I know curiosity typically kills the cat, but can’t help it anyway.
After discovering I had to give up my parcels in Babbage due to lack of funding, and also since I recently tried out InWorlds (another of the various of the SL based OpenSims) I find that it’s rather stable (once you get the browser set correctly) and extremely cheap (Currently $75 for a private sim with 35,000 prims to use). Also I think Victoriana has even moved there.
So I guess my Curiosity really stems from, has anyone thought of going to other OpenSims and creating other Steampunk worlds?
No.
The problem with those OpenSim grids is hardly anyone goes there….
I’ve considered it, it’s nice that it doesn’t cost me anything to upload textures, but yeah, everywhere’s I went was so devoid of people.
dunno, maybe they just need better marketing or something, i’d probably be there more often if it had more people
I’d probably go if Babbage went. Definately if Steelhead and/some of the other steamlands also went. Otherwise not much point to a social game with no people on it.
I do hope they do well though. SL needs some competition to shake things up a bit. Tier in particular is ruinous here. If they lowered tier to 100$US/month per sim they’d have people making their own continents.
I’ve visited Victoriana there but since I get so little time to spend in SL at the moment as it is, reducing that to spend time in Victoriana hasn’t grabbed me yet.
“It’s too crowded. No one goes there anymore”
-Yogi Berra.
I went once. Wherever it was I wound up was empty. I will go back some time. I’d like to see Victoriana again
I tried OpenSim and it was a bit disappointing. While I did meet people there, it was just a pain to import my clothes and textures.
I’ve heard about inworldz, but I’m not really sure about trying out a new world right now. I have so little time to devote to my stuff in second life.
I’m not an expert on the subject by any means but I do know some of the pitfalls. The Open Sim software is not the equivalent of Second Life. Linden Lab uses a variety of proprietary software that it licenses from third parties. We saw some of this at work in the recent Emerald mess. These packages are not available to people using Open Sim.
For example, Second Life uses the Havok physics engine, which I believe is now owned by Intel. Linden Lab pays lots of money for this engine and it is pretty good. Open Sim uses open source software called Open Dynamic Engine (ODE). I have no opinion on just how good this engine is, but I do know that it’s not functionally equivalent to Havok. It works differently. I have tried taking my kites over to Open Sim and it was a disaster.
In Open Sim, scripts don’t work the same. Vehicles don’t work the same. Speaking as a scripter, this is the deal killer. It’s hard enough to get complex scripts to do what you want them to do in Second Life. Trying to get them to work in Open Sim is a headache I don’t need.
If all you want from a virtual world is a place to size and texture prims, Open Sim might be great. But I think a virtual world without scripts would be a pretty sterile place.
It’s funny you mention this because another SL friend of mine was just telling me about Inworldz last night. She said she rented a store front in a Steampunk sim (Victoriana?), and that she asked the owner if he would object to urchins in the sim and he said no. I went and created an account but haven’t gone yet. And my understanding is that Inworldz is still in Beta, so just because they don’t have scripting now doesn’t mean they won’t ever.
http://alphavilleherald.com/2010/09/linden-lab-has-no-apparent-business-plan.html
In Worldz has Scripting ,it just is not the same formatting as in SL ..
many major vendors are there conducting business, and it In Worldz is growing rapidly !
4 winds & bits and bobs examples of two ..
In Worldz also uses lindens that onc can transfer over from sl .
Look I do not think LL is going puff anytime soon !
But As Cyan said In Worldz *beta* does offer some interesting & generous Investing growth options to the new explorer !
To just simply cut it off and claim it does not exist nor will effect sl is just pure denial !
As for
Blue Mars and Open Space yep they are there, and have their own Money systems!
((and issues :) ))
None of these worlds are quote utopias but “there are other games in town”, perhaps a good thing !
i’m all for more virtual worlds than just SL, otherwise you’ll have stagnation, and eventually it would go the way of 90’s VR, and just a technological curiosity (though I think they still use VR, or at least AR in hospital training?)
June’s issue of Prim Perfect focused heavily on taking a look at grids outside of SL.
http://en.calameo.com/books/00000423493a01935471c
And last I heard, Caledon existed on Blue Mars, too.
I would be interested in looking at other options. The builder in me would love the opportunity to build a complete sim of my own. Of course it would be a shame if no one ever saw it.
Thanks for all the responses so far.
I haven’t traveled much in the OpenSims yet but there are some nice things about them I think.
Personally if we are talking about things we’d like to see, well in Furcadia there’s an option to build your own area and invite people to it without any cost (although I think it’s run off your computer). I think it’d be kind-of cool to be able to do something similar to that, have a private invitation to someones personal sim and they get as much space as their computer will allow. It would definitely allow people to be more creative I think and would be nice to have your own personal sandbox to create anything you could think of without too many limits.
Anyway I will have to explore some of these other places some more. Please feel free to continue responding as I am enjoying the responses :3
It seems there is a sudden awareness of Inworldz because they’re also discussing it over on SLUniverse. It seems that while you can buy entire regions for very little, the option to buy little parcels does not exist unless you rent from an estate owner.
Well I know the one area where the main owners are you can get land for free as long as you do a monthly event of some sort (thinking the educational type).
whispers maybe a good thing others are not interested in In Worldz ;)
makes for a nice escape from the norms … grins ..
i hate living in gated communities. that puts the other OS grids off my radar, except Inworldz and Blue Mars.
I’ve been watching Inworldz for a while. Apple users will be able to get in, but movement is still painfully slow. Yes, you can get a sim for cheap, for now. while it is in beta. Yes, you can have double and triple the prims, and you pay for it dearly in server performance. see how long you stay logged in on a heavily loaded sim. inworldz sims are still dealing with the same limited resources that sl sims are, they have simply chosen to distribute it differently. thier model will be great when the server techonology can catch up to it. meanwhile….
I think Inworldz will always be playing the catch-up game.
Have i considered it? well, yes. but it won’t be New Babbage. i have something in sl i could sell to fund it. time is the biggest constraint. most of us only have so much time per evening we can spend here, dividing that time into another grid takes away from what we have here.
I’ve noticed movements are still very sluggish actually and in truth I really haven’t been back since I visited the first time cause as you said dividing time between different grids takes away from what we already have (and I really do love Babbage). I haven’t really gotten to explore it much though so haven’t really found the lag yet (although when I started I was crashing every two seconds). Unfortunately I think any of the OS grids are really just going to be playing catchup it’s the ones that go out and do their own thing that would probably be better to look at.
Speaking of Blue Mars I looked at the prices there and felt a pain in my wallet without even buying anything. To get a full city there was 1000 a month. I haven’t seen much of what it would entail but still… that’s a lot of dough.
yeah, it is. i was playing around in there on a free intro account, you used to be able to get an outpost for cheap, but that package is gone. the unlimited horizon terraforming made me drool, no building your landscape tile by tile. i’d go there more, but my bandwidth does not seem to be enough, people can see and hear me, but i cannot see or hear anyone. this is the most interesting one of the lot, but it seems to be very ‘game’ oriented, as in the tools are geared towards being a host for people to build functioning games for firend and customers to come and play, and less of a social/builder environment.
That’s too bad. Not everyone likes to game all the time. For a long time tried the Playstation Home (until I rediscovered SL and Babbage) and it was okay but extremely limited and positioned more for gamers and gaming than anything else (of course). The only good thing that happened which got me interested in the first place was they had a ARG on it for a bit which was rather fun. After it went away though we were left with just Home… and it’s rather dull on it’s own.
excellent conversation .. You are wise Clockwinder :p !! thank You for sharing . Cyan I look @ your avi picture as I read your comments & always smile @ what a good character You be !!
Hippo makes a huge difference for Inworldz http://inworldz.com/faq.php
its a little tricky the first time but hey if breezy can do it :p .. *smiles* as i said i just think its a venue worth exploring not just knocking is it sl noooo !! I concur with “the catch up game” remark … None of the worlds are LL but again each are out there to explore :)