Opensim on VM: Finally working....

Finally have managed to get Opensim working on the uni's virtual machine after spending a week annoying IS support. It was hanging up on the region handshake when I tried yo connect using impudence. Could not find anything on opensim discussion boards about this problem on virtual machines; just stuff about the error being caused by port forwarding in routers. The virtual cluster is pretty much a black-box to me, so was worried this might make it impossible to run Opensim on VM. In the end it just needed the UDP ports opened. Now all I have to do is think of what we can use Opensim for. At the moment I am planning to shift large teaching simulations off Second Life onto Opensim, as they are used by local users, and then use the Second Life region as an open demonstrator of simple simulation exercises, using Facebook to track/authenticate users... so that should keep me busy for the rest of June.

Opensim

Following the price hike from Linden I have been asked to look at moving our virtual worlds presence from Second Life to OpenSim. It will be cheaper and demonstrate our touching faith in open software. On the suggestion that we close down the SL region immediately and shift everything across for the start of the coming semester our faith in open source in general and OpenSim in particular was found to be less rock-solid, so the plan is to run them in parallel in the coming year. Aim is to run OpenSim on a virtual server with 4GB RAM and Windows 2008 R2, but not sure exactly how much virtual real estate this will give us, and get it set up by the start of semester in mid-September. What could possibly go wrong?

Shrinking World

Heard on the Radio 4 PM programme yesterday afternoon that Linden Labs, the operators of Second Life, are laying off 30% of their staff. More details . The coverage was very negative, arguing the virtual world bubble had burst and it was all going to go a bit Friends Reunited. A lot of it does indeed look pretty pointless. However, the difference is that there are uses of Second Life that have some commercial logic and don't just depend on the buzz. In maintaining an island in Second Life for management simulations we are effectively doing two things: paying to have a server maintained and being able to make the simulations very accessible to casual visitors. If Linden Labs slipped over the side of their flat virtual World tomorrow the simulation could be shifted onto an Opensim server that we would have to maintain in the uni: but I just do not want the hassle. I suppose as a contingency it makes sense to create a shadow version on Opensim, but it is even more of a hassle to do this if we are not sure we will need to. I will add it to the to-do list...