Austin Tate's Blog

Try the timed ski runs on Coeur Lac d’Annecy Ski Resort… https://secondlife.com/destination/coeur-lac-dannecy-ski-resort

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Coeur%20Lac%20Annecy/51/21/2179/

I was inspired by one of Inara Pey’s excellent Second Life destinations reviews to visit another nice replica of Fallingwater in Second Life. Fallingwater the home designed by Frank Llody Wright for Edgar J. Kaufmann and his family in the mid-1930s.

The Fallingwater build is by Miltone Marquette at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fivepenny/112/40/45. Contact Miltone directly in-world and to arrange a time when you might visit his reproduction of Fallingwater. A video tour is shown below…

“Shoji Falling Water – 1/4 Sim” by Namuri

“Shoji Falling Water – 1/4 Sim” is a nice Second Life marketplace item by Namuri. It requires a large plot of Second Life land to rez and should be placed along with its included landscaping to work correctly.
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Shoji-Falling-Water-14-Sim/7944058

Esprit Christmas Village and Skating Lake by Camila Runo

There is a well developed winter themed region on Esprit by Camila Runo. Walk the winter woodland trails and skate the surrounding lake. Then visit the Christmas village for a glass of Gluhwein and some friendly chat. Don’t forget to get your Christmas tree before you leave.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Esprit/204/57/2026

Winter Wonderland by Linden Lab

Also, there is the Winter Wonderland created by Linden Lab themselves, where the annual snow ball flights take place between Second Life residents and the Lindens and Moles.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Winter%20Wonderland%205/113/7/31

Flyte Ice Skating Lake by Jenna Dirval
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/FlyGearZ/7/215/26

Stanlee Ice Skating Lake by Logan Marcus (quvie)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Stanlee/33/138/2601

The OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC) is one of the longest running virtual conference series, having started in 2013 and run annually since. This is OSCC’s 10th year and the event celebrates 16 years of OpenSimulator as the first commit was January 31, 2007. The OpenSimulator community and Avacon Inc. come together to run the event on the OpenSimulator Community Conference (OpenSimCC – http://cc.opensimulator.org:8005) grid.

The main keynote presentations area uses the adjacent corners of 4 sims to provide capacity for up to around 400 attendees.

There are many other regions for avatars, shopping, exhibition booths for presenters, OpenSim community hub, music and dance venues, etc.

Links to my blog posts on earlier OpenSimulator Community Conferences.. https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/?s=oscc

Sponsors and Crowdfunders

Day One

The event opened with a visualisation of the commits to OpenSim over a period of 17 years…

Then continued with a panel of the OpenSim Core Developers…

Maria Korolov of Hypergrid Business then gave an overview of the status of PpenSim and OpenSim grids…

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/12092-second-life-destinations-le-chateau/

https://secondlife.com/destination/le-chateau-motel

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Swing%20Island/50/109/34/

Creator Victoire Sire says that the inspiration behind Le Chateau is a typical 80’s style American motel. I was interested to see that (from the poolside) it looks VERY similar to a Miami Beach hotel we stayed at in the mid 1980s called “Chateau by the Sea” on Collins Avenue, North Miami Beach.

Diva Canto provides the popular “Diva Distribution (D2)” precompiled version of OpenSim which includes a number of addon modules. One of these is called “Wifi” and provides a web front-end interface to OpenSim running in “Standalone” or “Grid mode with “Robust” services.

Wifi is documented on the OpenSim Wiki at http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Wifi through which links can be found to Diva Canto’s download and source areas on Github. Wifi serves web pages which provide services such as:

• Account creation, optionally controlled by the administrator
• Configurable default avatars for new accounts
• Account updates by both users and administrator
• Account deletion by administrator
• Password recovery via e-mail
• Simple user inventory management

Wifi as an OpenSim Add-in

Wifi is provided as an “add-in” library. Diva Canto has provided a blog post which describes the new Wifi mechanism and how to build and configure it, mostly geared at Unix/Linux users.

• Diva Canto Blog Post – Wifi and Other Diva Addons – 5-Apr-2015

Wifi for OpenSim Robust Grids for Windows Users

In case it is helpful to those running Robust grids under Windows, I describe here the mechanism I use to build, configure and run Wifi on our own grids.

1. Download the OpenSim source distribution as a zip file from one of the following:
   • OpenSim Source Code – Stable Release
   • OpenSim Source Code – Developer ViewGit (noting the risk of code in a state of flux)

   and unzip the source code to a suitable location. Note there is a folder called “addon-modules” at the top level (same level as the “bin” directory) which only contains a README.

2. Obtain the source of the Diva addons via
   • https://github.com/diva/diva-distribution/

   and unzip it to a temporary area. Copy ONLY the contents of the “addon-modules” from that area into the main unzipped OpenSim directory top level addon-modules directory. Take care as there is another directory “bin/addon-modules” which is NOT the one you want to copy to.

3. You may wish to alter some of the addon-module .cs files to remove warnings on compilation. ...\addon-modules\01DivaUtils\WebAppUtils.cs catch // (Exception e) occurs twice ...\addon-modules\21Wifi\WifiMain.cs catch // (InvalidOperationException e) occurs once
4. The following Diva addon modules are required for Wifi to work… the others are optional for uses beyond the Wifi interface and may be omitted…
   • 00Data
   • 00DivaInterfaces
   • 01DivaUtils
   • 1DivaOpenSimServices
   • 20WifiScriptEngine
   • 21Wifi
      
5. You can now build OpenSim as usual, and the addons will also be automatically compiled. E.g., in a Command Prompt shell “cd” (change directory) to the top level of the OpenSim unzipped directory and then run “runprebuild48.bat” followed by “compile.bat”. The resulting bin directory contains all you need and will have in it the addon Diva modules including Wifi.

6. Wifi allows for extensive localisation with several provided languages and instructions on how to add further languages. A script is included in Wifi which creates a .dll file containing the resources used when the Wifi module starts up to populate the WifiPages area. This setup step uses a script that requires “ResGen.exe” and “al.exe” to be available to run from a console and usually that means a path to the latest version of ResGen.exe and al.exe needs to be on the “Path” environmental variable… e.g. on Windows 10 using .NET 4.8 these usually located in…
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v10.0A\bin\NETFX 4.8 Tools
   So long as ResGen.exe and al.exe are accessible, which you can test by trying to run them in a Command prompt (cmd.exe), then run the script at addon-modules/21Wifi/Localization/make_languages.bat

7. Before you run Robust.exe and OpenSim.exe, configure Wifi for your requirements by creating a bin/Wifi.ini file (but see the section “Disable Wifi in OpenSim.exe” below for a suggested improvement). A basis for your own bin/Wifi.ini file can be found in addon-modules/21Wifi/Wifi.ini. Since Wifi.ini sets Wifi as disabled by default, you will have to explicitly enable it and change necessary information to access your OpenSim data base, set your administrator avatar name and e-mail, etc.

8. To allow tailoring of Wifi for your own grid, a directory “WifiPages” at the same level as the “bin” directory may be used where you can place specific *.html and any image/* files which will override the default equivalents in bin/WifiPages. The following pages can be overridden:
   • footer.html
   • header.html
   • links.html
   • splash.html
   • termsofservice.html
   • welcome.html
   • image/*

Disable Wifi in OpenSim.exe

With the default locations suggested in Robust.[HG.]ini.example and OpenSim.ini.example for the add-in configuration and registry locations, the addins are picked up by both Robust.exe and OpenSim.exe and use the same configuration for both. This means that if Wifi is enabled in Wifi.ini it runs in both Robust.exe and OpenSim.exe. This is not what is wanted for a grid and means that Wifi is served on the OpenSim default port (usually :9000) as well as the grid services port (usually :8002).

Hence, the following is the configuration used on Openvue and AiLand grids to allow for separate enabling of Wifi for Robust.exe and disabling Wifi for OpenSim.exe. Wifi.ini is MOVED from bin/Wifi.ini to config-addon-robust/Wifi.ini. These configuration settings may be useful as a basis for what others might wish to use…

-------- Robust.[HG].ini ---------------------- [Startup] RegistryLocation = "." ConfigDirectory = "./config-addon-robust" -------- OpenSim.ini--------------------------- [Startup] RegistryLocation = "." ConfigDirectory = "./config-addon-opensim" -------- config-addon-robust/Wifi.ini --------- ; Copied from Diva's Wifi.ini with [WifiService] Enabled = true ; and changes for your data base, admin avatar and grid environment ... -------- config-addon-opensim/Wifi.ini -------- [WifiService] Enabled = false

Notes on the Diva.Data.MySQL.dll StorageProvider used by WiFi

The WiFi Module uses the tailored Diva.Data.MySQL.dll as the “StorageProvider”. The default StorageProvider = OpenSim.Data.MySQL.dll should be used for the normal Robust.exe services as configured in Robust.[HG.]ini. Wifi itself picks up the (still necessary) StorageProvider = Diva.Data.MySQL.dll separately from the settings in Wifi.ini.

Setting up the Default Avatars for Wifi

Using the provided example Wifi.ini file you have an indication that you can select one of three default appearances for newly created avatars set up via Wifi. But in a new environment you must set those avatars up first.

1. Create the avatars with names “Female Avatar”, Male Avatar”, “Neutral Avatar”. and authorise them via the Wifi Admin is that is required.
2. Login as each avatar in turn. They will usually appear as a cloud initially and then after a short while (depending on the version of OpenSim you are using) rezz to appear as “Ruth” wearing four basic body parts, new pants and new shirt. Note these parts come directly from the OpenSim Library and MUST NOT be worn in your final appearance for the default avatars. You can COPY these library parts into the avatar’s inventory if you wish, or create new body parts and clothing, but before you finish you should remove any items that show as “worn” that are located in the OpenSim Library as those will not rezz on avatars created based on these models.
3. Create new body parts and clothing and edit them and/or add any other mesh, clothing, attachments or HUDs you wish to appear on the avatars.
4. Note you can extend (or change the avatars names or labels) for the range of default appearances that are shown in Wifi and/or change the preselected default by altering Wifi.ini. ;; Syntax: AvatarAccount_<AvatarType> = "<FirstName> <LastName>" ;; (replace spaces in <AvatarType> with underscore) AvatarAccount_Female="Female Avatar" AvatarAccount_Male="Male Avatar" AvatarAccount_Neutral="Neutral Avatar" ;; Preselection for default avatar in new account registration AvatarPreselection="Neutral"
5. When you Create a new avatar via the Wifi web interface based on these predefined avatars the items worn will appear in the newly create avatar’s inventory under Clothes -> Default Avatar <AvatarType>.

Artemis I – Website – https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-1
Artemis I – Tracker – https://www.nasa.gov/specials/trackartemis/

Mastodon is a micro blogging social network similar to Twitter. But it is based on open source code and a distributed network of servers. You find a suitable server to register an account on and have a handle such as @username@site. You can then follow people on that site locally or on other sites via a federated setup.

Find a suitable and available server via https://joinmastodon.org/

@atate@mastodon.world
@aiaustin@mastodon.world

The Network on Air free streaming evening on 28th October 2022, the 60th Anniversary of the first broadcast of Fireball XL5’s Planet 46 opening episode, included colourised episodes of Four Feather Falls (First Train Through) and Fireball XL5 (The Sun Temple).

Trailer

The Hypergrid Safari Group met on 19th October 2022 to visit the grid.vibel.eu grid’s “WesLorien ElvenWood” themed region by Roland Francis.

https://www.vibel.eu/regions/weslorien (Diary Blog Post of a Visit by Elbereth Elentari)
hop://grid.vibel.eu:8002/WesLorien/71/172/31

The Hypergrid Safari Group met on 19th October 2022 to visit Outworldz grid’s “Hobbiton” themed regions by Fred Beckhusen (avatar: Ferd Frederix). The grid can be accessed via http://www.outworldz.com:9000.

hop://www.outworldz.com:9000/Hobbiton/487/357/23
https://www.outworldz.com/cgi/freesculpts.plx?q=OAR-

The Virtual University of Edinburgh “Openvue” grid on http://virtual.aiai.ed.ac.uk:8002 has been operating since 2007 on the OpenSimulator platform as an open Hypergrid accessible resource looked after by Prof. Austin Tate (avatar: Ai Austin) in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Openvue has now been moved behind the University firewall and thus will not be accessible externally via the Hypergrid. It will continue to be available within the firewall or via the University’s secure VPN. This is part of a networking security effort by the University to close open ports for services run by individual departments or schools or by normal staff members.

Openvue OARs via open.ed

The Openvue regions separately and as a single 4×4 varregion “continent” continue to be available as OpenSim Archive files (OARs). See this blog post (19-Jul-2021) or this open.ed blog post.

The OARs can be downloaded via https://vue.ed.ac.uk/resources/open.ed/
Right mouse click on any .oar and ensure you save it as an .oar file (or it might be unzipped y the server before the download). OAR files are actually .tar.gx (.tgz) files.

Openvue continent OAR via DreamGrid

Openvue is also available as an OAR (4×4) that can be loaded into a 4×4 sized region on DreamGrid, one of the largest OpenSim distributions [OAR File, Readme, Thumbnail Image]. CC BY-NC. For flexibility and future protection it is not exclusive to DreamGrid, so can be mounted on any OpenSim grid you wish.

http://opensimulator.org/mantis/summary_page.php

This blog post provides resources and information for a route to take Ready Player Me avatars through Blender into Second Life and OpenSim to travel across the Hypergrid.

Workflow for Conversion

• Obtain Ready Player Me avatar .glb URL
• Download avatar URL with ?textureAtlas=none&pose=T on the end
• Start Blender and delete the default camera and light
• Import .glb to Blender and check avatar is in T-Pose
• Extract textures via Texture Paint tab

Set Finger Pose to Second Life Splayed Fingers

The Ready Player me T-Pose has the fingers in a line. Second Life and OpenSim T0-Pose rst pose has the fingers widely splayed. The steps in the bullets below should be undertaken BEFORE doing the character conversion. Missing out these steps will still give a reasonable avatar but leave the fingers deformed.

• Add (temporarily) the Bento Buddy Rig Creation Safe Rig which have splayed fingers as expected in Second Life and OpenSim) to act as a comparison to the Ready Player me T-Pose which has the fingers straight.
• Enter Blender Pose Mode. It is also useful to set the skeleton to be in front in Viewport Display.
• Rotate the bones of the avatar’s fingers and thumbs to closely match the reference rig. It is best not to scale or move them to avoid bad hand positions.
• Select the avatar “Armature” and under Bento Buddy Rig Tools click the “Rebind associated mesh” button.
• Check that the Pose and Rest Pose for the mesh are now identical (with splayed fingers).
• Remove the temporary Bento Buddy reference safe rig.

You can save the splayed fingers T-Pose in the Bento Buddy Library for later reapplication to simplify these steps on other avatars. Use the bento Buddy Animation tab -> Enable Posing Library. “Add Pose” to the rig, rename it to something meaningful (e.g. T-Pose Splayed Fingers” and “Save Lib” to save a .bpl (Bento Pose Library) file. You can skip the steps above by Loading the .bpl pose library fil and applying the pose to the avatar. Though its safest to restrict the change of bone positions to just the thumbs and fingers which you changed by selecting them and using the Posing Library option to “Apply to selected bones only”.

Convert Avatar Rig/Armature to Second Life/OpenSim version

• Under Bento Buddy Character Converter, load the mixamo_no_prefix.bbm map (Ready Player Me avatars have a Mixamo compatible skeleton) and click Convert
• Use Bento Buddy to export for Second Life/OpenSim (select all three options including Project Full Rig)
• Import to Second Life/OpenSim ticking both “Include Skin Weights” and “Include Joint Positions”
• Attach the uploaded mesh avatar (e.g. to Avatar Center)
• Texture the mesh faces using the Diffuse textures and Normal Maps (for bumpiness). The shininess/metallic textures don’t work well and may be omitted

Note that there is also a readyplayerme.bbm. After 1-Oct-2022 versions of Bento Buddy will likely have readyplayerme.bbm (28KB) set as a copy of mixamo_no_prefix.bbm (28KB), but before that readyplayerme.bbm (2KB) would not give a full conversion and would leave the hands unconverted.

Hand Relax Background Pose

• You could add a hand relax low priority pose into the mesh

To “relax” the hands when not in a pose you could use the RuthAndRoth “bentohandrelax” script and “bentohandrelaxP1” animation. These are available in the Ruth2 v4 and Roth2 v2 distributions in Second Life and OpenSim or via the RuthAndRoth “Ruth2” GitHub repository. See, for example, https://blog.inf.ed.ac.uk/atate/2020/08/30/ruth2-v4/.

In-world Customisation

• Optionally make some parts transparent (such as hair and glasses, hats, etc) to allow use of in world attachments for those parts
• Try the Avatar Shape sliders as many will work

A number (but not all) the “Edit Shape” sliders work on Ready Player Me avatars to adjust the general shape.

Some parts such as the hair, accessories such as glasses, etc can be set to 100% transparent and the underlying avatar shows through (such as setting a bald head). This can allow some measure of in-world customisation. It also allows standard avatar attachments such as mesh and flexi hair to be added on without initially uploading a bald headed Ready Player Me avatar.

The head and body parts and textures cannot be altered. Facial hair, eyebrow details, make-up, etc are all baked onto the skin textures which have a unique mapping for Ready Player Me avatars. Hence tattoos and other elements that can be applied to skins in Second Life or OpenSim will not work.

The eye texture can be changed, even to a Bakes on Mesh (BoM) Eye (ensure you use an underlying avatar mask that allows the eye to show in that case). The normal eye texture iris image is slightly larger than the standard Ready Player Me one, so you may wish to adjust the image horizontal and vertical scale to (say) 1.1.

Licence Details

• Blender is an open source 3D modelling tool.
• Any avatar created using the Ready Player Me website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), allowing non-commercial use.
• Bento Buddy is a paid Blender addin.
• OpenSimulator is an open source virtual world largely compatible with Second Life.

Beorn’s House is a 256×256 region for DreamGrid (OpenSim) with surrounding mountainous landscape and is part of the “Hobbiton Collection“/Shirelands of Hobbit/Lord of the Rings themed regions built by David Denny (avatar: Darkness Papp), licenced for exclusive use on the DreamGrid distribution of OpenSim. It can be loaded onto a 256mx256m region in DreamGrid via the “Content” menu in the DreamGrid control panel.

Licence and Credits (from OAR Readme)

Part of the Hobbiton Collection by Darkness Papp
For exclusive use only in DreamGrids CC-BY-NC 4.0
Character Created By: J. R. R. Tolkien

Beorn lived in a wooden house on his pasture-lands between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood, to the east of the Anduin. His household included an animal retinue (horses, dogs, sheep, and cows, among others); according to Gandalf, Beorn did not eat his cattle, nor hunt wild animals. He also grew large areas of clover for his bees.

When you rez this build, make sure your music is off, you will want to hear the sounds here… a billy goat, a wolf, and birds. A serene countryside estate with lush landscaping.

This lovely country cottage has beehives, horses grazing, bales of hay to feed them. Entering the cottage, from the garden area, you will see Great Danes to guard you, and a cow eating hay in the prep area of the cottage where you will bring in your produce from the fields to prepare them for your evening meals. Attached is a Dining area where you can enjoy your freshly picked harvest.

GitHub JennaScvl (Berry Bunny in Second Life, Kallisti#2038 on Discord) recently announced work on a Unity-based viewer for Second Life and OpenSim using LibreMetaverse. This blog post provides resources related to the development of Crystal Frost which is still at an early stage of development.

The Unity project code and ersources can be obtained at https://github.com/JennaScvl/CrystalFrost

Starter scene is in Scenes/SampleScene (may be renamed in later versions).

saveyour.world is a virtual world created for the World Wildlife Fund Deutschland and accessible using a Ready Player Me avatar.

SwiftXR lets a user create a project, drag and drop 3D objects into it, personalize it, and deploy cross-platform 3D, WebAR, and WebVR experiences. A basic project can be tried with an initial 5 credits given when you first register (as at September 2022). 1 credit is used when you make a project and download it as HTNML (in a zip file ready to deploy). But the platform is pay as you go after the initial credits are used.

https://home.swiftxr.io/
https://swiftxr.io/hub
https://home.swiftxr.io/pricing

Projects can include Ready Player Me avatars…

Direct Access to SwiftXR Ready Player Me Avatar Creator: https://swiftxr.readyplayer.me

Documentation: https://docs.swiftxr.io/
Tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChI10A1F-771X04TVEvigvw

Sample project: http://atate.org/aiaustin/SwiftXR-Ai/
1 Credit is used to generate app and download project HTML as a .Zip file

Ready Player Me (https://readyplayer.me) allows the creation of cross platform avatars that can be exported in .gltf format for use or conversion to a range of virtual worlds and metaverse platforms and many other purposes. A range of clothing, outfits and fasion that may be openly accessible to anyone, or available in limited editions only for a limited subscription time (free or otherwise) is appearing. Examples include

Parallel Tommy Hilfiger

Male and female Outfits available via a free token for a limited time. See this blog post.

Vogue Singapore

The September 2022 and October 2022 issues of Vogue Singapore (https:/vogue.sg) linked the virtual world fashion of fashion designer Yimeng Yu (https://vogue.sg/fashion-designer-yimeng-yu/) with Ready Player Me avatars. See this blog post.

Kahani

Pull & Bear

TBA