Chic at Ebbe's Place

Just for myself mostly, I wanted to repost (save) a comment I made on the blog of someone newly exploring Opensim. Over ten years old in SL, she does have some background in VR. She visited Inworldz and now Kitely, but has yet to actually discover what Opensim and the hypergrid is all about. *wink*

Talla pretty much said it all. In my experience CURRENTLY Kitely is a much better choice than IW. From all accounts and the folks that I talk to still in IW (and login statistics) like most or all closed commercial grids, IW is in decline. SL is too of course, but it is so big and with THE BEST content creators that slow decline doesn't count for all that much.

Most of us have been where you are, trying out worlds. The thing that may take you some time to understand is that the hypergrid OS "is" in many ways the equivalent of a grid such as SL. So while there may not be that many folks in Kitely, there is the WHOLE hypergrid that is actually part of your world. Things are very different here and there is no way to grasp that in a few weeks.

IW has very little to do with OpenSim even though it is technically part of it due to the platform. They have a model much like SL only cheaper. That worked for a long while, but now there is plenty of evidence that shows the hypergrid is the growing part of the metaverse.

Time will tell. I was in the alpha program at Hi Fidelity but there are MAJOR issues for content creators there that don't seem to be on the docket for change. That means it will be the hobbiest creators that make up the world. That isn't a bad thing, just that I don't see that we should expect top notch SL content there. When I was there briefly, well known designers were leaving in mass simply because publishing content there was much like giving it to the world (there is that issue in OpenSim in general also so I am not saying OS is better than HiFi in that regard *wink*). 

From all that I can tell, the studies I have done and people I have talked to. Sansar will be very different from SL. For some it will work, for others not. The same for Hi Fidelity. Honestly at this point, I don't see any clear winner. They all have their pluses and minuses and it will depend on the individual which one fits the best.

And I don't see SL going away any time soon -- even five years as you say. Too many folks have too much invested and The Lab is doing a good job keeping things current and making improvements. True, it is old architecture, but it is amazing what folks on their own have figured out to make it as good as it can be. With my Maitreya body and Lelutka head, I look DAMN good *wink*.   I am not sure what my inventory is worth at the moment but it could easily be $10,000 US and I have thrown about five times that or more away (I have been blogging for eight years). It would take a lot for me to abandon all that goodness.

I love OpenSim for what it is. Free. Easy. Less drama. Creative. Sharing. It will never REPLACE SL for me. It is a different world with a different draw. I think there is room for both.