Troppo The Blog

Photosynth of a project from Opensim Troppo Grid. A 1 bedroom house soon to be built

Is Exporting, Importing objects from or to Secondlife and Opensim possible.

Yes a few applications work either way, how useful that is, is depending on what you are exporting or importing.

SecondInventory will import and export (backup)most items,  a few 3^rd party viewers will attempt to do the same in some sort of a fashion.

Meerkat and Emerald

The flow of content as expected is from SL in to other grids, mainly because SL “has it” and the the other grids are new and looking of content. This is changing with lot of content being made in opensim based grids right now.

When we first started in Opensim our aim was to take what we had in SL and transfer it to Opensim. This was painful, lots of imports got screwed up and lots of time was lost in cleaning up. That was more than 1 year ago and things have improved. With hindsight we should have rebuilt and made a fresh start.

Using Opensim as your workshop (developing platform)) and exporting your product in to SL sounds like a good idea and it can work.

However if you use lots of large building blocks (prims larger than 10x10x10) as you do in large buildings it gets hard if not impossible to export to SL (max prim size in Sl is 10 x10 x10).

This stops a lot of design flowing from Opensim to SL . On the other hand importing a build from Sl containing lots of prims that could be built with far less in opensim is also not a good idea.

Conclusion: As a first step SL should change and allow building with larger prims!

SL has far more users and content. Removing the wall and have free trade will benefit all ( free trade removing trade barriers I have heard this before…). The platform is sound it is inexpensive and relatively easy to learn, that can benefit everyone from large cooperations, governments to individuals.

OpenSim supports: Large prims, Hypergrid, Megaregions and Oar backups that alone makes it an advanced and professional 3D simulator.

We are still testing and playing with the light and shadow effects in OpenSim using Kirstens s17 viewer.

What do we think so far? We love it! No if’s no but’s!

Problems yeah we always have problems a day without them means we haven’t tried hard enough

We had some corrupted prims maybe?, We think that was the problem happened to a few roofs light was streaming in, in places it should not let light in. Deleting the prim and adding a new one fixed that.

Prims that have been cut or hollowed we have had problems with them so we have replaced them with whole prims.

Of cause transparent texture is just that transparent and do mot cast a shadow so our blinds are now made of prims.

We have some nice looking trees and plants that we haven’t worked out how to use. We have at times used an old linden tree or fern together with them to cast a shadow, companion planting

Light as you can see in the photos adds depth to the picture. All of a sudden we have a lot of control, that makes the environment more complex but that is exactly what we wanted.

What once was an exciting world is now even more exciting. OpenSim really is very good.

No Light source top photo

Light  intensity 0.5 radius 3m falloff 0.75

Light intensity 0.75 radius 3m falloff 0.75

The vase only has a Blank added as texture so all the shading is dynamic  how good is that ?? All photos taken as snapshots .jpg high res only cropped no other editing

I had a look at Photosynth  8 or so months ago  so I thought it was time for me to come back and have another look. I think I am of the same impression as I was months ago this looks Ok but  or am I missing something here? It feels like it is potential brilliant but something is missing  I think I come back in a few months time. This is how the lounge room of the Picasso home looks like  but you cant beat being there 

We done some more work and tweaked the shadows in Troppo Grid, a few little workarounds and we get a better result.  A picture tells it all, still a lot of improvements are possible as always but hey we come a long way in a short time. Together with todays update of osgrid asset server,  voice and group implementation,  OpenSim  is delivering more than I ever dream t about so Rock on …….

A short clip to show some parts of the Display Village as seen in the  S17 viewer. I am impressed  the whole experience is wonderful, inside our buildings shading and light is added giving  a better depth and definition. I also noticed the interior of our buildings are darker. Sculpted objects ? some work fine some don’t transparent objects ? but I can learn to live with this  there is always a work around  mmm… The Workaround Grid good name Have fun ..

By using Kirsten’s ShadowDraft viewer when I log in to Troppo Grid It opens up a new world. It feels a bit strange because all of a sudden we have a mix of dynamically generated shadows and a few fake ones (that we worked hard on to create ). Over all it looks fantastic it will save me heaps of time and make The Display Village a far more life like experiense. The guys at Linden Lab must have been working hard to get it to work as well as it is, very clever and the spin off  working in OpenSim is even more fantastic Thank you to everyone that helped.  Yes a picture tells a 1000 words or more……………

OpenSim,  Space Navigator and Troppo Grid

I use Space Navigator in OpenSim on the Troppo Grid. I have had the 3D Connexion device for over a year now. It has become an extension of my left hand. My right hand still grabs the mouse, together thy work in harmony. You have an extraordinary control of movement with Space Navigator it did however take some time to get used to the gadget and after the first week or so it ended up in the drawer. It emerged back in my hand a bit later I started using it making in world Videos.

Space Navigator is part of my life now, I started using it building before I was crunching numbers I still am but as I get more and more used to Space Navigator the numbers become a final check only.

I have no association with Space Navigator people only wanted to pass on my experience with the device. As far as I can tell it is a very solid and functional aid in making precision adjustments and I have had no problems with it in OpenSim or in SL for that matter. Thanks guys for a great product.

For the last 3 months or so we have been working on our new Grid.  We made a decision to scale down our presence in SecondLife  Why?

Many reasons  Zonja Capalini has an excellent post about a very similar situation, I could not express it better myself so please read and thank you Zonja

OpenSim can offer us what we been looking for in SL but could not find,  a guest account, backup system, hypergrid, private server a way to be in charge of what we do.

I am fully aware of the shortcomings OpenSim has at the moment however Troppo Grid has been surprisingly stable and so far I have nothing but praise and admiration for the OpenSim development team the progress in the last 3 months just amazing… Maybe because Troppo Grid only has 9 regions and at the moment has two servers looking after its existence it works so well (and I like to add at a cost less than half of  One SL region).  We are looking to develop  small Grids servicing the Real Estate and building Industry working as a marketing and selling tool, the Grid’s all connecting via hypergrid technology. The final product  working much like the 2D net as we know and use today. Oh and I forgot to say we are having plenty of fun putting all this together thank you all for helping ………