the structure of an Open Sim grid?

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Annabelle Fanshaw

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Jun 8, 2011, 4:28:13 PM6/8/11
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As a really noob when it comes to Open Sim- I am struggling to
understand how my grid actually interconnects with all its parts, and
how various programs reach into those parts. Does anyone know if there
is a diagram that shows how Open Sim sits on a server- where FTP
reaches into it, how and what the command prompt sees when you are
looking at the grid through ROBUST, and then through the individual
region command windows? On a dedicated server, is it just one really
big sim that has been subdivided into 16 regions, or is it actually 16
separate instances of the program running simultaneously? and finally,
how does filezilla relate to all of this? yikes, lots of questions I
know- but would love for some sort of sense of how this is
structured. Thank you- for any and all info.

ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 8, 2011, 4:45:07 PM6/8/11
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On a somewhat related note, has anyone created or run across a map-style visualization of OpenSim grids along the lines of the Second Life Map?

That is, showing relative "positions" of sims/grids on a grid, but in 3D rather than just the SL-style 2D version. I'd also like to see an SL-style grid WITH numbers and not just squares on a dimensionless map.

I thought I saw the beginnings of a 3D model (RL structure, not a diagram) in a snapshot on a long-ago blog post by Diva Canto, but I can't seem to locate it.

I understand that grids can occupy the same coordinates in all three dimensions, and that is a complication.

But to really understand this I need to see or figure out how to create some kind of visualization that includes the concept of the upper and lower grid locations (1000 vs 10,000 etc.) in addition to the usual 2D grid location coordinates. 

I "get" within-sim coordinates, but I'm a bit shaky on 2D grid coordinates for sim/region locations. Then to add on the "stacked" 3D vertical location...help!

Who has a link to a visualization of this, complete with numbers for x, y, z coordinates for the grids? Or who can explain it to me so I can try to make one? ;-)

Liz D. / Chimera Cosmos
Viz is my game

 

Graham Mills

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:17:42 PM6/8/11
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The only (very small) model I've seen was by Jeff Kelley and resides on a sky platform above Dolce Vita on NWG. I think it's supposed to show how to get from jokaydiaGRID to OSgrid via NWG, presumably at a time when that was possible. But I could be very wrong. Anyway, image attached.

In the early days of SL, the place was awash with cartographers but now, just when they're needed, <poof>.
kelley_maps.png

Graham Mills

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:32:10 PM6/8/11
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Having totally hijacked Annabelle's topic (humble apologies), it may be worth quoting Diva's most recent blog on the subject of the 4096 "bug" and the call to migrate regions down (which seems unlikely to happen due to practical issues with OSgrid):

The argument so far for calling it a “bug” seems to have been this: “well, if this is the basis for the 3D web, then clearly there will be more than 16 million regions, just like there are more than 16 million web servers.” True. But not on the same map! Not under the same authority! Seeing the map as one single shared space between all virtual worlds is just… wrong! The map is a grid resource; different virtual worlds should have their own maps. They should be able to have regions on the same coordinates — region placement should not require global coordination. Sure, there are interesting things that one can do with shared maps, but in my view of things, the starting point for interoperability is 1 grid = 1 map. As opposed to all grids = 1 map.

(my emphasis in blue; original blog http://metaverseink.com/blog/?p=222#comment-1754 and further analysis http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2011/06/hypergrid-inventor-calls-for-mass-grid-migration/ )







ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:37:02 PM6/8/11
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Yes, I have a collection of some of those early SL maps. Love them. What are the dimensions on the x and y axes of the entire grid? Analagous to 256m x256m on a sim...I think it might be related to the infamous 409x bug? (I forget what x is at the moment).

Thanks -- if Jeff sees this maybe he can give me a place to have a look. Chimera exists on most of the grids independently, even though Jokaydiagrid Chimera is my main Open Sim avatar.

ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:38:32 PM6/8/11
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Ah, I was writing my other reply as you were writing this on, obviously. ;-)

4096 it is, and reading that Diva post is what got me thinking about the map issue again, in fact.

ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:40:05 PM6/8/11
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Apologies from me too, Annabel (for the hijack).

Actually I'm very interested in the diagram you are asking about too!

Graham Mills

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:45:37 PM6/8/11
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Heh, I should give you a hypergrid address but it's late here. Try someplace around 200, 200, 1000.

ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:49:21 PM6/8/11
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Well Graham.

You have just hit on the exact spot of my ridiculous knowledge gap.

The meaning of 200, 200, 1000 and how to translate that into getting there!!!!

I need a map visualization!

ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 8, 2011, 5:59:59 PM6/8/11
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OK fine. Still not quite convinced but...

Then how do you construct an address to go between two 2D grids that happen to have chosen the exact same 3D coordinates? 

Thinking I'm exposing another knowledge gap: i.e. How do you construct a hypergrid url by knowing all of these things? Including SOMETHING ELSE that makes each grid unique...a web address? What? Put on your teaching hat, if you please. ;-)

Justin Clark-Casey

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Jun 8, 2011, 7:10:27 PM6/8/11
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You can see some basic standalone/grid diagrams at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Configuration#Standalone_vs._Grid

On a standalone, everything runs in one process (OpenSim.exe) though in different threads (e.g. one for scene update,
one per scene for processing incoming udp messages, etc.)


--
Justin Clark-Casey (justincc)
http://justincc.org/blog
http://twitter.com/justincc

Graham Mills

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Jun 9, 2011, 4:45:47 AM6/9/11
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Heh, I'm too new to OpenSim to be able to offer lessons yet. People like Path, Jeff and Vanish are more knowledgeable (not to mention Justin, Diva, Maria and an endless list of other folk).

That said, I am interested in increasing the visibility of the OpenSim edu community and have been playing around with, for example, constructing trails to facilitate exploration.
 
http://opensim-trails.tiddlyspace.com/

though I don't think I've nailed it and, of course, there are several other systems/gates/search engines. Being able to annotate builds/regions using the schema.org approach would be interesting.

Anyway, more to the point, I interpret the hypergrid address as

server_url:region:name/x/y/z

where name is optional. x/y/z in this case default to something like 128/128/25 if omitted and are in sim coordinates (in metres). If you follow Diva's interpretation, that's a unique address.

As others, especially Maria, have implied in comments to the two recent aforementioned articles, problems of regions occupying the same x/y/z are presumably due to the viewer.

I'm too much of a n00b to understand the meta-grid aspects beyond noting that you do get additional coordinates if you check Help|About in Imprudence.

Jeff has some diagrams here:

http://www.constructeurs-scripteurs.org/doku.php?id=notices:hyper_gateways

Diva has a draft paper here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18483217/hypergrid-draft.pdf

When we get it straight, we should probably edit this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlinks_in_virtual_worlds#Hypergrid_in_OpenSim

Graham Mills

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Jun 9, 2011, 7:51:11 AM6/9/11
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Bound to be errors in this:

The first teleport between grids was conducted in 2009 by avatar Whump Linden (?) between regions in Second Life and the OpenSim grid OSgrid. In 2010 Linden Lab, the operators of Second Life, announced the suspension of work on interoperability.

Subsequently in 2010 Prof Crista Lopes (UC Irvine) developed a protocol for teleporting between regions on different OpenSim grids that formed the basis of a Hypergrid. This presupposed that avatars had a home grid that was the primary host for their avatar and possessions in the form of inventory. An important feature was the preservation of avatar and inventory during teleporting. This, however, raised issues of illegal copying by avatars of content from destination sims and by destination sim owners from avatar inventory. Accordingly some commercial grids opted not to allow Hypergrid use. The Hypergrid protocol was also augmented with a suitcase intended to better protect avatars possessions on remote grids. With improvements in protection of intellectual property in more recent OpenSim and Hypergrid releases, it is expected that commercial grids will adopt a restricted form of the Hypergrid protocol.

Most OpenSim viewers are largely based on the open source Second Life viewer code. The  Second Life grid map is not designed to support more than 4096 regions in either direction. However, as some OpenSim grids decided to ignore these limits, teleports fail from the current location to any region beyond this limit in either dimension. Accordingly, long distance teleports involve the use of intermediate waystations and a number of these have been established solely to facilitate passage. Note that OpenSim grid maps are unique to each grid although jumps between grids must respect the 4096 region limit according to the positions of the start and endpoint on each grid.

Teleports may be initiated using a range of scripted inworld objects (so-called Hypergates and signposts, for example). Alternatively, many OpenSim clients support the secondlife: protocol. The avatar chats an address and then clicks on a hyperlink in the chat history window to make the teleport. Addresses are of the form:

secondlife://server_url:region_number:region_name/x/y/z

in which region_name is optional. The coordinates /x/y/z which represent the location in the respective dimensions in metres (regions are 256 x 256 metres) are also optional. Their omission will deposit the avatar at ground level in the middle of the region. Note that the address will not function as a hyperlink unless terminated with a forward slash.

In 2011 Prof Lopes further extended the Hypergrid protocol to support instant messaging, friending, teleport offers (lures), shared editing and other good stuff between avatars with different home grids.

(some more inter-op stuff or links threreto)

Robert A. Knop Jr.

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Jun 9, 2011, 12:10:16 PM6/9/11
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On Thu, Jun 09, 2011 at 04:51:11AM -0700, Graham Mills wrote:
> The first teleport between grids was conducted in 2009 by avatar Whump
> Linden (?) between regions in Second Life and the OpenSim grid OSgrid. In
> 2010 Linden Lab, the operators of Second Life, announced the suspension of
> work on interoperability.

That's actually late 2008 when the first teleport happened. I remember
that time-- it was exciting. I was Prospero Linden at the time, and
although I wasn't there for the first teleport, I did jump in and hop
about between aditi (the SL Beta Grid) and some OpenSim regions. I
don't know if it was Whump who did the first teleport, but he was the
one (or at least one of the ones) leading the project. I believe that
Tess and Leyla were also heavily involved in it, and a lot of the
groundwork behind all of it came from Zero. You may recall that for a
while around that time Zero used to hold office hours, and the
occasional large gathering, discussing the issues of grid
interoperability.

You have never been able to teleport from the main SL grid (agni) to
other grids. The grid interop code was only ever publicly deployed on
the beta grid.

Sadly, it was early 2009 when Linden realy pulled back on working on
interoperability. The first push was deployed, based on the result of
Linden and OpenSim people working together. Thereafer, Whump maintained
the interop regions on aditi. (I remember this, because at the time I
was server release manager. Every so often, deploying test releases to
the beta grid, I would screw up something whump was working on.)
However, a lot of the people who were working on it were pulled off of
it to work on other things. A number of them were sent over to work on
the SL Enterprise project (at the time called "nebraska" internally).
At the time, I thought that was a HUGE mistake. To me, the SL
Enterprise project compared to grid interoperability was like betting on
the old Novel Networks software in the face of the existence of the
Internet. (I was also personally annoyed because the release team had
various things we were trying to accomplish, and SL Enterprise sucked
away not only my supervisor whom I had a great working relationship
with, but also another release engineer we needed to get release stuff
done.) However, it was easier for marketing and business types to
imagine how to monetize SL Enterprise than interoperability, so that's
where Linden went.

By the time I was fired (May 2009), I believe that Zero and Infinity
were really the only two doing any work at all on interoperability, and
Zero had a lot of other things he had to think about. Infinity left
before the Lindenmageddon layoffs of 2010, and Zero left as part of
those layoffs. Shortly after that was when Linden announced that they
were formally pulling out of the OGP process (where OGP was "open grid
protocol"). However, OGP was still mostly at the stage of design
discussions, whereas at that time Hypergrid was growing and being
experimented with openly. Infinity will probably disagree with me on
this, but I believe that to most outside observers it was pretty clear
by then that Hypergrid was the way things were going, not OGP. Even
though Linden *formally* was involved in grid interoperability,
practically speaking they basically gave up on it in 2009 almost
immediately after the first demonstration that something like it was
possible. (It is this decision on their part that makes me fairly
confident that they won't be around, at least as a real virtual world
company, 10 years from now. The future of Linden Lab is the present of
Compuserve.)


> This, however, raised issues of illegal copying by avatars of
> content from destination sims and by destination sim owners from avatar
> inventory. Accordingly some commercial grids opted not to allow Hypergrid
> use.

This paranoia is part of what, I think, led Linden to slow way down on
interoperability. As it started happening, lots of the more paranoid
content creators on SL started making noise about making sure their
stuff stayed on the SL grid. So, lots of folks at LL started worrying
about doing futher experiments before they'd figured out how to get all
of the DRM right. (I suspect it's the same considerations, coupled with
advice from laywers (and listening to lawyers about your potential
liability is one of best way to slow down your ability to do anythingi
nteresting) that led Linden to decide that only people they could track
would be allowed to use the new mesh capabilities on SL. Which, of
course, will be another reason for many creative people and educators to
want to migrate to OpenSim.)

I cannot tell you how glad I am that the people who developed the
Internet and the Web didn't have to deal with this kind of paranoia. We
wouldn't have the wonderful world of global network that we have today
if those considerations had been ground in from the beginning. And,
truthfully, a lot of it IS paranoia. Yes, people are going to copy your
stuff illegally. It is GOING to happen. But, please, let us not let
worrying about that completely ossify virtual worlds in their present
state, and stop us from being able to experiment and grow. In the short
term, the things that are done to "protect content" end up being
barriers for legitimate purchasers as well as creators, and those
barriers hurt MORE than any piracy they stop. This is true with DRM
anywhere, and with what goes on in virtual worlds. All of the content
creators who wanted to make sure their stuff stayed in SL contributed to
SL not being part of the coming global metaverse. If we all listen to
the paranoia too much, we may never get a global metaverse, at least not
one that anybody can do anything in without some sort of copyright
authority approving every single act of creation. That's not a world
with freedom of expression, and that's not the world we want. In the
long run, creators benefit more from having a better and wider world in
which to share or sell their creations than they do from strict controls
that reduce copyright violations but fatally stunt the growth of that
world and the abillity of creators to express.

--
--Rob Knop
E-mail: rk...@pobox.com
Home Page: http://www.pobox.com/~rknop/
Blog: http://scientopia.org/blogs/galacticinteractions/

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Graham Mills

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Jun 9, 2011, 12:40:08 PM6/9/11
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Thanks for the insights, Rob. :)

I think almost all the dates are wrong by a year -- I wrote this pretty much off the top of my head as a therapeutic break from grading so it needs some serious fact-checking and polish. I'll have a further look at it when I need more therapy unless someone else wants a go in which case I'll pop it on gDocs.

Cider Jack

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Jun 9, 2011, 7:16:36 PM6/9/11
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Some verry interesting tidbits in there! A couple of things I'd like
to comment on if I may:

I wish everyone who is paranoid about content copying could read your
last paragraph. Very, very well stated. I would like to add that even
though as you say, "Yes, people are going to copy your stuff
illegally. It is GOING to happen" that it is not any less likely to
happen on the SL grid (or other walled gardens) than it is on any
OpenSim grid. Also those who participate in such unethical behavior,
even for presumably noble ends, are treading a slippery slope and
should not be tolerated. Just because something is possible doesn't
make it right. The end does not necessarily justify the means.

The other thing: "Linden to decide that only people they could track
would be allowed to use the new mesh capabilities on SL" -- is there a
blog or somewhere where I can find out more about this? Sounds...
incredible.

Overall, Rob, thanks for that nice concise overview of LL's position
in Hypergrid history. It confirms many of my observations as an end
user as well.

Cheers,
~!CJ

Clare Atkins

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Jun 9, 2011, 7:21:13 PM6/9/11
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Hi everyone,
Great discussion!
The information about mesh creators and their control by Linden was blogged about here by Tateru Nino.
Cheers




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John "Pathfinder" Lester

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Jun 9, 2011, 7:36:07 PM6/9/11
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It will be interesting to see how this "payment info on file"
requirement affects teachers and students.

"Class, today we'll be working with mesh in SL. Everyone, please take
out your credit card and type this info in..."

:P

Speaking of mesh, I am constantly amazed when I look at the bigger
picture. There's a huge universe of content creators and businesses
selling 3d mesh content that completely dwarfs SL in terms of both
revenue and market size.

And what kind of DRM do successful mesh marketplace companies like
turbosquid use to "protect" their models for sale?

None.


-John

----------------------------
John Lester
Director, Community Development
ReactionGrid, Inc.

My Jibe Office: http://bit.ly/Jibe
http://about.me/pathfinder
+1 (617) 910 0386

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the
vast and endless sea.”  -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

John Waugh

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Jun 9, 2011, 10:34:01 PM6/9/11
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I have to grin when I realise how much history is forgotten by even
those who participated. The first intergrid jump was done by Zha Ewry,
of IBM's Tarrytown, NY research facility, and she (actually he) arrived
at her destination without clothes or assets sometime in or before
October, 2008. I haven't looked through my blogs to find the date.
The jump by a group and there were pictures at the time arose out of a
process started by Zha Ewry through the Architeture Working Group
(http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/AW_Groupies#Purpose) which met
regularly on IBM Island at Thornebridge Town. Zha is still in SL so you
could ask her the date. There are a number of other links to the first
jump and how it came about as well.
cheers John Waugh

John Waugh

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Jun 9, 2011, 11:21:16 PM6/9/11
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Now found the link to the first hypergrid jump..... done by Zha Ewry,
Layla Linden and Tess Linden, June 05, 2008. Here is the link.
http://zhaewry.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/happy-jumpy-ruths-interop-takes-a-step/
cheers John Waugh

Robert A. Knop Jr.

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Jun 10, 2011, 12:33:52 AM6/10/11
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On Thu, Jun 09, 2011 at 07:36:07PM -0400, John Pathfinder Lester wrote:
> Speaking of mesh, I am constantly amazed when I look at the bigger
> picture. There's a huge universe of content creators and businesses
> selling 3d mesh content that completely dwarfs SL in terms of both
> revenue and market size.
>
> And what kind of DRM do successful mesh marketplace companies like
> turbosquid use to "protect" their models for sale?

One only has to read the comments on the blog posts about this LL
policy, though, to see some of the content creators lauding it and
defending it. The paranoia is out there, and people really believe that
they need this kind of stuff.

The comment that offended me the most was Gwenneth Lewellyn's. She said
taht mesh is for professionals, not amateurs, period. This is an
incredibly elitist attitude. It says that, all you unwashed proles out
there who might want to experiment with mesh, all you students who are
in SL trying to experiment with mesh, you're not wanted. We need to
track you if you're going to do this kind of thing in order to make
the elite business owners and content creators feel better about
themselves. Never mind that many of those people probably would never
have made it there in the first place if they didn't have the freedom to
experiment before they had to start ponying up with credit cards....

-Rob

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John "Pathfinder" Lester

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Jun 10, 2011, 1:26:17 AM6/10/11
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I'm a total newb at making mesh models. But I've started playing with
AC3D (http://www.inivis.com) and find it very easy to learn and use
effectively. It even has the ability to export sculpted prims for SL.

As a mesh beginner myself, I highly recommend it.

-John

----------------------------
John Lester
Director, Community Development
ReactionGrid, Inc.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the
vast and endless sea.”  -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iD8DBQFN8Z6wfEn1oMJSrdsRApVpAJ0R0LZK1gBTLxlWZ9JCeTOU4sUlKQCeNfzS
> 4cCUvPXlnOe0/axKuB/sZF4=
> =ncRa
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>

ChimeraCosmos

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Jun 10, 2011, 2:02:34 AM6/10/11
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I've played with AC3D off and on too. It's fairly easy and fun for SL sculpts, particularly if you google for some of the tutorials and templates that SL creators have posted on the web.

But I've only played with it to do SL sculpts, not mesh.

Is there a simple explanation of the difference between these classic SL sculpts and the newer Mesh objects (in AC3D and/or in general)?

Does the AC3D interface look the same and is the creation process for mesh objects the same, or different? 

*dumb noob questions*

Graham Mills

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Jun 10, 2011, 6:13:17 AM6/10/11
to the-hypergrid-a...@googlegroups.com, john....@xtra.co.nz
To be fair to Rob, Whump was my mistake, not his. Whether I can get any of this into Wikipedia is another matter anyway. The original aim was to help Chimera/Liz and I'm not sure whether it did or not.

Kyle G

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Jun 10, 2011, 7:32:30 AM6/10/11
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Well said Robert...

Kyle G
CEO ReactionGrid Inc.
http://reactiongrid.com
http://jibemix.com
407 992 8284

John "Pathfinder" Lester

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Jun 10, 2011, 8:36:39 AM6/10/11
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"Is there a simple explanation of the difference between these classic
SL sculpts and the newer Mesh objects (in AC3D and/or in general)?
Does the AC3D interface look the same and is the creation process for
mesh objects the same, or different?"

Long discussion about mesh vs sculpts here:
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/Question-what-is-the-difference-between-the-new-meshes-and-the/td-p/391900

The AC3D interface looks the same no matter what format you're
creating. When you're done making your model, you have the option to
save it as one of a number of different 3d model formats.


-John

----------------------------
John Lester
Director, Community Development
ReactionGrid, Inc.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the
vast and endless sea.”  -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Dharma

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Jun 10, 2011, 9:04:54 AM6/10/11
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Looks like LL has just made itself irrelevant, but the DRM issue is
likely to
Balkanize the Metaverse.

I've been saying for decades that the next Revolution will be over
Copyright and IP.
It's just a matter of time.

For fun and games and a little historical perspective read this:
A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
ON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY 1841
http://yarchive.net/macaulay/copyright.html


On Jun 9, 7:21 pm, Clare Atkins <clare.atk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> Great discussion!
> The information about mesh creators and their control by Linden was blogged
> about here by Tateru
> Nino.<http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/06/07/second-life-mesh-upload-to...>

Maria Trombly

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Jun 10, 2011, 12:28:46 PM6/10/11
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Crista Lopes invented OpenSim's hypergrid system in the fall of 2008. Read her post about it here:

By April 2009, it was up and running well. Here's an article about my first hypergrid travels, between OSGrid and Grid4Us (now part of GermanGrid):

-- Maria Korolov, editor, Hypergrid Business

Graham Mills

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Jun 10, 2011, 12:47:17 PM6/10/11
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I already did ;) What I didn't know iirc was that you can apparently search for hypergrid-enabled sims using MetverseInk and the sim: tag (provided the Diva Distro search option is enabled). I didn't have the patience to confirm that it works!

John Waugh

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Jun 10, 2011, 8:27:06 PM6/10/11
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Yes Maria I had read that and followed Wagner Au and yourself on the
work.. What IBM's Zha Ewry and Tess Linden et al did was the first jump
between SL and OpenSim in June 2008. Zha is the first to admit that
despite staging a successful jaunt between grids that pathway
eventually turned out to be a dead end. To me while Zha's jaunt is
analogus to the Wright Brothers first flight all power to Crista for
successfuly inventing a practical way to making hypergridding available
to all ... within the OpenSim environment anyway. I quoted yourself
and WagnerAu as well as others in this article on June 8, 2009 on the
first "public" demonstration of hypergridding .
> http://slenz.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/the-slenz-update-%E2%80%93-no-95-june-8-2009/

Cheers John Waugh

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Annabelle Fanshaw

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Jun 15, 2011, 8:44:18 AM6/15/11
to The Hypergrid Adventurers Club
in terms of cartography- I have started a series of blogs dedicated to
mapping cyberspace
as part of my involvement with the SENDS project-
http://sendsonline.org/2011/02/08/mapping-cyberspace/

I am now collecting information and sources
for Part 2 of that blog. One of the things I think a cyberspace map
will need is a more advanced
way to express location and content information. I think our brains
are well tuned to perceive
motion, and I think some animation keys should be part of that new
cyberspace map somehow.

Glad to have started such an interesting thread,
A

On Jun 10, 7:32 am, Kyle G <cre...@reactiongrid.com> wrote:
> Well said Robert...
>
> Kyle G
> CEO ReactionGrid Inc.http://reactiongrid.comhttp://jibemix.com

Vanish Seriath

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Jun 15, 2011, 9:42:25 AM6/15/11
to the-hypergrid-a...@googlegroups.com
With due respect to this ambitious mapping project, I think it's mislead
and misleading.

In the beginning of the WWW, we thought we would need to map and
categorize it, too, to get the full picture. (After all, yahoo, the most
popular search engine at the time, started out as a web directory.) It
just showed quite soon that really, nobody cared about the full picture as
long as everyone could just find quickly whatever it was they were looking
for. Thus, today's web resides on search engines, and we're quite happy
with letting computers map and categorize the web for us, even in a way we
can't fully understand, as long as the result will do what we want it to
do. So really, instead of maps, we need a better search.

Also, the metaverse is already very complex. Not only defies it mapping in
the traditional sense (one point in space relating to one location), it is
actually not location-based or even coherent. OpenSim simulates time and
space, but it does not depend on it. Just an example: My public standalone
has five regions on it. One is around the coordinates 8000,8000, the
others around 4000,4000. On a map, they don't form a coherent mass, and
when mapping my "grid", it would both fall into the "upper" and "middle"
reaches of the Metaverse.

Out of these five regions, one is a lonely inn on a cliff side, one is a
large palm house on an island, one is just a series of very small sandy
islands in the sea that I use for a classroom, one is a large forested
area, and one is a backup region, used for all kinds of purposes. So even
thematically it doesn't form a unit. And this is just a small simulator
that's run by myself - other grids are sporting thousands of regions,
which belong to an equal number of people. Just flying through OSGrid for
five minutes shows what a chaotic mess the Metaverse really is.

And finally, maps are quite static, whereas the Metaverse is changing, and
changing fast. I can change coordinates of my regions in the blink of an
eye, and even the theme by loading some preconfigured OAR. On bigger
grids, regions go down and new regions turn up every day, so any map will
always just be a momentary snapshot, and on the net, nothing's older than
last weeks news.

So, as much as I love maps, and as much as I would love the comforting
sight of a map of the Metaverse, I know it would be unreliable to navigate
by it. And worse, it might give the impression to people that it's
actually safe to navigate by it, when half the grids they're trying to
sail to have moved/upgraded/merged/gone out of business/renamed their
urls/whatnot, and only the most conservative of grids would be safe
harbours.

In order to charter the Metaverse, I think it's better to integrate the
web with OpenSim (in a very basic sense, like using HG URL links on
websites and making regions/objects searcheable on MetaverseInk), than to
make maps of clouds in the sky.

Godspeed,
V


--
The Twilight’s Green Illuminate Beam,
This Great ImBalance, that I’ve seen,
That Trees Got Icy Branches and,
The Good In Bad, That God I’ve Been.

http://tgib.co.uk/

John Waugh

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Jun 15, 2011, 12:09:37 PM6/15/11
to the-hypergrid-a...@googlegroups.com
Everything you say is true Vanish.... I long ago gave up trying to
locate and identify things on SL maps .... now only relying on them for
view ahead sailing or flying in specific Linden areas...such as the
Blake Sea. Even my older SL landmarks often prove useless... and that is
in an enviroment controlled by one organisation not the metaverse. I use
search in Sl, as limited as that might be.
Cheers Johnnie Waugh

Vanish Seriath

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Jun 17, 2011, 3:26:52 PM6/17/11
to the-hypergrid-a...@googlegroups.com
Slightly related, and because I found it again: http://xkcd.com/802/

Robert A. Knop Jr.

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Jun 17, 2011, 3:48:33 PM6/17/11
to the-hypergrid-a...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 09:26:52PM +0200, Vanish Seriath wrote:
> Slightly related, and because I found it again: http://xkcd.com/802/

Heh... of course, if you look at the zoom-outs in the uppor corner, he
doesn't do full justice to email. Most of email should be a barrent
desert labelled "auto-blocked SPAM".

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