OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 5 : Zeta Worlds Grid

 By Avatar JayR Cela :

On April 27 we had a visit from the Zeta Worlds grid team, this is what they were offering.

David7 Bravin: OKay - it looks like everyone is here that's coming...... Greetings and welcome Everyone.This is another special Community meeting to continue considering the future of the 3RG Community. We have special visitors here today from ZetaWorlds  Grid, who will be giving us a presentation shortly. I would now like to welcome and  introduce Vincent.Sylvester and  Edison.Rex from ZetaWorlda Grid.Please do not interrupt their presentation and keep any questions to the end - not forgetting to "Raise a Hand" first - and wait to be called. Vincent and Edison -  Please go ahead.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: okay, well. I think we can start with the history of Zetaworlds. Zetaworlds is over 11 years old now, We have servers in both North America and Europe. Our grid runs on Opensim software based on core, but modified.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: It originally started just as a way for testing things, not really doing much headway in community. It evolved over the years into what it is now.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: We've had a free land programme for years now, and we also allow self hosting. I'll let Vincent tak about our approach to grid management.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds: These days the focus is on stability and being a good neighbor in the wider community. I highly value education and try to provide a lot of information both technical and in terms of how we approach the metaverse

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: if you've seen our website you can see how we build on what is there.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: As it evolved out of a testing platform for new features the aim was always to bring movement into OpenSim itself so over the years we have worked to build a working relationship with the core team

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we were early adopters of ubODE physics, for example

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: In terms of community though I leave most of those things to Ed and Kelly here, with a mostly hands-off approach as the saying goes live and let live. It's my goal to allow communities to build how they would like to build and not interfere much unless I have to

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: as to that, the terms of service guides that

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com:8002: For going on 15 years now I have been on and off running communities and engaging with OpenSim, which is what has led to that approach as I think there is much value in providing an open platform like we have. That said I suspect there are some that have heard about some of the policies implemented on our end. The restrictions we put in place to some degree. They are the result of the aforementioned wish to educate on good practices and equally as measure to protect our end. I'm aware that does feel strong handed in some regard, but it is a difficult thing for us to work out. Trying to prevent detrimental effects and staying as open as possible. There is a lot of potential and good in OpenSim and that's worth protecting and fostering, but it needs information. It sounds cliche but knowledge does make a big difference in that regard and over the years it has shown us that it goes such a long way to create a community that critically thinks about problems and seeks solutions that work for everyone. Nobody is perfect and both Ed and Kelly have shown me that there is always things to work on and think about, constant flux if you will. That is why it strikes me very much when I heard about what happened to you. It was almost like a constant that I had relied on suddenly went away. I did send Ed out to see what was needed at first. It was surprising to me to see you reaching out to us, but from the conversations I have had so far it seems that I probably should not have been. While things never align perfectly I do agree that there is quite a bit of overlap in the approach to things, but the extent only time will tell, though I hope regardless of the decisions made that you all find a home your are comfortable with no matter where.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: and with that, we're open to questions.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that presentation Vincent and Edison - very interesting......

Are there any questions ?

JayR Cela: I see that your grid is using ubODE physics engine Grid Wide ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: yes, we moved to ubODE early on

JayR Cela: have you been able to resolve the many problems that seem to be associated with using the ubODE physics engine and Mesh Building structures ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: that's all down to physics hulls.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Outside of specific needs that is the default. While Bullet is still available it isn't maintained in core it is still there. It is meant to get updates according to misterblue, but they have not materialized yet.

JayR Cela: your website says open water and land and air travel are possible or is this a standard feature ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we have a very large series of regions contiguously joined set up as ocean, and by very large, well over 20 miles each direction last I saw.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: That's part of the policies specific to the Ocean project that Ed maintains yes, it's meant to make sure you don't hit banlines, but of course if there is a need for privacy that isn't set in stone either. The regions themselves are all open though for any vehicles

David7 Bravin: Thanks

Jedburgh Dagger: Can you tell me about your server backup plan, and include how often you verify those are good and working?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: over to Vincent for this comment:

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Every 8 hours a auto backup is made, those are moved daily to a backup location and replicated to an offsite storage as well. They are the basic asset-less oars from the auto backup module. Full database backups of all regions are made daily as well. Manual full oars can be issued via the website for anyone that owns a region. From time to time OpenSim hiccups do result in rolling back stuff, so far that has not failed.

David7 Bravin: Are there any more questions ?

Dolfke Barbosa: on your Website I read, the creation of alternate accounts is discouraged. Creating more than 3 accounts is prohibited and will result in suspension of some or all accounts. For Starfleet we have many ships, and every ship has his own crew, read: alts ..., can that be arranged ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: TL;DR, yes

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Some of the education customers we have create a lot of accounts for their students so if there is good reason for more accounts to exist that is generally not a problem. The rule mainly exists for those that utilize them for less than nice purposes. The policy is aimed toward abusers.

Dolfke Barbosa: Understood, a second question, are ppl from a dreamworldgrid welcome to your grid, via HG ?

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: This goes toward the restrictions I mentioned. A problem that isn't well understood in the metaverse surrounding how OpenSim handles hypergrid data. We found a lot of these installations pop up and create data endpoints that then disappear overnight, which causes OpenSim to fish in the dark trying and locking up its pipes to reach them. The detrimental effects can go as far as preventing teleports to regions in extreme cases. Similarly you have issues with DNS caching not following TTL times and such. It's caused us to restrict access to certain known dynamic dns providers as they failed to update in time.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: if you've got friends lists and group lists which you can't remove yourself from, because that grid is gone, or assets with missing parts.

Georgina Mills: So if I turn off the grid at night it creates a new connection that's different?

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: The other thing that goes into this is a legal one. As these setups are open from the start they allow new registrations, which can be used to evade bans or create other havoc. By default they don't provide any way to contact the owners of them or even list who they are. Trying to then resolve problems becomes ten times more difficult and it worries me greatly to whether the operates understand the risks and liabilities of running their grids. We restrict those with a link to more information about those things to try and resolve these. Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: On windows famously DNS ttl times are just completely ignored. It caches the ip for a domain until you reboot, which can lead to all sorts of funky things. The problem is that if OpenSim cannot connect to an endpoint it keeps trying for 30 seconds and there is only so many spots in the queue for those requests to get stuck in. After a while it just breaks down and kills the http connection, which can lock you out of a region in the worst case. In many cases things like friends, creator data of prims and other stuff can cause these issues and leaving these endpoints around not understanding the gravity of what it might cause. Sure they can be cleaned up on our end, but that's time and effort and it is hard to track where it might be needed.

Ellemir Maven: Sorry, I just want to follow that for a moment.  Because although we got a big long answer, I am not sure if it was a No. I think it was (more) As far as I know there are two kinds of Dreamgrid.  One is a home computer behind a dynamic DNS that might get turned on when someone feels like it.  Those are typically outworldz.com systems I think   The second kind is actual servers, with actual domain namwes that are on the Internet 24 x 7, with Dreamgrid just used as a nice graphical interface to OpenSim.  Does your answer apply to both kinds?  And confirm the answer is no?  And then I have my real question.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: again, Vincent will write something, be patient ;)

Ellemir Maven: Of course. Edison I think you can answer my question though.  I know the import IAR and OAR are manual (open a ticket). Can people backup their region to an OAR on their own or is that a ticket request ?

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: When a grid pops up we check their website and see what we are dealing with. If it is dynamic dns then yes those do get blocked and usually stay that way unless it becomes clear they maintain a high availability, which is what the known grids page we have is partly for as well. In terms of new grids that don't use dynamic dns it comes down to their terms of service, if they have at least an email address to contact them under in case there is something we need to let them know. If that's not the case they get blocked, which often results in them contacting us to resolve it. I'd say in 75% of cases they understand the reasoning and supply that information

Ellemir Maven: Thank you.  So the answer to Georgina's question, for the part time grids, is NO they can not HG to Zeta.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: OARs can be requested via the web panel directly, that does not involve a ticket. If an IAR is needed, that's done on ticket request.

Ellemir Maven: and thank you Vincent.  People can backup their region any time they want.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Correct, we encourage people to do that.

David7 Bravin: Georgina - do you still have a question?

Georgina Mills: Same domain name and fixed IP from my ISP but outworldz domain is banned anyway, I can use an avatar from another grid and join Zetaworlds ?

Lannorra Sion: I am not very technical and your answers to this dreamgrid thing is perplexing for me.  It seems that you are saying you ban first, then if someone contacts you, you MAY allow them, is that right? and i have follow up.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Vincent will answer this, be patient.

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: May I say something to this?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: please do Kelly

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: The word Ban is incorrect, they get a blocked message, If they read the pop up it directs them to the issue, Then they can fix it.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: We always deal with anybody who is willing to work with us

Lannorra Sion: What is the issue, that they can fix ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Our website lists them

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: Most times basic web site info

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: any basic contact info

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: When they appear as new in the tracked list then we check what their setup is. In most cases with these setups they provide no contact information and within a day the amount of time online vs offline rarely exceeds 50% so to prevent us having to clear tons of dead endpoints from friends entries, creator data etc. then a restriction is put in place that informs them as to why they are being blocked. The problem we face is we don't want to just blankly remove anyone, but without contact information there is no way to let them know about the potential issues it can cause.

Sunbeam Magic: I have 2 questions: 1) what currency systems does Zeta use  2) how many regions per server are alloted ? and comment follow up on how many avatars one can have, do we need to write someone to get permission for more than 3 (on AAcme City I use 4,  2 are my husband's who passed away a year ago... )  each have different textures  and items needed to maintain and such Thank you.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: We use Gloebits, that's our currency. We maintain a direct relationship with Chris Colosi. Vincent can answer 2, and on 3, you would speak with us. As we said the policy is aimed at abusers.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: I track the server performance and if there is enough capacity left regions get deployed on them, if they are full new server or another one it is. Usually try to keep at least 30% headroom on them.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we have existing roleplay groups, they've spoken with us and we allow multiple alts for that purpose. What we don't like is someone who is a pest, making alts and being more of a pest. We've crossed paths with some real characters.

Sunbeam Magic: AAcme City is not a Role Play city.

Kelly4u.Lynn @hg.zetaworlds.com: I watch for and check alts. If for RP I dont need to watch them, If they seek free land or other options I do

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we do not allow alts to take free land if the original has free land, for instance, that's cheating.

Jedburgh Dagger:   What are their policies on copybotted items brought in from other grids?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: define copybotted, first without a takedown notice from a real creator we wouldn't know.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: What you do on your region is your thing. I don't play content policy. If we receive valid takedown requests for content they are investigated and acted upon accordingly. That's the legal requirement we have based on the jurisdiction, but I see regions as private property like any rented apartment so I don't go barge in unless there is good reason for it.

Han BoShi: Back to the locked accounts for DreamWorld grids, I suspect the white listing is then by grid, once one person goes through the process anyone else on that same grid is fine.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: Han is correct for that grid

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Yes. If we can see that a conscious effort is made to understand the implications of grid operation and the hypergrid then there is no reason to restrict them

Ellemir Maven: Someone (I think Sunbeam) was asking about regions per server.  Three of the four grids we have had present, have offered an option where we would get a dedicated server, just for our community. In the case of Zeta, that server would accommodate up to 32 regions.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: in our original conversations we discussed that, our answers here in this meeting are more general.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Up to and starting at being the key words there. Depending on the scale you need there are different options. Also not out of the option to change hardware if it ends up being too small or not suited well. It's hard to nail that down to numbers when you can have 100 empty regions that use barely any resources or two regions require a whole server in themselves.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: depends on how much land impact, how many scripts and how many people, how much area too.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: I did look at some options that would work and their prices already, would help to have information on how many regions you have now and what resources they consume on the machines they sit on.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: for example we have 120 simulators running the ocean, each with 4 4x4s. but that's kind of extreme, it's not overloaded though. I hope this was helpful. I meant to say to JayR Cela, we can accommodate a Bullet region on its own, although moving scripts is kind of my personal project.

JayR Cela: I have 3 questions please..... 1. Do you offer an in world voice solution(s)? 2. Were you recently affected by the infamous grief-er Priscilla and if so how was this situation dealt with ? 3. Can a region owner move their region to another place on the world map ?

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: ah yes, what to do post-vivox, hehe, Vincent will take number 2 and 3. yes. you have to put in a ticket. Priscilla was an interesting one to defeat. I'll let Vincent explain.

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Oh heh that one is funny. We had some fun with that on one of the estate regions, though that's easy to deal with just deleting their objects via console. It amused me greatly, reminds me of the old SL days. Just not leaving rezz rights on is all you need to combat that, though course did ban them as well

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: for 1. we're all working to find a good inworld successor to Vivox

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com:8002: I gave Ed a number of different ban hammers to play with if they want to be crafty.

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: and I spend a lot of time tracking those kinds of miscreants

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: A new voice in SL is already being tested, when that comes to OpenSim remains to be seen. I been working with core to try and find a way to implement it, but webrtc is a big beast to tackle and we don't yet have a full understanding of the protocol. I suspect that will take some time to resolve and not be as easy as vivox was, though it should offer much better quality. It's been discussed on mantis quite a bit and we are aware that a solution is needed now that SL is pushing it :)

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: we would be likely to adopt it early though.

Lorin Tone: OK, it was more a comment on the Vivox issue or lack thereof.  As an inworld sounds guy, I've been keeping up on that topic and a number of potential fixes are in the works, can be in touch all around on that.  end

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: thank you

Vincent.Sylvester @hg.zetaworlds.com: Vivox should still work, we don't blankly offer that. In the past we just set the registration details up when those that wanted it registered. So if you still have those we can put them in.

Alia Soulstar: First I’d like to thank Vincent, Ed and Kelly for taking the time to speak to us and answer our questions , very kind of you, thank you, you three…

Edison.Rex @hg.zetaworlds.com: you're welcome!

Alia Soulstar: And to say that I have a full summary of Zeta’s offer to us and how we would look to work with it, plus those of the other grids we heard from, when I say full, 27 pages of information and analysis,  some of which is subtle, so plenty to digest. And as Zeta is the last grid to present we are in a position to move after this meeting to discuss and come to a decision. We should make that decision within a few days. And I think it would be prudent to have another meeting this weekend, perhaps tomorrow if that can be arranged as we will all be better informed. 

David7 Bravin: THanks Alia, Vincent and Edison - Thanks again for your presentation and answering our questions (including Kelly) .......... On behalf of everyone here,  please accept our thanks for coming here today - much appreciated.

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 6

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 4 : Barefoot Dreamers Grid.

    On April 20 the crew from the Barefoot Dreamers Grid stopped bye for a visit, Gabe and Hugga were very nice folks and it was a pleasure to meet them. 

 David7 Bravin: So let's get started... Greetings and welcome Everyone. This is another special Community meeting to continue considering the future of the 3RG Community. We have special visitors here today from Barefoot Dreamers  Grid, who will be giving us a presentation. I would now like to welcome and  introduce Huga.Bug and Gabe. Collingwood from Barefoot Dreamers Grid, who will be giving us a presentation. Please do not interrupt their presentation and keep any questions to the end - not forgetting to "Raise a Hand" first - and wait to be called.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you David

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Hello First I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to be here today. Gabe & I are the Owners of barefoot dreamers grid, Barefoot is a Dream grid which was created by Fred Bechausen who is also our tech support when needed. I run contabo servers that are based in the USA, they are Windows based as Dream is not designed for Linux, they are 2022 & i back up daily I also have backups offsite as well as with backups on  contabo & my self. We do have events we range from 5-20 on any given event our top number was 35 for Gabes birthday  & we can hold them all with no lag,we respect our residents privacy, as our residents come to relax & just take a break from all their creativity & other virtual world situations they may come into. What we can offer is a server for 3rd rock residents that is exclusive to you,comparable pricing, we have /use discord to get a hold of us 24/7 should you run into a situation, being a smaller grid we offer our personal touch I am very hands on.  I have a great support team should we have any questions to keep our grid running smooth. We have an open door policy and we make ourselves available to all residents not just a select few.

I have been running barefoot dreamers for over 4 yrs now & I also feel it would be a win win situation with your residents & role play members you would have a home & we would grow. We are a smaller grid with loads of potential. We would like you to visit us & see what we have too offer. thank you again for this opportunity & your time.

David7 Bravin: Many thanks for that presentation Huga, Has anyone got a question ?

JayR Cela: several questions please  / Your head Technician is Fred Ferguson ?... Who are or how many backup Techs...and how many Admins do you have ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: I run the servers if there is any  major issues Fred helps get us back on track. I am the only one in the servers, Gabe Rayne & I are the staff since we are small. Fred Bechausen is his name.

Jedburgh Dagger: About how many regions do you currently host?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: 93 total.

Lannorra Sion: I just have a comment.  I have a non-commercial grid, Phantom Rose, that is also a DreamGrid.  It came on line in Jan 2019 and has been running 24/7, since then with very little down time.  I have the equivalent of 83 sims and I just want to say, I think DreamGrids are very successful.  And a lot more robust than many people realize.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Thank you Lannora,we agree.

Alia Soulstar: Can i ask what the pricing would be for a dedicated server, what is its capacity regions/prims and what are the limits in terms of Var sizing?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes one moment.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: for 16 cores it is 266$usd,var sizing we have had 4 10x10's no issue. We also have had 2 farms no issues,the prims depending size go to 80000. There really is not a limit on prims on the regions that is just a base number

Alia Soulstar: right, so would we purchase the server and give you details of land allocation or would you just create our lands off your ratecard and poke them on that server?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we would purchase the server.

Alia Soulstar: yes, I meant hire it off you

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we  will place lands & place them accordingly.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: correct

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes Alia great question

David7 Bravin: and the pricing ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: for land? or server?

David7 Bravin: for both please

Alia Soulstar: ok so just to clarify, that $266 is the cost to us and we fill it though you?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: 1x1 is 5$ 2x2 is 10$ 3x3 is 20$ 4x4 is 35$ 5x5 are 50$

David7 Bravin: Thanks

Ellemir Maven: This is just a follow to the server questing.  For 266 a month, you add a sixteen core physical server to the grid, and that's just for our use (not shared with others) and we can have as many regions on there as we want (to some practical limit)

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: correct

Ellemir Maven: Based on the little I know about Dream Grid, if you lost your primary server, your approach for recovery would be to replace the server, reinstall Dreamgrid and then restore the backups.  True?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes

Georgina Mills: How many prims on the 1x1 2x2 3x3 etc? Avatar limits? How many avatars allowed?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: all regions begin with 40,000 then can be added  without extra fees, we can hold 35 with no lag.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: as many as you want

JayR Cela: Do you have a preferred physics engine or is this select able by the region owner - estate manager ?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: you can select it as you want or need .

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: as for engine if you have a preference  you just let me know.

Alia Soulstar: What is your average daily traffic like Huga or Gabe? On non event days?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we get most of our traffic to our huge mall about 20+ daily

Alia Soulstar: and do you have a busy event calendar?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: not at the moment we have 2 days week at moment

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: we had a dj /resident pass away

Jedburgh Dagger: Because it is a topic on everyone's mind, do you have a contingency plan in case of incapacity or unavailability for the servers Gabe?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes we do,great question.

JayR Cela: how is event scheduling and posting them to the BFDreamers event calendar handled ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: rayne does our posting & makes sure calender is up to date

JayR Cela: posting trouble tickets on the BFDremers grids website is handled how ?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: you would use discord we have a help channel

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: I check those continuously through the day

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: and other channels, we both have discord on our phones also to be reached.

JayR Cela: so is the posting of a trouble Ticket handled thru a Discord account or the BFDreamers website or both ?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: both

Thoria Millgrove: Could you give a bit more background on your contingency planning? You have to understand that we are very sensitive to that here due to recent events

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Gabe is my  backup for the servers

Thoria Millgrove: Meaning he has full access to them if necessary?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: Rayne is my right hand so if I were to become ill  or an able to do my part they know how to run the gird, yes.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: yes

JayR Cela: I just want to say that for myself I find Discord can be a nightmare to get working properly / I must be behind the times.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: JayR i use skype also.

JayR Cela: the point I was trying to make is 1 way to initiate a support ticket / the 1 standard properly supported way,not 2 or 3 or 4 ways.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: discord is handled quickest, I use website for those who do not use discord.

Prim Ativ: Two Questions.... what are your thoughts on  the community of barefoot dreamers socially integrating with 3rd Rock Grid?  i.e. events, etc.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: I have no issues with that.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: I feel we would fit well, as friendly as you all are & we are open & friendly they would welcome others to make barefoot their home.

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: i see no problems.

Prim Ativ: Second...what do you feel you could bring to 3RG?

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: a home

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we could bring open end opportunities to grow, a place to flourish and keep your dreams moving forward.

JayR Cela: 3 questions on BFDremers grid policies .....

 1. How do you deal with griefer attacks....

 2. your policies on child like avatars......

 3. copybotters or copybotted goods on your grid.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: well we first would double check our securities that are in place, clean up their mess & block them all ways possible.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: we have had some visitors that are small kids in families we do not put up with pedophilia in anyway

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: if they are residing on our grid all copy botters have been banned for use

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: child avis are only allowed in certain areas

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: if the creators come to me & inform me of their product it are removed on the spot.

Han BoShi: Do you have any active RP on your grid? Any cultural facilities like our Nuna art gallery? Any educational regions, like our Blender courses?

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: not at this moment, we hope to grow to have those available to others if you are here you'd be the first.

Alia Soulstar: Well comment, not a question. I’d just like to thank Gabe and Huga for making this effort to come here today. It was kind of them and very appreciated. And what i’ve seen of their grid i can confirm what they say to be true—friendly people and a personal touch in how it is run. One of the nicer grids out there. :)

Gabe.Collingwood @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you so much means a lot.

Huga.Bug @login.barefoot-dreamers: thank you that is very kind.

David7 Bravin: Huga and Gabe - Thanks again for your presentation and answering our questions. On behalf of everyone here,  please accept our thanks for coming here today - much appreciated.

    So my feelings so far from the 3 presentations were all positive, we still had 1 more to go before we needed to make a decision.

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : Part 5

JayR Cela :_)

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid's Closure - Part 3 - Alternate Metaverse Grid presentation to 3RG : UPDATE !!

By Avatar JayR Cela : 

    My sincere appoligies to Cataplexia and Clifford for leaving out thier excellent presentation, before this article was first posted earlier today.

    So on April 13 we had our next meeting with the Alternate Metaverse or AMV grid, whom I had heard quite a bit about in the past year or so, due to the large number of events they regularly schedule on a daily basis. I had attended several in the recent past,and being impressed I was anxious to see their presentation. After an impressive and lengthly presentation of what AMV had to offer, the floor was open to questions from the 3RG attendees. Some of these questions and supplied answers, left more than one of us head scratching. 

      Greetings everyone and welcome to our presentation of Alternate Metaverse, Our Virtual World Grid in OpenSim. Alternate Metaverse is one of the largest and fastest growing and most stable grids in all of  OpenSim. We are the two owners of Alternate Metaverse which we commonly call AMV,  

HISTORY

Alternate Metaverse began as a company founded by Cataplexia Numbers in Second life back in 2007,  which included Stores and SL Marketplace Items which were her personal creations. As she added more and more goods and services, Alternate Metaverse grew and expanded into InWorldz  and OpenSim.  

In 2019 when Cataplexia Numbers and Clifford Hanger became partners in the virtual world, they decided  to do so business-wise as well. 

Clifford had started a small Semi private Grid named VWorld and had been working on making it more  established and very secure before going public with it. 

Once married in August 2019, they changed the name of VWorld and made the newly emerging and fast  growing Alternate Metaverse Grid a joint effort.  

OUR GRID

Alternate Metaverse Opened our doors to the public on Dec. 5th 2019 and is a very stable grid running on very reliable dedicated servers. 

We are using cutting edge OpenSim Code with modifications to incorporate Gloebits, eZombie and parts of  LaNanni code, all new code is tested on our Test Grid and here on our Yeti regions [3, 5x5s] We use bulletsim as standard, regions can choose to use UBODE on request.  

On May 1st we will be rolling out the new Nessie Code throughout our grid. It has been tested on our Test  grid for months first to ensure reliability and stability and the tests have yielded excellent results. Cliff has been adding more and more features on the technical level, and creating innovative scripts and  HUDs as Cat has been adding more regions and features within the livable grid and aiding our residents in  navigating them.  

We are recognized in OpenSim as the fastest growing grid in the metaverse. 

Our grid is Adults only and filled with a wide variety of clubs, schools, art galleries, Free shopping areas  & Malls, Holiday & Seasonal regions, beaches with swimming and surfing (including 3 clothing optional  beaches), castles and fantasy areas!  

We are for the most part, a very large and close knit family on AMV, welcoming to visitors and newcomers  from all over the world. We are a very safe and inclusive environment without discrimination of race,  gender, sexual orientation and choices. 

We do not open our doors to child Avatars as we once did due to numerous problems with sexual age play  and children approaching adults to adopt and finance them. 

We do not ban other grids on the Hypergrid easily but have when attacked with copybot viewers causing  damage to regions. We now detect Copybot viewers and ban entry to our grid to those who use them. 

In our events, we all watch out for other scheduled events and avoid stacking multiple events at one time  to ensure a greater number of people attending these events. As opensim grows more we shall expand on that because there will be more attendees. 

We celebrate and respect the individual rights of creators to give free content or charge if they decide to. If  you created it, you should have the right to choose whatever you wish to do with it. Despite this fact, most content is free on AMV or very low cost in a few circumstances. 

WELCOME 

We welcome you to Alternate Metaverse Grid, a warm friendly Adults-Only grid with Sail-able Open Waters  & Air.  

Copy and Save your own OAR from our website, Self Restarts & Rollbacks.  

Self serve performance check. 

Low cost land packages, Regional God powers available, Super fast Land Creation & Customer Service.  Large reliable servers. Online since 2019, FREE HOMESTEADS, 2 FREE weeks on your first land purchase,  and a choice of many FREE pre-built regions you can have put on your land.  

AMV is a community grid filled with Parks, Beaches, Diverse types of Roleplay including GOT & Adult, Arts,  Performers & DJs Daily, Karaoke, Open Mic, Zoos, Galleries, Community Areas, Clubs, Luxury Cruise Ship,  Spas, Several Malls & Stores, Raceway Island Regions, Amusement Park, Zombie Hunt, Adult Getaways,  Dinkies World, Memorial, Spiritual & Chakra Exploration & Education, Game Nights and countless places to  Explore & Enjoy!  

Own a region for as low as 5$ USD monthly! The Home of The Arts, Chakras In Motion, Mystical Paths,  Prana, Samsara, Serenity Chapel and Koryphon Academy. 

OUR OFFERING TO 3RD ROCK GRID MIGRANTS

For the current expansion proposal we are prepared to Offer: 

A) Exclusive use of a whole new dedicated Region server will run 60 to 70 regions of mixed size @ $500  per month, or

B) Use of 50% of the above @ $285 per month, or 

C) Free regions for your “Nuna” gallery region, Free Educational regions and new regions at our current  rates for up to 5x5 regions, and specials by negotiation prim count, size, god mode.

If you do choose option C. - Cliff and I would like to make an offer to 3RD Rock Grid migrators, to house  Nuna Gallery and your school at zero cost. We support the Arts and Education very strongly. We could  integrate your existing classes into Koryphon Academy if you wish, or provide you with free land to  house your school on. Frankly I feel that integrating with Koryphon Academy would provide an inlet into  the community here so it might be a good path to follow, but the choice is up to you, we are fine with  whatever you decide. 

For many reasons we feel that the 3RD Rock Grid residents would find a happy and peaceful new home in  our world and we would equally be happy to expand our AMV Family!  

A place like Alternate Metaverse feels incomplete without Space RP, it is almost as if we were waiting for  your amazing Starfleet RP to make us whole!

SAFETY – ON A SAFE GRID, NO ONE LOSES 

Our expansion into grid creation, we decided to create a place that will allow the consumer freedom. I came from InWorldz and I lost a lot there as one of the biggest creators in InWorldz. I owned many different stores filled with my original content – including a texture store where I lost many  of my textures... lost a lot of my art.

We wanted to create a place where people don’t lose....period  

PERSONAL INFO & DATA - AMV takes only an email address from customers NO Personal, Credit or  financial info ever hits our servers, we do not even ask for your real name, avatar names only.

MONEY - We arranged for money to not be handled by the grid...We use PayPal and Gloebits...So people  never lose cash here...they can redeem cash and Gloebits externally to AMV.

LAND - We set up Cold storage so people if in the hospital or on vacation or extended leave will NEVER lose  land that they have built on as well as the ability to save their regions at any time to their hard drive. We  allow all residents to do their own OAR downloads, Region Restarts, Region Rollbacks AND have regional god powers if they choose to do so.

SAFE is freedom from risk of financial loss, we neither collect or store any private information other than  your email in order to contact you, this is linked to your Grid Avatar and securely encrypted password. This  means it is impossible to be financially hacked.

SAFE means we allow you to copy OAR files of your regions and to rollback 24 or 48 hrs automatically and  on request rollbacks for up to 6 months.

SAFE means we scan every login to our grid and prevent access to copybot viewers, known copybotters and  griefers. 

All of these things are geared towards the resident suffering zero loss.

AMV currently runs on a modified 0.9.2 version of opensim with mods for EZombie and some time saving  mods by the late Lananni Sundara. 

In May 2024 the grid will be updated to run on the more efficient Nessie 0.9.3 latest stable dev release. AMV currently uses 7 large dedicated servers in a Chicago data center with excellent and fast connection to  data highways. The First one of our 7 dedicated servers is our GRID Server, the other 6 are Region Servers.  All our servers are interconnected by LAN to provide fast communication with each other. Our server  provider maintains our servers which are wholly owned by them. 

All important drives are protected by RAID configurations allowing replacement of faulty drives with no  downtime. Our grid server runs typically at 6-12% cpu so we have lots of wriggle room. 

We use file based Assets stored on a large raid configured drive, they are backed up over the LAN daily to  two separate copies on our biggest region server. 

Grid server databases are backed up locally every 3 hours and are immediately synced to our cloud server. 

We store database copies for 2 days worth in the data center and in the cloud.

REGION SERVERS

Using large dedicated servers allows us to host regions efficiently and means we can offer Residents  regions up to 10x10. 

Regions are backed up to OAR files daily, stored on the Region server and synced to the cloud. Region databases are also saved every 4 hours and synced to the cloud and stored for two days. Regions are auto restarted every 24 hours when empty, tested hourly. Regions can be restarted manually  on our website. 

OARS on our cloud server mirror the Region servers plus weekly copies are stored for 2 months, after this  monthly copies are stored for 6 months, then monthly files over 6 months are downloaded and stored at Cliff’s home.

Our regions are backed up as OAR files daily on the region servers, available for customer download or  rollback (last 2-3 days). 

AMV will load existing OAR Files onto any land you purchase at no cost to you. 

We provide our residents with an avenue on our website where they can download their existing land OARs  to their hard drive themselves at no cost 

Residents may also perform rollbacks themselves within 2 days of and accidental terraform or building  mishaps. Please be aware that all changes to the region will be lost that were made in between the rollback  and the date of the region you are rolling back to. 

Residents also have the power to restart their own regions – Log into Website, find the region in your  profile tab. 

Residents can also check how their region is running on our website. 

IAR files can be backed up for you upon request and be made available for you to download, including  large ones. Please be aware that they do take time to load and will take time to download onto a hard drive or other avatar as well. 

An example of a very large IAR is Myself, Cataplexia Numbers. My inventory is roughly 315,000 items at my recent IAR. It took nearly  2 days to save, cost Cliff a lot of work to load and set into an alt avatar and was 132Gb in size.  

I highly recommend you do not ever let your inventory exceed 150,000. This is where you begin to lose  access to mass quantities of content and start having serious issues loading your inventory…..these are the  reasons WHY I had to back mine up into an alt. I lose access to content often.  

Clean and organize your inventory!  

Clean your SUITCASE weekly and after every power shopping spree or it will slow you down and inhibit  your teleporting and crash you often. It is meant to be a TEMPORARY storage so that you can travel lightly without loading your entire inventory!!

FIX IT BEFORE IT IS BROKEN 

When our grid server died, and admittedly it did, we were back on our feet within less than 25 hours...with  a brand new server, running perfectly – With ZERO losses suffered! 

We keep assets doubly stored - so we lost NOTHING. 

This is our ENTIRE OUTLOOK...the resident loses NOTHING...Period. 

 I was so adamant about that when I signed on for this because of what InWorldz did to me and countless  friends 

Everything breaks at some point - it’s how you recover that is important 

everything breaks - you need to expect that - if not it leaves you unprepared and vulnerable.

GRID STATISTICS 

copied from our website on 4/10/24 

GridStatus: ONLINE Online_Now: 718 

HG_Visitors_Last_30_Days: 1,487 

Local_Users_Last_30_Days: 496 

Total_Active_Last_30_Days: 1,983 

Registered_Users: 3,673 

Regions: 856 Var_Regions: 526 Single_Regions: 330 Total_LandSize(km2): 667 Login_URL: http://alternatemetaverse.com:8002 

Website: https://alternatemetaverse.com 

Login_Screen: https://alternatemetaverse.com 

Version: 2020110101 

LOGGING IN FOR THE FIRST TIME 

Logging in to our Grid 

Our web address is https://alternatemetaverse.com 

Joining is free and open to all who accept our terms and pricay policy. 

You will need a Viewer. We strongly recommend Firestorm for Open Simulator as your viewer which you  can find on the “about “ tab of our website. 

Our Grid is recognized by Firestorm, go back to your log in screen and type your name (first and last) and  password, and choose Alternate Metaverse as the grid. 

All residents get a free Mesh Avatar - there are about 20 to choose from. You may change this in any way  once you have entered the grid. 

Send in your email confirmation, if you cannot find it, wait a few minutes and check other folders such as  spam, promotions etc. as sometimes email programs try resorting mail. 

We have an external chat IM program which allows live text chat to our mentor and management team if  you have any issues logging in. 

As you enter you will be on AMV Welcome, and can travel all over the grid and Hypergrid from this point.

GRID STAFFING

Where each grid has generally one owner who runs around doing it all, we have two, and a huge well  Trained & Educated staff of Mentors and Management. Our mentors even create land and answer support  calls with knowledgeable and informative answers 24/7

MEET AMV STAFF AS OF APRIL 10, 2024

Clifford Hanger - Grid Owner & Technical Administrator 

Cataplexia Numbers - Grid Owner/ Aesthetics, Content & Community Administrator Chris McCracken - Grid Manager / Senior Mentor 

Lilie Finesmith - Grid Manager - Mall Manager & Lead Mentor 

April McKenna - Assistant Grid Manager / Dean Of Education / Special Projects /Housing Sofee Supermarine - Publicist / Greeter 

Ted Junior - Special Projects Manager/ Senior Mentor 

Taffy Starr - AMV Mayor / Greeter/ Yardsale Manager 

Desy Graywolf - Senior Mentor / Staff Educator /Housing Manager 

Tyler Mathews - Housing Manager / Senior Mentor 

Doc Mercury - Senior Mentor / Special Projects Staff 

Chris Dayellis - Senior Mentor 

Tingting Parx - Senior Mentor 

Serenity Graywolf - Mentor 

Winona Evergarden - Mentor

FREE HOUSING AVAILABLE

AMV provides Free Housing to all in need unless they chose not to. Free private homes are available on  request at the following Homestead regions: 

Homestead Riverville 1 Homestead Riverville 2 Homestead Riverville 3 

Tiki Cove 

AMV Neighborhood 

We also have housing at AMV Community Farm – A community farming co-op housing and work project

ENTERTAINMENT, FESTIVALS & THE ARTS

We greatly support the arts by housing several Art Galleries, The Live Poets Society, OpenMic & Karaoke venues, and Live Theater venues on AMV. We provide support and celebration of visual, poetic, performing and multi-media arts. 

For entertainment, Alternate Metaverse throws an annual Festivals of the Arts & Carnival, Fashion shows,  Koryphon Academy Events & Classes, Burns Night events, Halloween, Christmas & New Years Events as \ well as Annual Winterfest, Autumnfest, AMV Birthday Parties, Valentines Parties, Easter egg hunts and  Easter parties.  

We have daily Late Night & Early morning parties @ AMV Welcome featuring some of the greatest Live Djs  on the Hypergrid! We also feature grid sponsored bi-weekly live performances by the incredible Beccca  Baxton, MrMikie String, Icky and Sum, BG Singer, joao Frazao, Mavenn Live, Khiron Ametza and Zoree Jupiter at various venues. 

Additionally we provide our residents and HG visitors with several live performers and DJ events weekly,  Check our website’s Grid Calendar tab and Opensim World events for dates/times & Events. We are open to all who wish to call Alternate Metaverse Grid their home!

EDUCATION 

We teach not only residents but visitors as well for free at AMV’s Education Center, Koryphon Academy. We  also have extensions to Koryphon Academy called Chakras In Motion and The Seed, which both are of a  more Spiritual and New Age type of teachings (Chakras In Motion). The Seed features our weekly meetings  of exploring home & self, meditation and inner growth both individually and as a grid community. We also  have the Avatar Education Center for new/learning avatars. 

Prim Building and Advanced Building Classes run through Autumn/Winter seasons with Rique Giano and are incredibly popular. 

We offer a sound usage class every two weeks taught by Lorin Tone. 

There is also Bible study education at Serenity Chapel and a school of Arts Magicans at Mystical Paths, both  owned by private owners. 

ROLEPLAY 

Alternate Metaverse supports on-grid roleplay and is the home to the largest Game Of Thrones Roleplay  venue in OpenSim. We also have Meridian- Mer meets human RP, Lycan & Gothic RP, Medieval fantasy RP  & Heaven & Hell RP at Mythical Realms, Gilligan’s island /Fantasy & Gypsy Roleplay at Metasea, Zombie  hunting Roleplay and Adult RP The Rendezvous. We do not have any Space themed Roleplay and quite  frankly we look forward to that coming here, should Starfleet be joining Alternate Metaverse.

 

FOR THE SECOND LIFE REFUGEE

If you have made the adventurous journey from Second Life to Alternate Metaverse, you will notice right  away that prim count availability is off the charts compared to Second Life. Add that to Open waters & Air,  Attractive Mesh starter avatars, free Downloads and uploads, free shopping, free spacious homes available,  free photos, free self partnering and de-partnering, Self OAR Saves/Rollbacks & Restarts via our website,  God Mode availability, Free Education, and travel throughout the hypergrid to countless grids. You will feel as if you have finally found your happy place just sign up and THAT is free too!

 

THE FUTURE 

Our main goal is to provide all of our residents with an inclusive, happy and creative atmosphere that they  can feel comfortable to live in, with great entertainment and amenities already built into the grid, and they  of course are free to build and add what they wish to add to this community.

We offer education and supportive chat on many levels such as our Talk To feature on our website for help,  Discord Servers for both AMV & Koryphon Academy with AI sites in Mid Journey and Wambo for creating  art, and Mumble Group Chat as well as in world voice. AMV has a very dedicated, supportive and well  educated staff who is always happy to help newcomers, visitors and long term residents around the clock. We hold occasional Town hall meetings where everyone is free to contribute and inform our residents about  new Grid Features, Events and plans for the future of AMV. 

Happy Residents and Visitors make a happy grid, Simple Ethos!

BUYING LAND ON AMV 

We provide land packages that we feel are very fairly priced, with the first two weeks of your land tier free  credited! For a list of land prices and options such as water surrounds, isolated regions and god powers,  Visit the land tab on our website at https://alternatemetaverse.com 

We have pre-built regions we call Demos, some with homes, some only landscaping. These are available at  ZERO COST to you when you purchase your land to place them on! We have several available from nature  to beach themes and even fantasy! 

The lowest land packages are 5 USD. 

Billing options include invoice or AutoPay 

Optional God Mode features are available. 

We have open water /air features available as well. 

For those without land, we provide starter parcels/houses free for residents to use in what we call  Homesteads. Ask our staff if you are interested! 

Overcrowding is prevented by simple rules over region placement: 

No-one shall have populated regions adjacent unless both owners agree. 

Grid connected regions will have “water” regions adjacent at least the same size as their region. Water regions are navigable by residents and visitors, vehicles my be used on all water regions by Residents. 

ALL residents are free to use our open Air & Water regions for boating, flying, traveling and exploring! 

AMV also offers audio streams (shoutcast or icecast) and video streams (suitable for teaching aids, movies  and karaoke, in that all viewers see the same thing at the same time unlike YouTube style media). 

Please take a look and let us know if you wish to be a part of our growing community!"

David7 thanked Cataplexia for the presentation and asked if anyone would like to ask any questions. 

The very first question was from.. 

: Dolfke Barbosa: 1. do you use load balancing, and how many servers do you have at the data centre, I understood 7, but I may have misunderstood.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we do not use load balancing.

: Dolfke Barbosa: how do you move regions from one server to another pls ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse  by copying the db and config files we rarely have to.

: Dolfke Barbosa: my second question is more basic,how much do you ask for a region and a VAR pls?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : a 1x1 with 10k prims is $5, vars vary with size and  water surrounds. 

: Dolfke Barbosa: lets say a 4x4 VAR with 30.000 prims?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : but 1 5z5 fully surrounded with sail-able water with 85k prims is $55,our standard 4x4 hs 70k prims at $40.

: Jedburgh Dagger : What sort of 'bench depth' do you have for your technical team, just as a worst case        scenario, since having a succession plan is a very important issue given our current circumstances.

 : Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : our mentors can solve most tech issues,in terms of   disaster mitigation, Cat and i share our passwords and our phone numbers are known to managers,the datacenter takes calls 24/7

: Jedburgh Dagger : My other question is about your backup plan. Do you restore from backups as a test to confirm integrity periodically, or have other processes in place to ensure they work?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse: we recently restored a dead grid server from raid drives,we periodically test rebuilding dbs from OAR files. 3 yrs ago we were hacked,we had to rebuild the grid server from backups, we lost 30 minutes of creation, and were back up in 4 hours.

: Michel Farrell : I have 3 questions. 1. We are used to meetings in text here, in that case people can read back minutes later who have not been able to attend the meeting. That is not possible with voice. How is that done in AMV when people are not able to attend the meeting ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse: we create a pre meeting notecard. When town hall meetings are conducted, distributed to attendees, I have a very detailed notecard,  in a box for all to take, and on request to any resident.

: Michel Farrell : 2. What is God mode ? 3. What is the advantage of God mode ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : my stock answer is, if you need to ask, you don’t need it! but I let Cat explain.

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : Ok i shall give an example, I lived on Kitely for awhile, several stores, 17 regions, when i moved out i could not change perms on my own creations i made from scratch. I was stuck with huge beautiful castles i could not give away. When i went to OS Grid, I have my own servers and land, and ALL osg residents have God Mode. So I was able to make all of my stuff full perm again. Admittedly, i went to SL with a copybot viewer, to get MY OWN CREATIONS, i could not export them, because several megaprims were in the builds, and THOSE were created by others, so i had to copybot my own stuff. I luckily did not get caught.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : in AMV region owners can ask  for god mode to be removed completely, then no-one can copy incl. grid owners, not even upper management. And illegal viewers cannot gain god mode.

: David7 Bravin: You said that the Grid is "Adults only"...... How do establish if someone is an "adult" - especially as said that you do not require people to use their Real Life names to register ?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : We get child avs all the time, that sign the TOS as adults,  they do not make it past staff, We had so many visit that were all interested in two things, sex or cash from adults. We decided to ban them all. When i see a child come in, I say, Are you a child or an adult in a child av? If they say they are, and I direct them to leave and come back as an adult, as we do not accept children on the grid period. If they refuse and return as child avs, they are banned, if they tp away to another region...same.

: David7 Bravin: So it is Adult avatars only .…rather than RL Adults only?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : There are some adults that are not like this but like Child avs, One is singer Rosy oGrady who LIVES THERE. We make her dress as an adult out on the grid, knowing she truly is an adult.

: Dolfke Barbosa: what about when a 10 year old child comes online as an adult ?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : We cannot see them in RL if they are lying, we take them at their word and TOS agreement, we have no choice.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : but if we have suspicions we can interview them

:  Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : but if we were to hear someone on voice...yes we interview.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : but as Cat says it is difficult to prove. Its not the most important thing on the grid.

: Alia Soulstar: If, for example, we took half a server, approx 32 regions, what would the total prim loading be for us to distribute between our regions? And what tools would we have at our disposal to self-organise?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we would use the model we have currently, each region owner or manager has access to a read only console. And can see real time CPU usage on our website, prims at 40-90k per region.

: Alia Soulstar: Yes, so how does taking a server differ from just using your rate card?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : we normally create regions only up to 10x10, beyond that brings immeasurable lag no matter what grid you are on.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : its not usually prims that create poor server performance, its bad scripts.

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : 10 x 10 VAR REGION - Equal to 100 SL Sims (2560x2560)

10 A) includes 1 10x10 VAR Region (the equivalent of 100 single regions) with Management Control of your region and regional God Mode rights.

10 B) Same as 10 A with a single edge connection to sailable waters.

Prim Allowance = 125,000 Prims

Cost for Package 10 A or 10 B - $125 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : That is our going rate for a 10x10

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : 5x5 VAR REGION (1280x1280)

5A) includes 1 5x5 VAR Region (the equivalent of 25 single regions) with Management Control of your region and regional God Mode rights.

5C) as 5A with a single edge connection to sailable waters.

Prim Allowance = 80,000 Prims

5B ) - as above plus, fully surrounded with sailable 5x5s [8] waters

Cost for Package 5A and 5C - 45 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

Cost for Package 5B - 55 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : 4x4 VAR Region (1024x1024)

4A) includes 1 4x4 VAR Region (the equivalent of 16 single regions) with Management Control of your region and regional God Mode rights.

4C) as 4A with a single edge connection to sailable waters.

Prim Allowance = 70,000 Prims

4B ) - as above plus, fully surrounded with sailable 4x4s [8] waters

Cost for Package 4A and 4C - 40 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

Cost for Package 4B - 50 USD Monthly or European Equivalent

: Alia Soalstar : So $500 is the top of your rate card?

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : its not on our rate card

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : the server at $500 will run upto 70 regions

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : its a special offer to your grid

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : total cost

: Alia Soulstar: I have read the rate card Cat, that's not my question. So if we buy a server we might want to make a 5x5, a 4x4 a 6x6, and so on with different prim loadings, no?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse :8002: correct

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : We do not offer a million or more prims, that is highly impractical as you are paying MORE for the prims, and will be so lagged out you cannot use that many.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : you can use whatever sized regions you wish, but if you use the prim counts from our rate cards, then a mixed offering would support 70 regions. But not if they were all heavily scripted 10x10s

: Alia Soulstar: What tools do we have to manage that globally as the buyer of the server, to organize our community estates and private estates is my question

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : You have staff to create them for you, just tell them what you want, we create any sized land super fast.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : if you were to come to us, would you be integrating your regions with our "connected" grid? Or wanting a separate area?

: Alia Soulstar: There are different options but yes, we would integrate but, with a server or part server option we would look to enclave within your community with open borders of course

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse.com:8002: ok, we have studied opensim region crossings  and some "old" rules are pertinent, regarding edge cases, "no region can have more than one region on any edge" we stick to that always, it means we can put 20 people on a boat and your grid crossings regions with minimal hiccups.

: Georgina Mills: You also have ready made OAR files you can lay down on different sized regions for users still?  They were nicely landscaped already when I saw the website ages ago.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we do

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : they are still there and many more added to

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : there are more now.

: Ellemir Maven: Cliff, this is a bit deep for most of this group, but does your grid use a one region per simulator model?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : for residential regions yes, we use multiple regions per simulator for water/interconnect regions.

: Ellemir Maven: then let me be more specific. If we were to get a full of 1/2 server, would it be one simulator per region.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : yes excepting water regions. We limit those to 1000 prims.

: Cataplexia.Numbers @alternatemetaverse : Does anyone have any other questions?

: JayR Cela: 2 quick ones please / your server software / WIndows or Linux based is first ?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : linux

: JayR Cela: #2 any particular reasons you are not currently employing any load balancing support?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : we have never seen the need.

: Thoria Millgrove: Aside from the basic open sim source, how much of your platform is FOSS?

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : I have never used FOSS knowingly, we use ubuntu20.04 currently.

: Thoria Millgrove: Huh? FOSS = Free and Open Source Software, open sim is FOSS.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : ok, all our software is open source. Ubuntu, apache, mysql, php, mono  are our main tools.

: Clifford.Hanger @alternatemetaverse : sorry i thought i saw a software company called FOSS.

: Thoria Millgrove: OK, thanks.

: David7 Bravin: If there are no more questions,Then on behalf of everyone here - Please accept our thanks Cataplexia and Clifford for the presentation, and answering the many questions - much appreciated !

After that, we had a rather lengthy after meeting. I will leave how that went to your imagination.  

The next two weeks had two more presentations in store, before a decision was made. 

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : part 4

JayR Cela :_) 

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid’s Closure - Part 2 - Wolf Territories Grid presentation to 3RG

 By Avatar : JayR Cela : 

    The first of 4 seperate Grid presentations to the residents of the soon to be closed 3rd Rock Grid. : a continuation of, “My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid’s Closure” : May 20 2024

On April 6 2024, we had the pleasure of a presentation by Lone Wolf of ‘Wolf Territories Grid’, and it was impressive, he explained some of the history and expansion, also some unique features and technologies used, server locations, technical staff ect... 

: Lone Wolf : "Thanks so much everyone for inviting me, so let's start with a bit of history....

    Wolf grid was actually started as 3 low prim sims on second life doing a wild west role play - we outgrew that, then we grid hopped getting bigger each time and eventually moved to our own grid. We went from a few servers to a full hyper-converged cluster, which is what we have now, with over 28000 second life equivalent regions, and 5400 or so visitors to our grid each month, which is growing daily.

    About our tech - so this might not mean a lot......  Our servers are all based in a data center in Frankfurt in Germany. The servers and cluster was built by 2 experts in the field, who actually work with the grid - one of them works in the data center. Our grid has a lot of features you won't find on other grids, but one of our main features is how it deals with issues. On Wednesday one of our servers died and the other servers took over running the things that were running on that server, keeping us up and running - so that's what having a hyper-converged infrastructure is about for users. We have a powerful control panel, that includes everything from renaming your region, to our terrain generator that can create a random terrain for your region.

Our staff : we have 3 tech guys: Myself - I've been a programmer since I was 15, I have a high functioning autism; Busty who works in the data center in Frankfurt; and Daja who manages the day to day running of the servers - although 999% of it is completely automated. We have 3 grid admins including myself who provide oversight and 32 volunteer peacekeepers, who are always available to help someone who needs it, plus of course Bobby our AI who knows all about everything.

    The grid is made up of a lot of communities, some from different countries, some based on other things. We have 2 universities using our grid, who have moved from Second Life - the University of Texas working on climate change, and the University of Colorado who are just getting things together ! We also have a number of charities, including the VWEC group - Virtual Worlds Education Consortium and a charity that helps people with disabilities access virtual worlds - so we're really busy with both of them. We have a motto on this grid "Don't dominate, facilitate" - so we're here to make people's dreams come true! We have some incredible builds as well, from Luxor through to Jimmy Olsen's Europa. I've listed 6 here but obviously the size of the grid means we have a *LOT* of things to visit.

More about the features : So we have a pretty extensive control panel for users and also regions. There is a video on my YouTube to demonstrate it, you can see the AI terrain generator, we have this live streaming facility you can stream anything on your computer in-world. So for instance, you could share a movie with some friends, demonstrate how to use blender, all in-world. We also have tidal water, so our water goes from 18.5 meters to 20 meters, you can turn this off in the control panel. It means you can build a beach and it works, the tide goes in and out, you could have a road that goes under water when the tide is in. We have a network of star-gates that you can add your regions to by using the control panel, an easy to use events system, a marketplace that can import the products from your  region - you just fill in the blanks. We own our own mastodon social networking site, www.opensimsocial.com, and of course Bobby AI integrated into the grid is Bobby who knows a lot about everything, he can write scripts,write a poem, translate it into Chinese,he can tell you where the popular places are right now, etc...

In terms of what we could offer you if you feel that this is a good fit :-) We as a grid would like to gift you a 4x4 region with 1.2 million prims for you to set up a Welcome area. We want to offer you free prim bonuses, so if you rent a basic region say with 20k prims we'll boost it up to 50k to support in moving over, like we've done with a few other grids that became part of us, but maintaining their own identity. So if you wish we would create an area and put your regions there and link them with ocean regions. The whole grid is joined by ocean regions, which means you can sail from one end to another, but it takes hours.

We hope that you find the right place to move to and we just want to help in any way we can. We have something pretty unique in terms of what we are doing and becoming part of that journey is really exciting! Oh and this is a community run grid as well, so we have a once monthly community meeting (it's tomorrow @ 11am ) that anyone is welcome to, where we share ideas and some of our best developments have come from there."

     It was at this point into the meeting I had a 90% chance of moving to WTG regardless, and Lone Wolf's  presentation impressed me, I think the other 3RG residents attending the meeting were as well. David thanked Lone Wolf for a very interesting and informative presentation and invited questions, which Lone.Wolf answered as follows :-

Slash asked about "Prices".

Lone.Wolf : "All our regions are 1024x1024  4x4, we can do 8x8 and 12x12 on request. For 20000 prims its £20 uk about $24 a month, 50000 £40 uk about $54 a month, 1.2 million prims £60 or $74 i think a month. But as  a special offer, we will upgrade you from the one you purchase, so if you buy a 20k region we'll upgrade it to 50k till the end of April :-) The grid will instantly build your region and then we can find a place for you if you would like it moved".

JayR asked "Earlier today you and I discussed your ability to migrate an existing region from 3RG even if it was smaller than a 4x4 and make it all work / can you explain this please ?"

Lone.Wolf : "if you have a region say its  smaller than a 4x4 we can load the oar anywhere into the 4x4 - in fact you can use our control panel to load the oars yourself and merge them. We're here to help you with whatever you need". JayR then asked "Please explain the ability to seamlessly traverse the grid".

Lone.Wolf : "We do have region crossings like any grid, however because we own our own local network in the data centre, they are very fast, when you cross a region crossing you are moving from one server to another so 2 things are important - database latency and network speed so that's all very highly tuned". 

Prim asked "Thank you for giving us your presentation, I've visited WTG a number of times and the tech is mind blowingly fantastic... However, my question is more about administration...  Is there any sort of succession plan if anything were to happen to you?  I ask because our previous system admin passed away, leading to this need".

Lone.Wolf : "Yes. In fact we have a full disaster recovery plan being written right now, the other 2 techs are both qualified and able to take over the tech, and as we grow we will start employing more, with the appropriate security. This is a properly run UK Limited company and our dealings with universities etc mean we have to answer questions like that all the time !" 

Dolfke asked "What is your Policy concerning IAR's pls ?"

Lone.Wolf : "IARs cause a problem because they HAMMER the region they are running on, right now we are building a new IAR loading server. So the policy is we want to help with it but we need to preserve the load on the rest of the grid, although we do have 40 robust servers lol, so we will have a dedicated region server just for loading iars that will be done probably Monday/Tuesday. OARS you can load yourself".

Dolfke added "I meant more the one time import of our IAR's from here in 3RG".

Lone.Wolf : "That's fine - that's what our new server will do".

Lannorra asked "Do your residents have land rentals?"

Lone.Wolf : "When you rent land from us you can do what you like with it, including renting out land if you wish". 

Lannorra then asked "Is there any capacity to have a single sim? separate from a 4x4?"

Lone.Wolf : "We don't do 256x256's because we run each sim on its own simulator so it's not really financially worthwhile". 

Thoria asked " First, what's the difference between a tech and an admin?"

Lone.Wolf : "A tech is someone who deals with the tech stuff and admins are more like the day to day running on the actual grid - people who've been with us a long time, although it's actually more about being there and assisting". 

Thoria then asked  "Second, what version of OpenSim are you using, how often do you upgrade, and do you have significant grid-specific modifications?"

Lone.Wolf : "We are using Open NGC 9.2.2 something, so there are a lot of fixes in it. Upgrades are seamless and we do those after a new release comes out.We are working directly with the NGC devs in fact. Plus we are also working with a new viewer build called the crystal frost viewer, which will run on linux, mac, and windows"

JayR asked "What are the major differences between the official OS core being developed mainly by uBit of OSGrid and the NGC version of OS?" 

Lone.Wolf : "The NGC is a fork of the OSGRID version, which basically means the osgrid version feeds into ngc. ngc's differences are a lot to do with things like we use a much faster database driver. It's like 40% faster, so its things like that. You can read on the opensim ngc github if required. (ngc is open source)" 

Thoria asked "How does your "hyperconverged" fail-over work, and what is your backup model?"

Lone.Wolf : "Basically it means we don't care where things run. We have a pile of servers and a pile of processes that are replicated across all the servers. If a server fails, it fails over backups are held in two places. Our main cluster is in Frankfurt,we have backups in Dusseldorf and of course striped across international servers using cloudflare r2 storage. Every 15 minutes the whole grid is replicated across all the servers basically".

Jedburgh asked "Do you ever do a forced failover test to confirm it is working, and do you restore from backup to confirm that the backup integrity is solid?"Lone.Wolf: "Yes. In fact the backups are held on a proxmox backup server, so it verifies the backups once a day and we do restores once a week to check everything is good, although tbh we should never need to use them because of the replication going on".   

Rhia asked "What is your stance on Copybotting ?"

Lone.Wolf: "I hate it. We want to encourage creators and it's a constant discussion on how to protect IP.  and not something that will be solved overnight. However we do have Luna Lunarias main store on our grid and she's doing pretty well with her amazing builds".  

Dolfke asked: "Do you have a download location for your viewer pls (so we could test) ?"

Lone.Wolf: "We're sponsoring the viewer at the moment, if you sign up for the crystal frost patreon there is the occasional download, but deffo worth having a look at youtube on it you'll be blown away.  https://www.patreon.com/CrystalFrostViewer : This is not the only viewer we are working with but I think it's the most promising".  

Slash asked "Concerning copy bots - do you prohibit exports from your grid?" 

Lone.Wolf : "No, we don't prohibit exports. HOWEVER these things are always up for discussion and part of the opensim ngc discussions are around this. I think the plan is to implement the export flag so creators can lock them down on the next release of ngc"

Rhia asked "Who are the devs for NGC ?"

Lone.Wolf : "There are quite a few https://github.com/OpenSim-NGC/OpenSim-Sasquatch its here somewhere. Mike and Balpien are involved and quite a few grid owners are involved as well". 

David thanked Lone.Wolf on behalf of everyone for giving a very informative presentation and answering all the questions. Allia added her thanks to Lone.Wolf and later went on to say that the owners of 3 more major OpenSim Grids would be attending our last community meetings. If your curious to find out who they were, then...

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : part 3 next week.

JayR Cela

  

OpenSim : HyperGrid : My Virtual Life After 3rd Rock Grid's Closure

OpenSim : HyperGrid : by Avatar JayR Cela

My virtual life after the recent closure of 3rd Rock Grid is looking rather good right now. On May 15 2024 my home grid for the past 13 years sadly bit the dust. This unfortunate event was something I saw coming about 2 years ago, with the attempt to make a successful upgrade to our OpenSim code from the, 0.8.x to 0.9.x series of open-simulator's main branch went badly. It is not worth going into the details of what,why or who dropped the ball on this move, things did not work out well. It was back in January I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to move to another grid again,and soon.

And so my search began, which grid to choose,who were the people operating the numerous OS-HyperGrid’s out there. I certainly had,had my fill of small grids run by acquaintances, friends and so called OS experts. I wanted cutting edge yet stable modern back-end hardware,and software along with a solid tech team to back up my newly inspired enthusiasm,so I started doing a lot of grid hopping and research. My goal was not only to find just the right for me grid to join, but more importantly, which grids to avoid.  

When the final news was announced that 3RG was closing down for good,4 meetings with different grid owners were arraigned to visit our community,and have their presentations of why we should migrate to that specific grids operations base. In the mean time back in March I just so happened to become friends with one of the admins in the ‘Wolf Territories Grid’or "WTG", and the things she was telling me about WTG were intriguing to say the least. It was at this point I decided to create my ‘JayR Cela’ avatar there,and began transferring portions of my 3RG inventory.

Several weeks later we had our first Grid Owner's presentation in 3rd Rock Grid…..

Story to continue in : My Virtual Life after 3rd Rock Grid's Closure : part 2 next week.

https://jayrcelasecondlifetechnologist.blogspot.com/2024/05/opensim-hypergrid-my-virtual-life-after_28.html

JayR Cela

3rd Rock Grid : Will CLOSE on May 15 2024 !!

By Avatar : JayR Cela

Impromptu, Unscheduled 3rd Rock Grid Community Meeting, March 30 2024 @1:00pm grid time.

Location :: hop://grid.3rdrockgrid.com:8002/Community%20Bravo/122/127/...

In case some 3rd Rock Grid residents that may still not be aware that the grid WILL CLOSE ! on May 15 2024 !

Efforts are currently underway to preserve some portions of 3RG and move what we can onto another grid. This hopefully will include as much as possible, however this may also require some additional work on our (current residents) part, to make this transition as seamless as possible. In order to do so it is important that if you are interested, that you attend this meeting, and the subsequent weekly meetings now scheduled thru April and part of May 2024 

Please note these meetings are for current and or past 3rd Rock Grid residents only, unless you have been specifically invited as a guest speaker then,  please attempt to contact your current friend(s) in 3RG and request an invitation.

Thank you.

JayR Cela