New Blog Location for Rutgers Unviersity Virtual Worlds

The Rutgers Virtual Worlds blog is getting it's own domain name and service. You can now find all the latest news and information at http://blog.virtualworlds.rutgers.edu. There you can find out how our adventures with the latest Open Sim environment goes in the RU Danger Grid.

A quick way to jump into Open Sim

For experimenting quickly with OpenSim I've been using the Diva Distribution, http://www.metaverseink.com/blog/?p=21, of OpenSim and it's HyperGrid ready. With Hypergridding ready, you can have students move between sims. technically, installing OpenSim requires that your are able to install Mono and Mysql on the target servers. Guests, students, faculty, and staff would need to be created in the management interface Wifi, and you do need to make sure that the DNS configuration is just right so all the different sims can be found a
talked to properly.

If you plan to use groups you'll need to configure that feature separately. It's not an automatic feature of OpenSim, but can be enabled as a separate module.

Also, you need to make sure the Second Life client supports Open Sim
well, and is easily configurable. We've used Imprudence here at
Rutgers because when we started with OpenSim it rendered textures
properly. Best advice here is try out the viewer and make sure it sees
your content they way expect. I've used Imprudence with good success.

In terms of content you'll need to make sure that content you're
describing is available in OpenSim. In order to export from SL you
need to have creator permissions for the entire object. Additionally,
textures are not exportable with the object until Linden Lab
implements showing the permissions flag. One really good option for
content is to contact the content creators and buy their work in RL,
you can chose where you want it to go. or invite the builders in to
create work in your OpenSim. You can then save the sim information as
an OpenSim Archive (oar), and Inventory Archive (iar). Makes it easy
to get the rest of you sims up and running because you bring a new
grid online, and load the OAR file.

Lastly, my plug for content. OpenSim needs more content. If we can
generate content and put it under an Open Licences, like Apache 2.0,
and Creative Commons. We can create a body of content that can help
start other education worlds up.

--Rick Anderson (Rk Jinn)

Second Life not the only virtual world in town

My immediate reaction to the doubling of sim costs by Linden Lab the providers of Second Life:

I'm regularly approached for projects that can't afford to fit

into Second Life. So the projects that I do
there are sized for what we can afford. Because of budget issues I've
capped our land growth. I've already lost the sandbox dedicated to
students, and faculty. Now, I may be asked to shrink the foot print to
make the budget remain balanced. However, the big success of the
Rutgers project has been in visualizing future version of our
Livingston Campus. It's been used to help coordinate the stake
holders, and help the see the what they are working on. As the
architects plans get updated, so does this build.

It's a four sim build already, and scaled below the standard 1:1.5 for
Second Life. Keystone Bouchard, Ceera Murakami, and Dfox Spitteler all
have done excellent work there. To do the entire campus it would be 16
sims. So the plan is to build the entire campus in OpenSim, and port
to second Life the elements that represent the vision of the new
campus the best. Current status, the 4 sims in SL have been ported
Open Sim. Clean up, and expansion of project is next.

I really want to show off this amazing work to the SL community. But
we already show only a portion. I now may have to show rest in
miniature. But remember the prim count doesn't care how big or small a prim is.

--Rick Anderson (Rk Jinn)