Posted by Jani Pirkola on February 24, 2009 under OpenLifeGrid | 
Users of the Openlife and popular backup software for Avatar inventory called Second Inventory would be aware of the disabled access to the Openlife with second inventory software whilst improvements to security and stability are made.
Second Inventory developers are working together with the 3DX team to make improvements to the methods and capabilities of second inventory and it’s access to the Openlifegrid.
The improvements being developed will make will improve it’s security and safety to provide Openlife users a 3rd party backup method for the inventory and a method for Second Life Creators to safely import their content to the Openlife knowing the software cannot be used to steal the content or not respect the creator’s Avatar Name.
The Second Inventory team expects the first changes to be available in the coming soon version 1.2.0.9 version of Second Inventory.
Collaboration and design ideas have already started in co-operation to improving the security relationship between, content creator, user and the Openlifegrid. Improvements to script upload capabilities have also been shared between the Second Inventory and the Openlife Grid and can be expected in the next release.
(via Sakai Openlife’s blog)
Posted by Jani Pirkola on February 2, 2009 under OpenLifeGrid, realxtend |
KirstenLee Cinquetti reports that the R17 viewer is in schedule and the estimated release will be at the end of February. Now the code merge work from realXtend viewer 0.4 is 75% ready. The majority of the work is to write parts of realXtend code again to make it compile for all major platforms; Linux, Windows and Mac. R-series of viewers are specifically tailored to work with OpenLifeGrid, the biggest OpenSim-based grid.
The first deliverable from KirstenLee’s work will be the OpenLifeGrid specific R17 viewer, which has most of the features from previous R-series of viewers and also most of the realXtend features. After R17 is released, KirstenLee told to CTN that the next step is to take the latest SL Viewer, and backport the code from R17 on top of that. The result will be cross platform realXtend viewer, based on the latest official Linden Lab SL Viewer.
The realXtend team is working hard to get Modrex fully functional, and it is expected to have most of the functionality ready by the end of February. Modrex is a library that makes a standard Opensim to a realXtend cabable server (Opensim + modrex = realXtend server). OpenLifeGrid is expected to utilize Modrex to support the realXtend features of the upcoming R17 viewer.
Posted by Jani Pirkola on January 22, 2009 under OpenLifeGrid |
To improve stability and crash reporting, OpenLifeGrid (OLG) changed the login to accept only Openlife R16.2 viewer. The viewer is done by KirstenLee Cinquetti take a look at CTN post about OpenLife viewers).
One of the consequences is that Linden Labs Second Life viewer is also blocked out. It seems that this is not a big deal for the users, who have already learned to use alternative viewers. Macphisto Angelus writes in his blog post, that the OLG users feel not so happy about the fact that Second Inventory, a backup tool for Opensim and Second Life virtual world content, is not working anymore within OLG.
Stephen Sima said in a CTN interview, that R16.2 is the current viewer and R16.3 comes out probably in less than a week: ” Basically we’re just focusing on stability”. Mr. Sima also said that “to get the best data feedback we locked in the current viewer as the only viewer so we can work attack the relevant bugs without having the feedback corrupted by older incompatible viewers.”
The benefits are soon coming to OLG users. The 3DX team reports significant improvement in stability when both the new R16.3 viewer and new 0.6.9.1 server are used together. The new viewer and server software are being released within a week, and the Second Inventory problem is going to be solved as well.
Posted by Jani Pirkola on January 13, 2009 under OpenLifeGrid |
The OpenLife Grid is about to get an in world credits system to allow users to trade items or buy services with a Virtual currency in world. The OpenLife credit system is planned to go live by the end of February, 2009.
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 OpenLife logo for the credits |
Steve Sima, the founder of the OpenLife grid, says that: “…exchangeable credits are a popular request from residents. However with interchangeable credits comes a range of new issues that must be addressed. After a good 6 months of consultaton with Openlife users, we’re pleased to say we’re on track to deliver an in world payments solution in the forum of Openlife Credits before the end of February. This will follow shortly after new fixes and implementations in objects and inventory permissions are rolled out.”
The amount of available credits is indicated by the Gold Star with the ‘C’ in the middle at the top right hand side of R16 Openlife Viewer. KirstenLee’s new r17 OpenLife viewer with realXtend features is planned to be out at the same time as the credits system (read earlier CTN article about OpenLife viewer plans).
All users will be able to buy OpenLife credits. The supported payment systems include initially paypal and common credit cards. The cash-out possibility is reserved only for the region owners. Steve says that this was decided after a careful consideration: “We found the general consensus amongst users is they didn’t want the implementation of credits to affect the goodwill amongst the grid. One of the mechanisms in place to keep the balance will be the exchange of credits for real dollars only being available to region owners.”
OpenLife grid is the biggest OpenSim based grid in operation. Take a look at the CTN article about the growth of the OpenLife userbase.
Posted by Jani Pirkola on January 6, 2009 under OpenLifeGrid, realxtend |
The next OpenLife viewer r16.3 is planned to be released during January.
KirstenLee has released a series of SL Viewer based OpenLife r -viewers. realXtend viewers from 0.3 are based on Kirsten’s r15 codebase, which is still compatible with SL. The r16 series is evolving into direction where the viewer is not anymore compatible with Second Life. Kirsten’s viewers are stable and well performing.
OpenLife r16.2 and asset browser screenshot
After r16.3, Kirsten is working towards r17, which is going to include majority of the functionality from the realXtend viewer, such as the Avatar 2.0, OGRE rendering and 3D meshes - and it is going to be working on all three major platforms; Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Already the 16.2 release had many features, such as Skype call and asset browser integrated from the realXtend viewer.
The first beta versions of r17 are planned at around the end of February 2009.
While waiting for the r17 to run realXtend on Mac OS X and Linux, it is possible to use Wine to achieve cross-platform support for the official realXtend viewer.
Posted by Jani Pirkola on December 26, 2008 under OpenLifeGrid |
OpenLife (http://www.openlifegrid.com) started year 2008 with already honorable 18000 users. Now after one year the amount of users has risen to over 43000.
The growth has been enormous and partly helped by the Linden Lab announcement to raise open space sim prices. Many content developers fled to OpenSim alternatives. OpenLife is the biggest OpenSim based grid and as a such, seems to be the safest bet for many.
OpenLife also announced 18th of December that it has now a cross-platform viewer, OpenLife r16. It is derived from SL Viewer and has many new features built in, such as avatar radar. The earlier OpenLife r15 viewer served as a base for realXtend viewer, because its performance and stability.
OpenLife is going to open a beta-grid that uses realXtend technology during early 2009. If realXtend technology proves itself successful, then the OpenLife grid will take the technical lead over SL by introducing support to 3D meshes and easy web integration.
