Visiting V-business Grid

My visit to the V-business Grid

This is my 6th visit to an OpenSim Grid

V-business is an IBM initiative to encourage the adoption of Virtual worlds. I believe the Grid is a volunteer effort by IBM staff. It would probably be best to keep this in mind during my comments. I was using the recommended Hippo Viewer



The website lists these regions

Welcome

Community    
      
Education
          
Energy
    
Finance
    
Government

Health

Molecule    

Research
               
Retail
      
Shengri La vBusiness
          
Smarter Planet
          
Transport
      
I'm guessing these are the themes for each region

The Welcome area is quite nicely done, as you can see it has a few
building and some sculptures, well I guess they are sculptures.
The checkered object is a lighthouse, with a TP from the base to the top.

Here you can see two windmills, a theatre in the distance, a geodesic dome, a building with a tree growing in it,and a model of the Earth inside a building.
The tree building was the one that caught my eye, I think it would be nice to actually live or work in a place like that.

Below we see a Ferris wheel, it's much better seeing it in the dark

The Map shows how small the Grid is, I immediately wondered why Molecule was out as an Island. One thing to notice is how much you can see on the map, as Welcome is quite built up, and Education, Transport, and both Finance regions are quite bare. Why Finance needed a mature area, I don't know? (rude accounting perhaps)

"To boldly go where no Avatar has gone before"
But not in that plywood ship  :-)
The ship and the Hypergrid Gateway are pretty much all their is in the Smarter Planet area. There also seems to be a breeding program for plywood cubes

No Prizes for guessing this is in the Retail area, but..no one on the check out, and no clothing section.

From here I went to the Community area, but it's mostly taken up by Rackforce, actually I think the Library is in Research.

But you can see that Rackforce is showing some plans, and looks to be checking them by making a mock up of them. So far they only look to have some doors and server racks.

Looking back to Education Sim. Some of the region crossings where quite bad, and could take up to 5 seconds to do.
At one point I had to quit, and relog.

Next stop was the Fashion Research Institute.
While I was here I picked up a few free clothes, hair, and skin.
Slight problem happened when I couldn't open my inventory to actually see what I had. Grrrr

This looks to be a miniature version of Shenlei's build on SciSim.
Now this probably wasn't all built on site, with OpenSim, you can use a .oar file that's a backup from another OpenSim, and just unpack it on site, and instant build. W00T!

 About this time I decided to have a look at Molecule, and it does look like it's been given some love and attention.

A Welcome Card from Kurt Taylor is a nice touch, "Feel free to look around" he says...Thanks!!
The best place view is from on top of the hill.
The information panels look to be well done, and probably make much more sense to anyone with a chemistry background, unlike me to whom chemistry means bunsen burners and whirley glassware, and things going BANG!

As I said, makes no sense to me whatsoever.

There are also some models of molecules, but I don't seem to have got a picture of them. D'oh!

And here is the obligatory picture of me as a noob

I did another fly over of the Regions to see if i missed anything, but most were empty, or had been wiped clean.

I stopped by the Hypergrid Station, and thought to jump to Cyberlandia. But the Hypergrid didn't work.
At this time I got a system message to say my inventory had been repaired.
I decided to test it by going back to FRI, and getting some clothes.

As you can see the Inventory was fixed, and I was able to change clothes, and put on a new skin. For some reason the bald base for the hair would not attach, and the shape is not able to be altered. But I still think it looks pretty good.

 

But as I  said, this seems to be set up as a sandbox, so it's not meant to be pretty.
 I don't know where it's hosted, I suspect due to the rather dire Sim crossings that it's across different servers, and some Sims are very slow to cross, so possibly even in different datacentres.

Further Reading


http://www.thinkbalm.com/2009/08/27/the-v-business-grid-a-vision-of-the-future-immersive-internet/


The only person who I could find with some connection to the v-business Grid was Peter Finn, he twitters here http://twitter.com/Nink


Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.
Thomas J Watson - Founder IBM

Visiting Condensation land

Visiting Condensation land

This is my 5th post on a visit to an OpenSim grid. 

( with comments and help from Zonja )

I first heard of Zonja on Vints blog on how to install OpenSim on XP. I tried it and it worked, and I was happy, and then I tried it on Linux, and it worked...eventually, with a bit of tuning, and reading OpenSim.ini, and rereading the ini file as I didn't read it properly the first time.

Then I added her blog to my reading list, eventually discovering that she has built her own grid, Condensation land. 

Having your own Grid is a bit of an exotic hobby, and I asked some time a go for an account and I visited and looked around, performance was quite good, border crossing, didn't throw you a hundred or so metres away (As SL still can).

is not really through choice, and she did at one stage have quite a few SL Sims, and these were OpenSpace Sims.

Then came the day when linden Lab decided that these Sims where no longer being used for their stated purpose, and were being abused. I have my own theories of what happened, but to read through Zonjas eyes, go to here. Zonja and her friend Ludmilla with Favio Piek, have taken all the work they had done in SL, and set up their own grid to save it all. I'm actually quite sad that so much work was lost, but so many people had no way to back any of it up at the time.

But it's probably true to say that this event was the major shot in the arm that spurred on the development of OpenSim. 

                                                                

Zonja is builder, scripter, artist, a brilliant machinemist, an excellent dancer, ** she was also a major SL evangelist, so not only was the Openspace a financial assault, it was a kick to someone who had been telling everyone what a great potential SL had. 

Here we can see Zonja in SL, and in OpenSim.

                                                      

                   

It's not a conscious choice that I choose Zonja for my next visit, but it is an interesting contrast to Reaction Grid. As Reaction Grid is a commercial entity, Condensation Land is on a PC running windows, on the end of a 2mg SDSL line, and it works, it's fun to visit and to look around. 

 Ludmilla Writer                                                                                  

It's a private grid, but I  believe you can hypergrid from Osgrid. Hypergrid is a protocol so you can travel between Grids, it's also in Alpha, and still has a few bugs, and doesn't play nice with the Diva Distros, such as Condensation land is running. 

She has also demonstrated on how you can use very large linksets on OpenSim by constructing a Klein Bottle, you to can have your own to play with. 

Currently Zonja is hosting an art show called Mirror Worlds 

                                                                        

                          

It reminds me of the early days of the Web, people on dial up, and in company offices, and in government agencies around the would would run a web server on their PC. Ok, so the webpages at this time were very static, and you had to wait for the entire picture to download before you could see it, and we were  using Mosaic as a browser, but then, maybe, just maybe OpenSim is the new Apache Server.

My only real problem with OpenSim in the lack of any currency, and centralized shopping as does SL . There are skins and and clothes, and AOs available, you just have to find them. You really do miss your normal appearence, but thankfully it's getting better, as Botgirl also shows below. Left hand side is Reaction Grid, right hand side is SL

                                           

Thanks to the joys of Open Source, is that I could offer clothes or items to the main developers to include in the Libraries, so I can't really complain can I?

When you first login, your back to being Ruth again, Currently Zonja hasn't installed any Freebies to wear or use, but this is only due to being busy in RL

                              

The Condensation Land grid is about 5 regions, as you can see on the Map below:-

The main focus of Condensation land is the Large Gazebo [that's my club at Condensation -- Zonja], and also the Gallery.

  

Below you can see the rotating Klein bottle.

Zonja also has a Zeppelin, that you can TP to, and a Balloon that goes around on a circuit. So this is almost the same view as SL Condensation Land

The following pictures display a panorama from near the Home point, as it's quite small you can almost see across the 5 Sims

Below is shoshisn's Shilova's "Stairway to Heaven"

The Tower below is in Condensation land north, and it's big, really big. I'm standing at the 9:00 position. [That was supposed to be a rotating restaurant, which I neved finished -- Zonja]

I'm flying back from the tower, and turn to look at it again.

Then face the other way

 (Didn't I say something about pictures of the back of my head in my last post?)
I saw this sculpture at Condensation Beach [That's "vase 101" from shoshisn Shilova, you can find it also in the Mirror Worlds exhib -- Zonja] .

Now here we are at the Gallery, I do feel a little under dressed :-)

Well, there goes my thoughts in being under dressed :-)

Remember the title of the display is Mirror Worlds, so it's not just the main image your looking at, it's also the mirrors and reflections in the glass, and the surfaces. 

More art works by Florence Babenco

You have to come here to see the rest of the gallery.

Marla Korolov has posted on Grid Statistics and grids numbers, but as she says, there will be many Grids and Sims not listed. Condensation Land one of the many grids not listed anywhere. (Someone should really make a good name for these..eg grey grids or something.)

At the end of the Gallery Zonja has a secret passage. Watch your step  :-) . Don't fall in!!

I arranged to meet Zonja on a later date, where she was able to give me some clothes and shoes. I also uploaded my shape via the Meerkat Browser. I believe the latest Imprudence browser can also do this. I didn't have time to get a better skin, or shoes or an AO.

 

You know, I'm certain the sliders move just a tiny bit upwards, when you move your shape across. I didn't get a new skin, but Zonja and I really only had 5 minutes together due to our RL schedules.  So I'm off to explore a bit more.

Here I am seated at the Arrabal Tango Club, no one to dance with me :-(

As I was passing here again I thought it a well framed shot with the sculpture, the bottle and the Balloon flying over head.

After all that, it was time to relax by the pool.

Well I hope you can see what is possible with a home PC, a Broadband connection, some creativity, and OpenSim , so I'll wave bye for now.

Links below for further reading and viewing

 

 

Zonjas latest post on oar files

Condensation land blog

Zonjas blog

An interview with Zonja on Maxping

Zonjas Flickr Stream

Condensation land Flickr group, both SL and Opensim

Zonja on Youtube

Maxping Article on Ludmilla Writer

Ludmillas Flickr stream

Zonja has donated her club as an oar file so anyone can import it to their OpenSim

also available in the OSgrid

** this has nothing to do with the fact she is my sl Landlady....really...promise  [Ha Ha /Zonja]

In my day, we didn't have virtual reality.  If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an axe, you just had to hope you could outrun him.

- Anon