#opensim

[solenloid]

designs for posters in an opensim instance: shouldnt be taken seriously ;]

[liftedpixel]

time for hypergrid safari

[jojomanda]

Stark Dystopia on OpenSim. An abandoned island with much to explore. If you want to just walk around and look, or RP, this is the place for you. Located at Stark Dystopia on Zetaworlds/Opensim

[x86]

[faithfromund]

(via https://www.flickr.com/photos/faith_fromund/53455507723)

[teslakuhn]

Thanks for the Support

I was successful to move my domain and page with another provider. Hosting a contest for anyone interested in strategically placing themself at my 3D game room. https://patreon.com/teslakuhn

[focusmagazine]

Midjourney Woman by Angela Thespian - FOCUS Magazine Via Flickr: I'm not sure how much credit I should take for these! Other than I'm getting better with prompts!

[immortalsins]

it's still so over

5k/10k of my thesis completed 👍 we might be so back (<- girl who has 3 days to do the rest)

[nova-ayashi]

So, it’s been about a week since I jumped into OpenSim, and took it all in as if slamming a shot of tequila. I made some judgments right off the bat, and a little bit of an angry, now deleted post, where I decided I wasn’t thinking about things correctly. And then I spent a bit reflecting on the time I’ve spent in Second Life … building, a Second Life, a store, and watching as the land barons, the landlords, slowly, but surely, ruined everything the virtual world used to be.

I’ve spoken before about how Second Life has been overtaken by landlords who sell shopping events to store owners and creators, so that they can make money off of your work, and money off of the people who buy your work. How they’re all exclusive, special cliques that you can never criticize, else you’ll lose your spot. Your spot that you pay for, in hopes of making a profit.

Pictured below is a new shopping event seen via Primfeed depicting an event accompanied by what can only be described as a battlepass.

Some people depend on Second Life as an income. I never really made it there, and that’s partially because I refuse to participate in this disgusting game of exclusivity and censorship of ideas. The slow trickle of theft of compensation for your work, into the pockets of digital landlords who … well, do mostly absolutely nothing.

And I guess that’s the most accurate way a virtual world could possibly mirror real life. Someone’s always trying to get their’s, at the expense of everyone around them, aren’t they?

I realize this sounds a bit scathing, and it is. I kind of hate what Second Life has become. I miss the strangeness, the surreal landscapes, the virtual chatroom where anyone could end up your friend.

Now? It’s one big never-ending shopping event for you to throw money into, forever.

So, we circle back around to OpenSim, where I’m renting an entire region for 95% less than what Linden Labs charges.

Five bucks.

You can visit Phyria L89 at the Neo Machina region, here.

The reason I’ve kind of doubled-back on my feelings on items and work from Second Life ending up in OpenSim, is because I was looking at it wrong.

Internet piracy has been around, forever. It’s been around since even before Lars Ulrich tried to sue people for downloading Metallica albums.

The way it works, is like this: If someone is pirating your work, or someone else’s work, you aren’t losing that as a sale. If someone can’t afford to buy something, or they don’t want to, then they weren’t ever going to purchase these things, in the first place.

And this is coming from me, whom, after looking inside myself, and back through my memories, seeded my own music on PirateBay. Because there was a time when I fully supported piracy, and I’m not sure why I ever abandoned that position.

The people who want to and can buy these things, though, will.

In a world where almost everything is done via money and faith, locked down, and locked out, owning less and less of what we consume, it seems this is the only inevitable conclusion to the ordeal.

Now, I still think it’s a bit weird to take something out of Second Life, import it to OpenSim, and then slap your own logo overtop someone else’s … but, we’re also living in the age of AI where Twitter algorithms that talk, have warped a lot of people’s minds into forgetting what’s right and what’s wrong, when it comes to content, credit, and ownership. And, of course, on that thought, you can’t escape generative slop in OpenSim.

But, here’s the thing, it’s even worse in Second Life.

In the above screenshot, this is only a small slice of someone attempting to sell generative images directly on the Second Life marketplace.

This is almost worse than shopping events with battlepasses. And, as far as I know, short of blocking a store owner’s actual avatar, you can’t really stop yourself from having to see these grifters trying to profit off of something that was made via the evaporation of fresh water, and the frankensteined work of millions of other people.

And maybe you’d ask, “Isn’t using AI to generate images the same as pirating something you like?”

No.

Even when people on OpenSim plaster their own logo over, say, the Maitreya Logo, the product still retains what it originally was. It’s original form. Most of its functionality. And you still know where it came from, and likely, how to log into Second Life and support that creator. If you should choose. Also, and I should definitely mention this, there is almost nothing for sale in OpenSim. It is heavily encouraged that everything just be free (aside from region ownership, which is insanely cheap compared to what Linden Labs asks for 20 year old technology). OpenSim does not operate for-profit, and neither do its users.

As someone who has probably spent thousands of dollars in Second Life over the past 14 years, I think I’ve paid more than my fair share, especially to Linden Labs, and probably will continue to do so, unless I decide I’ve completely had it with mainline Second Life.

Also, it was pointed out to me, content theft/piracy, is also all over Second Life, and not even Linden Labs is attempting to stop this from happening. They’re too busy making an app that lets you replace actual living people with algorithm-friends, as if finding people who actually want to talk and be social wasn’t hard enough.

But, stay with me for a second here, because I get off-topic real easy.

Now, I think we were talking about content piracy and generative AI. Let’s say, some asshole makes an AI that generates mesh that you can upload to Second Life or OpenSim, and, for now, we’ll forget about how devastating this would be to creators. But let’s say that happens. Obviously, this would have to draw sources from other people’s work in order to make something “new.” But, it wouldn’t be “new.” It would be an unrecognizable bastardization of thousands of other people’s work. Something unrecognizable, but cheap, soulless, and probably also broken. Say goodbye to mesh optimization.

… Not that a whole lot of current creators in Second Life know much about optimizing their mesh (queue the exploding graphics cards).

My point in all of this is, I don’t think OpenSim is as bad as I originally thought it was. I think what’s happening with Second Life creations ending up in OpenSim is a much more complicated topic than I originally thought. I still hate AI, and I’m sad over what Second Life has become, thanks to the landlords who likely aren’t working any real jobs, or creating anything of value. Just like real life.

If you decide to check out OpenSim, I’m just nova ayashi over there, and I should be relatively easy to find, especially if you sign up via Osgrid.org.

Stay away from AvatarLife. While AL is connected to the hypergrid (a connection of thousands of different grids), they’ve locked themselves out, so that, while you can technically see their worlds from the map, you can’t actually travel there. And people from within AL can’t travel outward. Not to mention, it’s rife with cryptocurrency and gambling. Their connection to the hypergrid is superficial, so that they can say they’re a part of OpenSim, without actually being part of it (basically, it’s just one big scam).

I’ve spent most of this post talking about my grievances with Second Life, and reconciling issues I had with OpenSim, though, and to wrap this up, I want to showcase some things that make OpenSim cooler, and different than modern Second Life.

Pictured above is a beacon, where you can view pages upon pages of currently populated regions across OpenSim. This is really great for traveling, socializing, and also shopping, because there is no marketplace page for OpenSim. Yes, you have to shop the old way.

This is the world map, where, much like Second Life, you can see regions that are currently online, or that exist. But, you should note, none of them are organized into a continent, some aren’t visible. I’ve found that some grids, while on the map, won’t show as an actual region landmass, for whatever reason. And this is just one piece of it. You can scroll … for a while.

In this way, OpenSim is actually much bigger than Second Life (think of Second Life as the planet Earth, and OpenSim as the entire galaxy). It is, in fact, so big, that you absolutely will run into this issue where you don’t encounter other users for a while in your travels. But, that’s what happens when there are thousands upon thousands of grids connected to each other.

But, there is an easy way to find people to talk to, if you’d like.

Welcome hubs! These are all over the place, and, I believe, or think, that most grids have them. And most of them have people in them. This particular welcome hub is Osgrid’s “Lbsa Plaza,” where I’ve gotten to know a few people already. In a week.

Something that hasn’t occurred for me in Second Life, at least not very easily, in years. And I once owned an entire region.

Of course, what would a metaverse platform be without nightclubs.

I spent a couple of minutes looking for a club that had an ongoing event, but this would probably take me a bit longer, as I’ve mentioned before, the hypergrid is massive.

Thanks for coming with me on this short little journey. Of course, there’s a lot to discover, and I’ve only scratched the surface in a week. I think I could take an entire day to just wander around, which I might just do!

Source: Original Post

Posted via Python, written by @daemon_nova

[news786hz]

OpenSim usage stats down as summer comes to a close – Hypergrid Business

OpenSim usage stats down as summer comes to a close – Hypergrid Business

[ai-news]

Storylink Radio is dedicated to the art of storytelling, keeping literature—both ancient and modern—alive and engaging through entertainment. Our mission extends beyond storytelling into immersive language learning, offering emergent readers and lan #AI #ML #Automation

[liftedpixel]

Want to see something different? I'm streaming Hypergrid Safari to YouTube:

🟦 #jessicapixel 🦒 #hgsafari #opensim

[jojomanda]

Come explore the underwater city. Dont forget to grab the free scuba gear at tunnel entrance and explore ruins and marine mammals! The Stark sims are at zetaworlds on Opensim. https://zetaworlds.com/

[metaverse-ar-vr]

All the OpenSim stats were up this month, as both land area, active users, and registered users all increased compared to mid-December 2024. The land area of the public OpenSim grids went up more than 100 standard region equivalents, active users we #AR #VR #Metaverse