Chic at Ebbe's Place

It has been a busy week in the metaverse.

The big news for Second Life is the newly available  SL GO ap for Firestorm which promises "50FPS in a crowded region with a draw distance of 256 at full ultra with shadows graphics settings".   With my new graphics card and fairly high speed internet connection, I am not really a candidate -- at least it wouldn't seem so, but the last couple of days have been dire.

Crashing and stalls abounded on various sims (not mine but not busy ones either). I had to relog in order to continue projects and when running two avatars one could not see the pose the other was using -- something that normally doesn't occur. So the new deploys didn't work well for me, at least it seems that way. But according to official reports only the main server channel received updates.

The sims where I had issues were not ones I normally visit so it is difficult to say if the problem was "them" or "me". I did NOT update my Firestorm viewer yet, so no changes there.

SL GO will also work with OpenSim. 

There are plenty of venues going on as well as the normally huge amount of hunts. And then there is Advent. The realms have been busier than normal and the fifth occurrence of Tyrah's realm opened one day, the first time anyone I know had seen it.

The official grid statistics came out today, mirroring my not scientific at all view that both Inworldz and Avination had taken big hits this last month or two. 30 day user statistic are definitely lower than previously and according to Hypergrid Business " InWorldz lost 390 active users and Avination lost 297."  I can confirm how very slow it has been on both grids.

The big dra-ma (and it was that) has been over at Aviworlds where I am no longer. I can report on occurrences before my exodus however.  Here's a recap.  Alex announced the closing of the grid; Alex announced the selling of the grid; Alex announced the return as CEO and grid owner (unbeknownst to the then new owner). Renters were given a day (IF they found the message on the website) to lease their land once again. If they didn't accomplish that chore in those few hours, it was lost.  The next day Alex announced the closing of the hypergrid and the new commercial closed grid status of Aviworlds.

Whew!

It of course got very messy over on Opensim Virtual; the moderator deleted many posts that I never saw but was was available to read was bad enough. NOT, mind you as treacherous as the IW Forums which once again this week crucified a long time community member who had given hundreds of hours of volunteer time to their beloved grid.

Once the hypergrid closed there was no point for me to be in Aviworlds, and that bitter taste in my mouth wasn't encouraging me to stick around. I don't suspect Aviworlds will last more than a week or two at this point. Did I mention that more of the crew was fired and the CTO and webmaster left?

After a headspinning week in OpenSim and dizzy week of fashion and design blogging, it was nice to relax in Canada and just build with prims, an old pastime that I have rediscovered. 

I had a little personal fame and glory this week winning three prizes at the University of Western Australia's machinima expo. A long lost magazine article (MOSP and ME) publication came to light (very bizarre story) and I became the "staff hypergrid expert" at GCG.


Another interesting statistic is that the public hypergrid enabled platforms moved ahead of closed grids for the first time. Second Life is not included in that statistic.