wanted their .OAR and .IAR files were able to get copies of them from the 3RG personnel left in charge of the shutdown. So in reality that is all that matters.

  David7 Bravin: Looks like everyone has arrived. Let's get started.For the record everyone please say "Here"

PurplePenny Broome: Here

Han BoShi: here

Nila Shvaress: here

Alia Soulstar: here

Dawn Greymyst: here

Georgina Mills: Here

Prim Ativ: Here

JayR Cela: here

Ellemir Maven: here

Michel Farrell: Here

David7 Bravin: Thanks everyone. Welcome to the Final 3RG Community Meeting.

David7 Bravin: I understand that Prim has an announcement ....

Prim Ativ: Hey Everyone, We are going to be holding a 'transition dance party' right after the community meeting is done today.  First we will be dancing at the Shooting Star venue, Where the Starfleet Boogie is held, with DJ Elle for 30 minutes.  And then move over to 3rd Wind's Shooting Star venue as a group and continue the party there.  Lets say our goodbyes to 3RG and celebrate our community's next chapter.  If you need LMs please let me know!  Thank You, End.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that Prim. Alia - would you like to give us all an update on the migration to ZetaWorlds please.

Alia Soulstar: yes,thank you David.

Alia Soulstar: I can report on the asset migration first, We have now moved 80 percent of our lands (via OAR in most cases) and have a high degree of fidelity in terms of things rezzing properly and working as they should. A lot of us are in a happy place with our avatars too — many thanks to Eldo for providing IARs and Zeta (Ed and Vincent) for loading them, there are inevitable minor transition issues of course… some arise from switching physics’ engines, some from moving from one OpenSim code base to another, and a few are OSSL variations. Positional scripts all need amending and LMs need replacing. We found note-carded and call-up scripts, NPCs, dance balls, vehicles and mesh collisions are our main problems, we are working on restoring all these things. Astro and BoShi are particularly active in finding us solutions to script issues and they are documenting/sharing the solutions they find. So… if stuff isn’t working the way it used to, let us know. There are solutions for all these issues in the pipeline. We can’t fix everything for you today but we will do all we can to make sure that everything will be fixed. For collision and vehicle issues we can revert your region to Bullet if ubODE is the problem. Earlier the week I sent out an email to land owners about estate tools… on why we don’t have them and how we can work around this issue by assigning them temporarily… I won’t re-litigate the “why”, that was explained in full in my mail which anyone who missed it is welcome to a copy of, but…


***********************************************************************************

Alia Soulstar : I want to remind you that all the 3rd Wind land is treated collectively as the “estate” with our dedicated server set-up, unlike the usual land purchase of a region, so when you are assigned that temporary management tool and you make a global change to estate settings, the change propagates to all our lands, options like land textures only affect your parcel, but some estate access tools can create havoc on other parcels, as we have discovered already, so please avoid “global” features.

***********************************************************************************

Alia Soulstar: second Item is Financials. Amazingly we have been able to cover our server costs through land sales alone—thank you to all who have purchased land in our community and made this situation viable. On top of this financial stability is the amazing generosity of those who have donated as patrons. Because of that generosity we find ourselves in a position to pick up a number of the performer contracts that 3RG established. Supporting the arts is an important pillar of our legacy. It has been central to the 3RG vision right from its inception. All of which means we can move our favourite artists with us to Zeta and continue our relationship with them. This is fantastic news and a huge relief! I think it’s fantastic that we are able to actually pay artists and show our support for the creative economy. This is a huge credit to our 3rd Wind Community it's a point of difference for us in opensim. Obviously we don’t have unlimited resources, there are budget constraints, so without generating more income, we can’t consider new community contracts at this point, or extend our payments beyond an established group of live artists, we can't yet include DJs for example, or guest speakers, but in Zeta we can still support them, tipping artists has returned to the menu. I hope people continue to support them, especially those like Tek, Laz and Rosy who have been so generous with their talents for so long. Finally, I want to thank some people who stood up to save our collective bacon at just the right time. Elle has beavered behind the scenes to enable 3rd Wind—and that’s not JUST a jab at her Canadian origins, we are where we are right now largely thanks to her. She worked hard to assemble our options and she mobilised the moment we settled on one. Thanks to her we were able to build and prepare our new home before we lost this one. Nila has been fantastic too, by taking on the job of treasurer and handling the homestead portfolio… it’s a lot more work than we imagined and it required a lot of creativity on her part. She’s been a godsend and we are beyond lucky to have her services. Astro’s timing in rejoining us at this moment is Swiss (which is probably an insult to a Dane) Cometh the hour, cometh the back-end expertise we need. He and Boshi are toiling away at the dark under-the-hood arts, making the details of this transition work. I want to give a shout out too, to David, who has organised and chaired all our community meetings for so long i can’t even recall when he started, and he’s done it with his distinctive aplomb, he gets my vote as cat-herder of the decade. And I want to acknowledge our friends who administered 3RG for us.

David7 Bravin: smiles

Alia Soulstar: The final outcome of closing 3RG is sad for us all, but it is heartbreaking for them, Alia Soulstar: heartbreak on heartbreak when you consider losing Kira, spare them a thought.

JayR Cela: may Kira R.I.P.

Alia Soulstar: I am glimpsing some of the work and commitment required to host a community and my respect for what they achieved—which was high to begin with—is now off the charts. It makes me personally very very happy that we have not yet seen the last of them. Although Eldo is taking far too much pleasure in sending me help desk tickets in our new home. I hope revenge tastes as sweet as they say it does

Alia Soulstar: When David has closed this meeting, I hope everyone will join us at the Shooting Star Club :) End

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that update Alia - and on behalf of everyonehere    many thanks for the work that you and your team have done on our behalf

JayR Cela: raise hand

Michel Farrell: raise hand

David7 Bravin: Yes JayR

JayR Cela: Concerning the Great Central Lake region / it transfered over intact / however if we want to use the uBoDe physics engine / is not to much of a problem / the jetski's / zodiac's will need to be replaced or rescripted / the speed boats work fine with a minor adjustment to my bump wave system, however if we convert that region back to Bullet Sim physics all that is required is some simple script resets, also I have a new version of the clubhouse and boat docks I would like to bring over to get things up to date, and thats about all I have to say / thank you. End

David7 Bravin: Thanks JayR, I think that the points you made have been noted.

David7 Bravin: Michel please

Michel Farrell: How will it go with the community meetings in ZetaWorlds ? End

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Alia Soulstar: We are planning to make the meetings monthly. This will allow us/our treasurer to prepare a financial report to be tabled among other things, we will use our meetings to steer the direction of the community, vote for leaders, etc... so they are events we should all try to make... the first will be within a few weeks, we are really self governing now. End

David7 Bravin: Thanks Alia. Are there any more questions or comments ?

Alia Soulstar: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes Alia

Alia Soulstar: here is our community event Calendar... it's on the "fun" tab of the main page on our website: https://3rdwc.com/event/events.html

JayR Cela: ahhh / looks nice.

Alia Soulstar: there are a couple of omissions, i need to get a schedule from Rosy to add her and we may still need to tweak a few events to fit with the Zeta events calendar, and for those who missed it our move was written up by Thirza, nice article here: https://hgsafari.blogspot.com/2024/05/into-3rd-wind.html?sc=1715220841070#c7569527300269296528

Alia Soulstar: end

David7 Bravin: Thanks for that Alia. Are there any more questions or comments ?

JayR Cela: comment

David7 Bravin: Yes JayR

JayR Cela: I'm gonna log off in a few minutes and log back into Zeta / someone TP me to Prims party please / and It's been a great pleasure to call all of you friends. Thanks. END

David7 Bravin: Bye JayR - take care

Light Sprite: bye Jayr


    This brings to a close a long chapter in my virtual life. I had spent 13 years in 3rd Rock Grid, the last 9 or 10 years working on my Great Central Lake. That project was preserved and is still present in the 3rd Wind Community located in Zetaworlds grid. Myself, I have moved to the Wolf Territories Grid with my new Great Central Lake 2, and 3rd Rock Lakes 4x4 regions there. Although I have attended all the subsequent monthly 3WC meetings in Zeta, I did not offer any additional monetary support beyond my initial donation during the November 11 2024 meeting and officially resigned from any future related projects besides on an occasional assistance or advice basis. 6 months was all the time I had allotted myself to observe how things would progress, and I see no additional good coming from further coverage of this grids migration debacle. 

    My hope in publishing this series of transcripts is as a learning experience for myself, and perhaps others that may suddenly find themselves in a similar situation. A longtime and well established grids closure can become devastating to a virtual community. I am truly happy for all my friends that were able to get their prized virtual inventories preserved and intact at the new home in Zetaworlds grid.  During the coming months, I will begin my coverage of the Wolf Territories Grid, my new home in OpenSim. 


JayR Cela :_)

No comments: